In this episode of The Women Inspire Aspire Podcast, I talk to Kanika Shharma about Child Safety.

Being introduced to child safety by phrases used by her son, Kanika Shharma became curious about the topic and did further research on it. That lead to she writing her book and eventually started working on child safety awareness creation on a broader scope.

In this podcast, she shares about how child sexual abuse rate is too high in India, how she researched about the wordings used about child sexual abuse, how she realized there were no books in India about the subject and all the books that were available were by western authors, how she wrote her book, and how she aligned with the terms of 'safe touch' and 'unsafe touch'.

As any important topic that needs awareness in a country with huge population like India, child safety also needs mass communication. We talked extensively about how, apart from her book, Kanika is making efforts to create awareness about child safety. We specifically talked about how to create awareness in the rural areas, the government schools, the anganwadis, etc. We also talked about how she plans to scale her work through strategies like social media. She believes that social media is a great medium to create awareness about this. She says whoever is taking this message forward need to believe in the cause and feel the passion for it, so that the message would have more impact.

She told us how the topic is a taboo, and parents are unwilling to talk about it to their children even though they are the best people to talk about it to the children. We also talked about the challenges in creating awareness in multiple local languages in India. She shared how it's important for keeping that communication channel open is very important, and having that trust established between the child and parents is so important, so that they can come and talk about anything that they want to talk to the parents.

She shared a few points for people who are planning to pursue a career in child safety.

As her hobbies and interests, she shared about reading books and contemporary dancing, and a specific societal issue that you should listen to the podcast to know about!

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In this episode of 'The Women Inspire Aspire Podcast', I speak to Nimmi Uday about designing experiences as a woman.

Nimmi Uday is a trainer and facilitator for enabling women and an inclusive society. As part of her work, she designs spaces and experiences for women to express themselves. In this podcast, we talked in detail about Nimmi's background, how she came about to work in this area, and the details of her work.

As a woman who felt restricted in many ways, Nimmi facilitates several ways for women. From

providing spaces to introspection and the necessary tools, conducting workshops, to running a Whatsapp group, her methods are varied.

We talked about the challenges that women face in the society today, with Nimmi stating a couple of important challenges that needs to be addressed. We also talked about how to scale her work and how to train more people to carry on the work.

Nimmi shared that Nature and reading philosophical and spiritual books are her interests.

As a societal issue, Nimmi cares deeply about an inclusive society where everyone feels valued and safe.

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In this episode of 'The Women Inspire Aspire Podcast', I talk to Madhuri Subbarao about environment and behavioral change.

Environment and sustainability are key topics today in the minds of people in the context of climate change and climate action. Having worked on lakes in Bengaluru for a long time, Madhuri now feels that it's the mindset of the people that need to change more than anything else to address the environmental concerns like waste management and recycling and efficient use of water. She honestly admits that her work so far has not made any dent, and has started efforts to instill behavioral change in people. When we talked about what areas she would work on, she mentioned several pillars including waste management, and water and electricity usage.

Having done quite a few podcasts on education, environment, and public relations and mass communications, I am always curious about how people address the twin problem of spreading the word out to the huge population of India and how do they follow-up to make sure that people are consistently following the new practices without resorting to the old methods. So I asked these questions to her, and she said she is in the planning process for those.

Addressing civic and sustainability issues need multi-pronged approach, and in addition to policy changes and implementation, addressing people's mindset also plays a key role. I am happy to have talked to Madhuri about the people side of things after having done some podcasts from the other perspectives.

Madhuri shared her hobbies and interests as well as the societal issues that she cares about. We ended the podcast with Madhuri expressing hope that people who listen to the podcast get curious and interested in this topic and see how they can implement these in their day-to-day life.

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In this episode of 'The Women Inspire Aspire Podcast', I talk to Bhargavi Rao about environment and livelihood of the underprivileged.

Bhargavi comes with expansive experience in creativing awareness and activism in the field of how developmental projects play havoc in the meagre livelihood of the poorest of the poor. Her approaches range from judicial intervention to talking to the local communities and understanding the detailed aspects of how the people live and support themselves.

There have been tons of projects that Bhargavi has contributed to in her career, but we spoke about some very important interventions. Specifically she talks about the Tungabadra - Netravati rivers origin place, where an iron ore expansion was prevented, and Bangalore-Mysore Nandi corridor where the villages acquired were surveyed and cases were filed for violations.

She also talked about significantly huge projects ie the Kabini thermal power plant in Karnataka, and the Bangalore Mavallipura and Raichur solid waste management projects. She says waste management is not about wet waste, dry waste, etc. It is about class, caste, religion, and more!

She talked about her work in trying to preserve a large chunk of grasslands in Chitradurga in Central Karnataka called Amrit Mahal Kavals in the context of difference between agropastoral farming and industrial farming, and how livelihoods of the farmers are deeply interconnected with these agro-farm lands. She talks about how in those lands, the pit looms of the sheep are woven into blankets and supported the livelihood of the natives.

She also talked about an Odisha project in a village called Jagatsinghpur, the Nagaland oil project, and a Manipur fishing community livelihood project that was awarded by UN for sustainable community.

When it comes to her Work in Bengaluru, it is about study of lakes which was helpful not just for Bengaluru, but for the entire Karnataka. She also remembers the tree-felling and road widening in Bengaluru, while she says she is currently looking at construction of Metro.

Her current projects include solar and Wind power projects in Karnataka, Assam, etc., to address lands being grabbed from the poorest of the poor to setup solar plants. She talks about the laws that govern the renewable energy, and how Panchayats, which should ideally have the say in these matters are ignored and lands are grabbed through leases.

She has a few tips on how to approach creating awareness and on activism on the topic of environment and livelihoods of the underprivileged which the audience would be very interested in knowing.

We concluded the podcast with Bhargavi sharing her hobbies and interests and the societal issues apart from environment that she is working on.

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In this episode of 'The Women Inspire Aspire Podcast', I speak to Ayushi Biswas, a hydrogeologist about ground water and related topics!

Hard work being the value that's instilled deeply in her childhood, Ayushi inculcated that value in her life and today shines as a successful hydrogeologist and ground water researcher!

With geology being her basic education in which she studied about rocks and their associated ecosystems, Ayushi follows a minimalistic lifestyle that nurtures the environment.

Ayushi quite passionately described the difference between hydrology and hydrogeology and the characteristics of ground water. She further delved into the details about what characteristics of ground water should the general public as consumers of it should keep in mind.

We talked in detail about the ground water situation in Bengaluru. Ayushi explained Bengaluru's landscape and how the ground water is organized into two major watersheds, with surface water and ground water interacting with each other a lot.

Ayushi explained about the specific steps that the public as well as the agencies can take to maintain the quality of the water, while processing and using it. She also explained the difference between natural and artificial recharge of ground water.

We talked in detail about the water usage of high-rise buildings, groundwater depletion, and tanker water supply. In this context, Ayushi explained about how low income communities are affected because of water depletion and how they have to pay a significant portion of their meager earnings to purchase water.

We also talked about the emergence of Artificial Intelligence and its data servers which require huge amounts of water for cooling purposes. Ayushi explained how recycled water or treated waste water should be used to cool these servers instead of fresh ground water, and how intelligently this recycled water usage should be planned carefully.

We talked about Ayushi's hobbies and interests when she mentioned about reading and board games as her hobbies.

Then we talked about Ayushi's future plans on research, and how she wants to pursue a path of policy-helping research which will benefit everyone using groundwater.

As a societal issue, Ayushi cares deeply about climate change. She feels that Bengaluru climate has changed a lot, and the rains have become too intense in spite of being less frequent. She explained how she is working with the communities, especially women, in addressing this challenge.

All in all, it was a great podcast covering the most important topics in groundwater, hydrogeology, and the urban perspective of groundwater usage. I was really delighted to have had this conversation with Ayushi Biswas, and I wish her all the best in her future endeavors!

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In this episode of 'The Women Inspire Aspire Podcast', I speak to Vidhya Sivaramakrishnan about organic marketing through online mode.

Online organic marketing has evolved a lot over the past few years. Generative AI and LLMs are mainstream and influencing the way search results are being shown and how they are summarized. Traditional methods like SEO, long-tail keywords, and schemas are being looked at skeptically.

In this podcast, I spoke in detail with Vidhya about the traditional online marketing methods and how they are affected by the LLMs. We spoke in length about LLM's ways of ingesting data and whether the traditional methods are still relevant today. The answer from Vidhya was surprising! I would strongly suggest that you listen to the podcast to find out about it!

In addition to Vidhya's work, we also spoke about her interests in Carnatic and Hindusthani music, her inclination from childhood to participate in many events including competitions because of the nudge from her parents, how she and her younger sister were once prepared to become the 'Jamshedpur Sisters' of Carnatic music, Vidhya's urge to spend quality quiet time towards mental wellbeing and so many other things!

We also talked about what societal issues mean to Vidhya, and it was quite interesting to listen to her point of view!

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In this episode of 'The Women Inspire Aspire Podcast', I talk to Sonali Prasad about journalism and poetry.

Sonali Prasad is a writer, journalist, poet, author, and a TED Fellow, who has been involved in a variety of endeavors linked to exploring topics that made her curious. She serves as a member of the Press Commission of the International Olympic Committee, being appointed as the youngest member ever in that committee. She is also part of the TED Fellows Program which she joined during the Covid pandemic days. In that role, she had the opportunity to meet a variety of accomplished individuals and get to know their work. Sonali is the author of the book 'Glass Bottom'. Sonali cares deeply about Climate Change.

In this vivid podcast, Sonali and me talk about her work as a journalist, and how her work contributes to the field of Climate Change and environment. She explained how results from journalism are not linear and it takes time for people to take notice of the facts and data presented by the journalism in order to be acted upon.

We spoke a bit about how Sonali feels about poetry. She believes that poetry need not take a structured form but could be an authentic expression without a prescribed format. She explained how prose and poetry could be intertwined in a work, where the author feels the need to pick a certain form as per their inclination at that point of time.

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In this episode of 'The Women Inspire Aspire Podcast', I talk to Swathi Kadur on early education.

Swathi Kadur from Bengaluru is an early childhood educator. She runs a preschool that incorporates a methodology that integrates Montessori with two other methods. From studying psychology, to spending a significant portion of her life in the nation of Trinidad and Tobago in the West Indies, Swathi has had a diverse experience of life while completely immersed in the Indian culture be it in India or in Trinidad and Tobago. She's a person who totally likes Indian culture, and even today is looking for Kathak dance classes to pursue her interest.

In this wonderful podcast, Swathi shared her affinity for meditation, spending time with her family, playing badminton and pickle ball. She also shared the details about the social work that she is doing through The Inner Circle of Rotary Club International as the current president of Inner Circle of Magnolia. Apart from the societal work that she's doing, Swathi has a word or two about the civic sense that needs to be present in our communities for all of us to lead a better life.

This is one great motivational video for women in English! Sit back, Relax, and Listen In!

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