Kiran Bedi: How I remade one of India's toughest prisons

http://www.ted.com Kiran Bedi managed one of India's toughest prisons -- and used a new focus on prevention and education to turn it into a center of learning and meditation. She shares her thoughts on crime and punishment from the stage at TEDWomen.

TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. Featured speakers have included Al Gore on climate change, Philippe Starck on design, Jill Bolte Taylor on observing her own stroke, Nicholas Negroponte on One Laptop per Child, Jane Goodall on chimpanzees, Bill Gates on malaria and mosquitoes, Pattie Maes on the "Sixth Sense" wearable tech, and "Lost" producer JJ Abrams on the allure of mystery. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, development and the arts. Closed captions and translated subtitles in a variety of languages are now available on TED.com, at http://www.ted.com/translate. Watch a highlight reel of the Top 10 TEDTalks at http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/top10

Now I am going to give you a story

its an Indian story about
an Indian woman and her journey.

Let me begin with my parents.

I am a product of this visionary mother and father.

Many
years ago when I was born in the 50s...50s and 60s didn't belong to girls in India.

They belonged to boys, they belonged to boys who would join business and inherit business from

parents and girls would be dolled up to get married. My family in my city and almost in the country

was unique. We were four of us, not one and fortunately no boys.

We were four girls and no boys . And my parents were part of a landed property family.

My father defied his own grandfather, almost to the point of disinheritance because he decided to

educate all four of us. He sent us to one of the best schools in the city and gave us the best education.

I have said when we are born we don't choose our parents and when we go to school we don't choose

our school. Children don't choose the school they just get the school which parents choose for them.

So this is the foundation time which I got. I grew uo like this and so did my other sisters.

And my father used to say at that time "I am going to spread all my four daughters in four corners of the world.