Book review: 'The Scientist Entrepreneur' by Dr Kalpana Sankar is a nuclear scientist’s inspiring journey of women’s empowerment

It was just her beginning with an NGO, and she was confronted with what she describes as 'polar opposite'. Dr Kalpana Sankar, who holds a PhD in Nuclear Physics from Madras University, had a stable government job, was the wife of a District Collector, lived in a palatial house, enjoying all the privileges entitled to a civil servant. She was about to be interviewed by Percy Barnevik, a Swedish industrialist for joining a small NGO, in a small two-storey rented Emma House in Kanchipuram, Tamil Nadu in 2004. This marked the start of a journey that would lead her to receive an award from the President of India at Rashtrapati Bhavan.
In her recently launched autobiography, “The Scientist Entrepreneur: Empowering Millions of Women”, Dr Kalpana Sankar documents her initial struggles when her leadership abilities were scrutinised for being a woman, when she was asked to take control of Hand in Hand. It primarily worked for education of poor children, especially from tribal families and trapped in child labour, rampant in those days. She recounts how, being from Chennai, and working in Kanchipuram, 70 km away from her residence, she faced strong resistance from locals, and often met with cold smiles. Yet she began working against child labour by identifying the root cause of problem with a scientific approach.
In this book, she discusses the child labour in the silk-weaving looms of Kanchipuram, sharing heart-breaking stories of children trapped in bonded labour and debt. She also mentions stories of abject poverty, like that of a painter who had to to sell his 5-year-old son for a paltry sum of Rs 500 as bonded labourer.

Despite facing challenges, she was able to lead Hand in Hand in successfully rescuing the children, enrolling them in schools, and helping them lead better lives. Soon, she was able to build cost-effective structures for the first residential school, “Poongavanam” (forest of flowers) with locally available materials. This school could accommodate 100 children and went on to become Hand in Hand’s landmark project, supported by the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (now Samagra Shiksha) of the Governments of India and Tamil Nadu. Later, her efforts in the Child Labour Elimination Project took her from Kanchipuram to Rashtrapati Bhavan, where she received the Bal Kalyan Puraskar by the President of India in 2019.
Talking about her fight against child labour in Kanchipuram, she mentions about the realization that the root cause was poverty, which ultimately inspired the idea of forming Self-Help Groups (SHGs). She believed that making women financially independent and helping them build small-scale businesses, would enable them to send their children to schools and become self-reliant.
By training groups of women with common interests, offering small loans for microenterprises, employing a credit-plus model, starting literacy programs, opening bank accounts in their names, conducting group meetings, and motivating them to become self-reliant, she helped reduce their vulnerabilities and enhanced their participation in increasing family income. The success was so significant that one SHG initiative under her mentorship—Crisp Bakery—won the Best SHG Award from Indian Bank, presented by the former President of India, APJ Abdul Kalam, in 2006.
Dr Kalpana Sankar is a nuclear scientist, social entrepreneur, Managing Director of Belstar Microfinance, and Co-Founder and Chairperson of Hand in Hand India. She was awarded with the ‘Nari Shakti Puraskar 2016’ instituted by the Ministry of Women and Development, Government of India for her contribution to the empowerment of vulnerable and marginalized women. But being a woman, coming from a traditional family that didn't have generational wealth, starting her journey with Hand in Hand in a small Emma House in Kanchipuram, her success wasn’t easy.
In her autobiography, she makes an honest attempt not just to shed light on the roadblocks women face—particularly questions regarding their leadership abilities, social and gender biases, entrepreneurship skills, and their capacity to build and lead teams and organizations. She also successfully narrates her journey from the world of nuclear physics to empowering marginalized and poverty-stricken families in building small-scale, sustainable businesses, create jobs, and foster financial empowerment.
Her objective as she describes it, is to help people make better lives for themselves through education and empowerment. Her autobiography, The Scientist Entrepreneur: Empowering Millions of Women, is a story of dedication, integrity, self-esteem, and perseverance.