When the Gods needed to destroy the Mahishasura, they invoked a female power in the form Devi Durga.

In the entire history of civilization, almost without exception, the mightiest power has always been reposed in a female God. Take the example of Athena, the Greek Goddess. She is the Goddess of wisdom, courage, inspiration, civilization, law and justice, strategic warfare, mathematics, strength, strategy, the arts crafts and skill.

Strangely, if we, for a moment, pause to think about MaaDurga we find the deification of the same traits in the form of herself, her daughters MaaLakhshmi and MaaSaraswati. While she as the mighty warrior kills the invincible to save the world from doom, her children, specially the Goddess of prosperity and the Goddess of knowledge, keeps the world edified and in order through wisdom.

If we start connecting the dots without any bias we would find that all the evolved civilisations reposed their faith in the female power. The modern day science has also traced a reason for it. Studies conducted across various activities have returned results showing women have empirically done better than men in stabilizing a challenging situation or in times of crisis, by individual performance, women have shown to have better abilities coming out as a winner due to their endocrinilogical endowments.

Closer home we have ample examples of women challenging the notion of a mediocre nation. Remember Karman Malleswari who won an Olympic medal in 2000 Sydney Olympics -- a 100 year after Norman Pritchard won two medals in 1900 Paris Olympics. With Mary Kom, Phogot sisters, Hima Das, Deepa Karmakar, Deepika Kumari and others in the sports and in other fields proving every other moment their resilience and superiority.

In the case of development narrative we find the same stories getting repeated. In poverty alleviation therefore it has been a conscious decision to leverage the resilience, grit and enterprise of women in fight against poverty. The understanding here is that women look after the family even in the hardest of the adverse situation and keep it ticking. It takes a great deal of enterprise to survive in the face of great adversaries. If that be so, a little handholding would go a long way in creating a new India. This basic understanding and its implementation through microfinance has started bearing fruits specially given the priority the government has put on creation of women SHGs, and JLGs and also facilitating their funding by creation of the MUDRA.

While sports women like Deepika, Phogot sisters, Hima and Jhulon have shown that they are the flag bearers of the new India, a silent revolution is also happening in the hands of their sisters at the grassroot level. The Durgas of the new India are out there to annihilate the curse of poverty. It’s only a matter of time before the transformation becomes palpable.

On this note let me wish you all with Season’s greetings.