From one of Tamil Nadu's oldest women's colleges, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman delivered a charge to a new generation — not just to participate in India's economy, but to lead it. Addressing the Platinum Jubilee Celebrations of Seethalakshmi Ramaswami College in Tiruchirappalli, Tamil Nadu on Monday, October 26, 2026, Sitharaman wove together decades of institutional achievement with the government's flagship women's livelihood programmes, framing the next 25 years as belonging to the women in that hall.

SRC's early-mover legacy in accreditation and vocational skilling

Seethalakshmi Ramaswami College, established in 1951, holds a distinction that sets it apart from most institutions its age: it was among the first seven colleges in India to receive NAAC accreditation, a quality benchmark most institutions are still working toward. Sitharaman pointed to this as evidence of an institution that has 'often moved ahead of its time.'

Beyond academics, the college trains students in horticulture, food processing, apparel making, electronics, and sericulture — a vocational breadth that maps almost directly onto rural and semi-urban livelihood clusters. It is precisely the kind of multi-skill foundation the government has sought to mainstream through its national missions.

MUDRA loans and Lakhpati Didis: the policy scaffolding behind the speech

Sitharaman anchored her address in two signature programmes. She noted that about two-thirds of loans disbursed under PM MUDRA Yojana — the Pradhan Mantri Mudra Yojana launched in 2015 to extend formal micro-credit to small entrepreneurs — have gone to women, helping them start and scale businesses at the grassroots.

She also cited the Lakhpati Didi initiative, which aims to help rural women sustain annual earnings of at least one lakh rupees through skill-linked self-help group networks under Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana–National Rural Livelihoods Mission. The Finance Minister stated that 3 crore rural women have already become Lakhpati Didis, and that the national target has since been raised to six crore.

Women-led development as a centrepiece of national policy

Sitharaman framed both schemes as expressions of a deliberate choice by Prime Minister Narendra Modi — to position women not as beneficiaries of welfare, but as 'job creators and leaders of growth.' The distinction matters: it shifts the narrative from protection to agency, from entitlement to entrepreneurship.

The speech drew a direct line from the classroom in Tiruchirappalli to the national numbers: institutions like SRC, she argued, prepare graduates to step into a momentum already in motion — and to accelerate it. 'Over the next 25 years, it is your turn to lead it,' she told the gathering.

The address is a reminder that women's economic empowerment, long treated as a welfare footnote, now occupies the centre of India's development vocabulary — backed by credit lines, livelihood targets, and the kind of institutional recognition that a platinum jubilee college embodies.