Allahabad :

A girl born in Allahabad and now studying at the University of California, Berkeley, has made the city proud by winning the ‘price money question’ of $ 64000 (approx Rs 38 lakhs) by asking former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton, “If you don’t represent women in politics in America as future president, who will?”

Daughter of an ex-faculty member of Allahabad University, Vrinda Agarwal’s family moved to Sacramento, California some time back. Vrinda, a junior studying political science at UC Berkeley, is the founder and CEO of 100 strong (onehundredstrong.org), which works to empower underprivileged high school women by providing them with mentors and leadership training.

She won the ‘price money question’ at an event called ‘Everyone’s Mind’, organized recently at the Clinton Global Initiative University conference at Arizona State University, Tempa, US. Vrinda has done her early schooling in the city.

Such was the impression of Vrinda’s priced question that former US president Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton shared the stage with her and assured her all help in future. Her question elicited a standing ovation from the jam-packed hall, Hillary Clinton’s answer reverberated across the country, grabbing front page spaces across the entire American print media and prime time news bytes on all TV channels.

Vrinda assured Hillary that she was prepared to proudly run her presidential campaign to which Clinton replied, “I appreciate the sentiment. I’m obviously thinking about all kinds of decisions.”

“There is so much inequality around the world, including America, for women which we see in public education, where women have lower graduation rates in poor areas; or in corporate America, where women earn less than men; and even in politics, in which women are significantly underrepresented,” said Vrinda, via e-mail.

source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / Home> City> Allahabad / by Rajiv Mani, TNN / May 21st, 2014