His Holiness Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar,
our Inspiration, Ms. Bhanumathi Narasimhan Ministers,
Distinguished Guests, Delegates of the 7th International Women's Conference,
I will address you today in my personal capacity so that I can speak undiplomatically.

Let us play an awareness game. Please finish my sentence.
The dynasty of Ethical Leaders - Where Walking the Talk Matters hails from Mahatma Gandhi to Martin Luther King to Nelson Mandela to...........

Yes, you got it right. The dynasty of Ethical Leaders - Where Walking the Talk Matters hails from Mahatma Gandhi to Martin Luther King to Nelson Mandela to His Holiness Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar.
I encourage everyone in Art of Living to use this line repeatedly in all your communication.

Dear Delegates,

Kindly permit me to share two points about my Professional Space:
Firstly, I am an Ambassador of Art of Living. The past Ministers of Finance of the Republic of South Africa, Mr. Trevor Manual and Mr. Pravin Gordhan always gave me two or three minutes to talk about Art of Living before starting with the official agenda. They would say: "Let us give, Shirish, a few minutes to talk about Art of Living as it will assist us to focus during the meeting”, or they would anyway begin to talk about Art of Living during the proceedings of our meeting. Secondly, I give 100% in everything that I do and allow our hard working Guru to put the finishing touches to all that I do. In this way I deliver on all my qualitative and quantitative targets five to tenfold above target and at much reduced cost. I immediately praise our hard working Guru and surrender all the results to Him. My contract with His Holiness is very clear in that the responsibility to deliver synergy, traction and exponential results is His responsibility. I am responsible to work ethically, give 100 % in whatever I do and provide leadership when required.
Convener of this session, please take note of the following Seven Points about Ethical Leadership:

1. The Women's agenda is not an agenda to be championed by women alone. Men must be involved at all levels of promoting the Women's agenda. The Women’s agenda must be driven by all of us collectively.

2. The Women's agenda must be central to the higher purpose of any organization. It cannot be just another objective or goal - because this is what allows us to achieve the higher purpose of our organizations.

3. Setting quotas to empower women does not work. Setting quotas alone will result in an imbalance in other important measures. We need large scale programs to change the fabric of our society to display a non-racial, non-sexist, democratic and developmental character. In the design of our social, economical and political tapestry we need to ensure that women play a significant role at all levels. Quotas can be used only as a short term measure or band-aid.

4. For every women US Dollar millionaire created by quotas and affirmative action, we could be disempowering 100000 women from our rural communities.

5. All leaders must know that the seat given to them is a temporary position. We must place people in leadership positions for only one term, with a maximum of five years. It is an ethical leader's responsibility to implement a program to cultivate the bench-strength of leadership in our organizations to take over as soon as they are appointed. This ensures that when they leave the organization at the end of their term there are a string of potential successors to take up the leadership positions. (In other words, leaders must create more leaders).

6. Retaining institutional memory of ethical leaders is vital to the long term existence and sustainability of any organization. We must place past leaders in strategic positions so that we can tap into the collective memory of all of our leaders.

7. The difference between an ethical leader and a manager in any organization is that an ethical leader puts her or his money where her or his mouth is. Whereas, a manager puts other people's money where her or his mouth is.

Ms. Bhanumathi Narasimhan, our inspiration, please take note of the five important focus areas for Ethical Leaders to prioritize:

1. We must Celebrate World Yoga Day on 21 June and Nelson Mandela Day on 18 July to promote Sustainable Ethical Leadership.

2. We must all know about the workings of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and work on World Day against Trafficking in Persons on 30 July. This topic includes the trafficking of domestic workers and many of us could be in violation of international standards against human rights. It also includes the trafficking of women.

3. We must continue to honor women who lost life, loved ones, and limbs in the struggle to promote non- racialism, non- sexism and democracy. Men always receive awards for their role in national and international campaigns. However, it is the women that are providing the backbone to support men in their achievements to build a better life for all.

4. We must discuss ways of stopping young people and in particular young women from joining radical groups that propagate violence in the name of religion. On reflection of my experience as a freedom fighter the following comes to mind:
Freedom fighters do not attend conventional military training.
A freedom fighter is put in the frontline. Based on the success of the freedom fighter, the freedom fighter is given an opportunity to participate in more dangerous operations.
This cycle of success results in him being tasked with more dangerous operations and this continues until the freedom fighter is captured or killed.
Therefore the success of a freedom fighter eventually results in her or his capture or death. From my own experience I know, that you go to a place where there is no return.

5. We, therefore, have to take the teachings of His Holiness Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar to every corner of the globe to make this place a better world for all and to prevent young women and men from joining wars that do not hold any moral ground.

Dear Ministers, Excellencies and Distinguished Guests,
To be an ethical leader you must know your intentions when you do anything - you have to be very introspective. For example, I always ask myself, why am I in Art of Living?
Allow me to introduce you to Ruweida, my wife, best friend, consul, partner, and lover. Yesterday, we celebrated our 36th wedding anniversary. His Holiness refers to Ruweida saying “She is a strong woman. She can dance. - I want her to teach me how to dance - did you see her dance? Oh! And she is a leading fashion designer".
I am in Art of Living because Gurudev has brought back my Ruweida from the dead on two occasions.

Dear delegates,
That is her story for her to share with you when time permits. For me I can simply tell you with conviction that His Holiness has given wings to my butterfly to fly high when all else failed on two occasions.
Delegates,
Please allow me to share a story that is told to me repeatedly by my late mother's best friend- Heerabhabi. She is currently very sick so I will kindly request all of you to send her blessings. Now, she suffers with Alzheimer's, so she cannot remember things. However, she never forgets to tell me her story and it goes like this, “Shirish, you must never forget that behind every successful man is a woman. In your case, Shirish, Ruweida walks in front of you. Shirish, you should never forget this story. You know I suffer with Alzheimer's and I forget everything these days. But when it comes to you I will never forget to tell you this story every time that I see you. Promise me that you will never forget this."

Ministers,
Let us check our awareness once more. Please answer the following two questions honestly.

1. In Art of Living, are women equal to men, or are they above men or below men?

2. Do we know any other organization that can during a Women's Conference of this nature make the claim that women are equal to men in every respect in their organizations like you did when you answered the first question?
We can therefore, collectively come to the conclusion that in Art of Living women and men are equal and this cannot be claimed by many organizations.
Ms. Bhanumathi Narasimhan, our inspiration, thank you for flying the flag of the Women's agenda in Art of Living so high.
In conclusion, Delegates, I am reminded of the Indonesia's national motto, "Bhinneka Tunggal Ika" ("Unity in Diversity" literally, "many, yet one"). This is so aligned to " The Butterfly Effect: Everything Matters" the theme of our International Women's Conference which we chose to hold in Bali, Indonesia.
Finally, every man in Art of Living should be asked to place one brick on the project to build the wall of women's agenda in Art of Living annually. I promise to place one brick on the wall every year to take the project of Women's agenda to new heights annually. I thank you.