PVLF 2026

Interview: Prachi Garg , Author of “India's Women Scientists”

Author Prachi shares the inspiration behind India’s Women Scientists, highlighting the resilience, ambition, and overlooked contributions of women shaping India’s scientific progress.
on Mar 12, 2026

Frontlist: India’s Women Scientists brings long-overdue attention to women whose contributions shaped science and society. What first compelled you to tell these stories, and why did this book feel urgent now?

Prachi: The idea for India’s Women Scientists: The Power Behind the Progress began with a moment of discomfort.

As a young girl who loved science, I searched for role models who looked like me. I found discoveries. I found missions. I found national pride. But I rarely found the names of Indian women behind them.

Years later, after nearly two decades in technology and digital transformation, that absence felt even more striking. I was working in ecosystems driven by innovation, and I could clearly see women shaping outcomes, leading research, architecting breakthroughs, driving complex scientific programs. Yet their stories were not part of mainstream memory.

When I began researching India’s defining scientific milestones, I realized something powerful: women were not participants in progress — they were architects of it. And still, many remained invisible outside institutional walls.

That invisibility created urgency.

We are living in a defining era for India’s scientific ambition. If we don’t document and celebrate these women now, we risk allowing their contributions to fade into footnotes.

This book is not just about recognition. It is about reclaiming narrative. Because when young girls see women leading science in India, ambition stops feeling exceptional and starts feeling possible.

Frontlist: You began your writing journey by documenting women founders. What parallels did you notice between entrepreneurial journeys and the lives of women scientists featured in this book?

Prachi: When I began writing, my very first book was about women founders, women who built against the odds, who navigated bias, capital gaps, and credibility barriers to create something enduring.

Years later, as I worked on India’s Women Scientists: The Power Behind the Progress, I felt a powerful full circle moment.

On the surface, entrepreneurs and scientists inhabit different worlds. But I saw the same fire, the courage to believe in the unseen, the resilience to persist when results take years, the quiet strength to build within systems not originally designed for them.

Both founders and scientists are architects of possibility. Both operate in high-uncertainty environments where conviction is everything.

What makes this deeply personal is that this is my 10th book. And there’s something profoundly symbolic about the fact that both my first and my tenth book center women.

As a woman in technology and leadership, that feels intentional.

My journey as an author began with women building enterprises. A decade later, it celebrates women building the nation’s scientific future. And to me, that continuity is not accidental, it is purpose.

Frontlist: Many of the women in the book faced deep institutional and social resistance. While researching, which form of bias or struggle affected you the most, and why?

Prachi: What affected me the most wasn’t always the overt resistance. It was the quiet moments.

Women who returned to work weeks after childbirth because a mission timeline couldn’t move. Scientists who presented breakthrough findings, only to have their ideas questioned more intensely than their male peers. Leaders who carried national projects on their shoulders and still went home to manage expectations that had nothing to do with science.

But what stayed with me most was invisibility.

Several of these women were central to landmark achievements, yet outside their institutions, few people knew their names. Imagine giving decades to building something historic and watching the credit diffuse around you.

As a woman in technology, I’ve experienced moments of having to prove credibility before competence is assumed. So reading these stories felt personal.

What moved me deeply was not bitterness it was grace. None of them framed themselves as victims. They spoke about responsibility, about the science, about the mission.

Their courage wasn’t loud. It was steady.

And that steadiness, despite resistance, is what humbled me the most.

Frontlist: Your background spans technology, leadership, and storytelling. How did your experience in the IT and innovation ecosystem shape the way you approached scientific narratives?

Prachi: Coming from nearly two decades in technology and innovation ecosystems, I’ve always viewed progress through two lenses systems and stories.

In IT and digital transformation, I learned that breakthroughs are rarely dramatic moments. They are built on iteration, recalibration, long feedback loops, and disciplined execution.

Innovation taught me one fundamental truth: patience and persistence are not soft virtues they are strategic strengths.

When I approached scientific narratives, I saw the same pattern.

A scientific discovery is rarely a sudden flash of brilliance. It is years of hypothesis testing, failed trials, midnight recalculations, funding uncertainties, and unwavering belief in data. My background helped me appreciate that science, much like technology, rewards those who stay the course.

Leadership also shaped how I listened. I was attentive not just to achievements, but to endurance, how these women navigated long timelines, delayed recognition, and systemic resistance without losing conviction.

Technology taught me to respect complexity. Storytelling allowed me to humanize it.

What stood out most was this: progress is rarely loud. It is patient. It is persistent. And in laboratories, just as in innovation ecosystems, those who endure ultimately redefine the future.

Frontlist: This book doesn’t just document achievements, it highlights resilience born from struggle. How did you balance celebrating success while staying honest about the cost of breaking barriers?

Prachi: What struck me during my research was something unexpected.

None of these women, through their writings, speeches, recorded interviews, or documented accounts positioned themselves as victims of their circumstances. And many of them worked in eras where institutional and social resistance was far more rigid than it is today.

As I studied archival material, memoir excerpts, institutional records, and historical accounts,

I kept looking for resentment in their words. Instead, I found resolve.

They wrote about experiments. About teams. About mission goals. About the science.

Barriers were present sometimes starkly so but they were never centered as identity. Their focus remained forward-facing. When opportunities were limited, they expanded competence. When recognition lagged, they continued contributing.

That shaped how I told their stories.

I didn’t want to dramatize their struggles or impose a modern lens of victimhood onto lives that were defined by agency and intellectual rigor. Their resilience was not performative. It was embedded in action.

What inspires me most is this: they didn’t spend energy narrating what held them back.

They spent it building what moved the nation forward.

And that quiet, disciplined rise feels deeply powerful even today.

Frontlist: As a thought leader, you’ve often spoken about visibility and representation. How do you believe stories like these can influence young girls and even policy or institutional mindsets?

Prachi: I’ve always believed that “you cannot become what you cannot see.”

When a young girl reads about a woman who led a space mission or advanced nuclear research decades ago, it does more than inform her it affirms her. It quietly tells her, “You belong here too.”

Stories have a way of entering places policies cannot.

When we humanize scientific journeys the patience, the persistence, the steady rise we move ambition from something intimidating to something attainable. A child doesn’t just admire the achievement; she internalizes the possibility.

And change begins there.

For institutions and policymakers, stories serve as evidence. They say, “The talent has always been here.” Sometimes systems evolve slowly, but narratives accelerate empathy. When excellence is consistently visible,representation stops being a diversity metric and starts becoming common sense.

I often tell young students, “Dreams expand in proportion to exposure.” If all you see are limits, you inherit them. If you see leadership, you normalize it.

My hope is simple: that these stories make ambition feel less lonely. That they plant courage early. And that over time, those quiet sparks become confidence and confidence becomes change.

Frontlist: Was there a particular story or moment during your research that fundamentally changed how you personally view science, ambition, or courage?

Prachi: Yes, reading about Kalpana Chawla profoundly changed me.

I grew up in India, like so many young girls, looking at the sky with curiosity. But Kalpana didn’t just look at the sky, she claimed it. A girl from Karnal who dared to imagine herself among the stars at a time when aerospace wasn’t even a visible pathway for most Indian students, let alone girls.

One line of hers stayed with me: “The path from dreams to success does exist.” The power of that sentence is in its certainty. Not hope, certainty.

As I read more about her journey, leaving home, navigating new countries, competing in one of the world’s most demanding scientific ecosystems, I realized ambition isn’t loud. It’s disciplined. It’s sustained belief over years.

And then there is another line she said that deeply moved me: “The journey matters as much as the goal.” After Columbia, her story could have been defined by tragedy. Instead, it became legacy.

Personally, her life reframed courage for me. Courage is not the absence of fear. It is the refusal to shrink your dream to fit your circumstance.

Kalpana didn’t just go to space. She expanded what space meant for girls like us.

Frontlist: What do you hope India’s Women Scientists sparks conversation, action, or change in readers across generations?

Prachi: I hope India’s Women Scientists ignite belief.

Belief in young girls who are curious but unsure. Belief in parents who are deciding how boldly to encourage their daughters. Belief in institutions that are shaping the future of science in this country.

More than conversation, I hope it shifts imagination.

When a child reads about a woman leading a space mission or advancing nuclear science, something subtle but irreversible happens, the boundary of “possible” expands. And once possibility expands, ambition follows.

I also hope it sparks accountability. Recognition is not a courtesy; it is a responsibility. The stories we amplify define the futures we normalise. If we consistently celebrate women as architects of progress, not footnotes to it, we reshape aspiration at scale.

Across generations, my deepest hope is this: that the next time India achieves a scientific milestone, a young girl instinctively believes she belongs in that story.

If this book can move us from admiration to action, from inspiration to inclusion, then it will have done what I intended.
Because progress becomes powerful only when it becomes shared.