Public Life

Hetal has taken an active part in British local political and community life, including standing for election and serving on an association's executive committee.

Her politics begin with a simple conviction: dignity comes from work. Thirty years of building businesses have taught her that opportunity is created, not handed out. She believes in effort over entitlement, in rewarding the people who build, employ and contribute, and in a state that helps people stand on their own feet rather than one that makes them depend on it. Free money, she likes to point out, is never free: it always arrives with someone else's name on the bill.

She is just as clear about belonging. British Indians did not arrive here as guests. Their ancestors fought in Britain's wars, and their children build its businesses, staff its hospitals and pay its taxes. When that place is questioned, she says so, plainly.

Her community work is practical. During the pandemic she helped deliver food and support to neighbours who needed it, and she has walked and cycled for the mental-health charity Mind, including the London to Brighton Bike Ride in 2022. Through her writing and community work, she brings these questions into conversation: what a fair society asks of its citizens, and what it owes them in return.