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CLF Literati 2026: Women leaders holding their ground beyond quotas, says Smriti Irani
The event also featured discussions with MP Tewari; veteran Doordarshan anchor Sheila Chaman; and authors Jonathan Gil Harris and Milan Vohra
BJP leader and former Union minister Smriti Irani made a strong case for women’s reservation in legislative bodies, citing both electoral success and developmental gains as evidence.
Drawing on the experience of panchayat-level quotas, she noted that a significant proportion of women elected through reservation later went on to win even from unreserved seats, disproving the notion that they cannot compete beyond mandated quotas. She also pointed to improved human development indicators in regions where women have held constitutional positions.
Irani was speaking at the Literati Spring Fest in a conversation with Sumita Misra, founder chairperson of the Chandigarh Literary Society, where she reflected on her journey from a determined young woman in Delhi to a public figure navigating entertainment, politics and public life.
Growing up in Delhi, Irani said she was surrounded by people who traded on pedigree, but she wanted none of it. Irani moved to Mumbai to build something independent of her father. A media house turned her away for being too young. She became a Femina Miss India finalist instead, a world so foreign to her she didn’t know how to put on lipstick. “For me, that was a ticket to salvation. I thought this is an area where my father cannot influence whether I win or lose,” she said.
‘I went from washing dishes to being turned down by an airline’
What followed was a ₹60,000 loan, auditions, and a dishes washing job at Mumbai’s first McDonald’s, with a free burger at lunch. Jet Airways had turned her down before that, citing a lack of personality. “No wonder the airline shut down. ‘Kyunki saas bhi kabhi bahu thi’ was handed a 10.30 pm graveyard slot because nobody expected it to last; It went on to become number one. I was very adamant that when you tune in to watch that character, you would tune in to see the issues she voiced or stood for,” she said.
She entered electoral politics convinced that civil society alone wouldn’t be enough. “No matter how much I travel, no matter what my input as goodwill ambassador was, Gopinath Munde, a senior BJP leader, told me that you have to be a policymaker. Otherwise, you’ll become a strong voice, but you’ll not have an impact,” she said.
Irani contested her first election in 2004 at the age of 27 and became a cabinet minister at 37. Speaking about what it means to be part of PM Modi’s team, she described his inclusive leadership style and emphasis on technology and innovation, and how that environment made room for out of the box thinking.
During the pandemic, she recounted the scramble to build PPE manufacturing from scratch, how raw material was sourced from Gujarat overnight, machines imported from Japan and swabs fashioned from pharmaceutical waste. By June 2020, India was the second largest exporter in the world, with no government subsidy. “All you have to do is pick up the phone,” she said.
‘We need to be civilisationally literate’
On gender asymmetries, she argued that India had misread its own history. “We need to be civilisationally literate, if a society had women heads of state across kingdoms, then why are we always labelled as gender unjust as a civilisation?”
She is currently travelling to 300 cities to help women owned businesses get listed on the stock exchange. “When women have money, they know how to take care of their family. They don’t need sympathy. They need entrepreneurship.”
The Spring Edition of the CLF Literati 2026, organised by the Chandigarh Literary Society at Hyatt Centric, Sector 17, also featured local MP Manish Tewari in conversation with journalist Manraj Grewal Sharma on his book, A World Adrift; veteran Doordarshan anchor Sheila Chaman on the golden era of Indian television; author Jonathan Gil Harris on his book, The Girl from Fergana; and Mills & Boon’s first Indian romance author Milan Vohra.
