When leadership speaks: A case about identity, bias and voice

In March 2025, Sarada Muraleedharan, the Chief Secretary of Kerala, encountered something no leader expects but many women silently endure. A commentator, comparing her leadership to that of her predecessor and husband, used skin colour as a metaphor for competence: his tenure was ‘white’, hers ‘black’.

It was a pointed, colour-coded judgement that cut deeper than a professional critique. It drew on decades of colourism, gender bias, and the culturally entrenched belief that fairness denotes virtue, intelligence, and capability. And it targeted not just a woman in public life but the highest-ranking civil servant in a state. But what happened next is what makes this story worth telling, worth teaching.

Sarada Muraleedharan chose to respond publicly. Not aggressively, not indignantly. She wrote with restraint and honesty, acknowledging the sting, tracing its roots to childhood, and speaking, perhaps for the first time, about how societal narratives around dark skin had shaped her inner world. And she wrote a post on social media.

Her post went viral.

Within days, it had been shared thousands of times, picked up by national media, and debated in living rooms, WhatsApp groups, civil service training institutes, and university classrooms. People recognised that she was naming something uncomfortable, something pervasive, something rarely spoken about by someone of her stature. This moment is what forms the heart of our new teaching case.

Why this case matters now

In an era when leadership is no longer solely about quiet competence behind closed doors. Leaders operate in a mirrored world, where they are watched, interpreted, and often misinterpreted. Personal identity and public duty can collide without warning. Sarada Muraleedharan’s story sits directly at this intersection, making the case timely for courses in Leadership Communication, Public Policy and Governance, Ethics and Public Administration, and Diversity, Inclusion, and Organisational Behaviour.

India has skin colour bias, often known as colourism, which shows itself in a variety of contexts, such as social interactions, marriages, and the workplace. People with darker complexions are often discriminated against, as lighter skin tones are frequently associated with success, beauty, and a higher social standing. In contrast to racism, which is prejudice based on race or ethnicity, colourism favours lighter skin tones over darker ones within a particular racial or ethnic group. The Indian subcontinent has a long and complex history of colourism.

According to studies, women of colour in leadership positions are frequently held to various standards and are either invisible (as trustworthy voices) or hyper-visible (as symbols) (Rosette et al., 2016). In Muraleedharan’s instance, people’s perceptions of her leadership were influenced by both her gender and skin tone, both in relation to her predecessor and in response to the personal remark that prompted her social media post.

It speaks directly to the aspirations of SDG 5 (Gender Equality) and SDG 10 (Reduced Inequalities) by inviting a deeper reflection on how institutions respond to bias, how women navigate leadership, and how public systems can evolve to recognise lived experience. The case poses a deceptively simple question:

Should a senior bureaucrat speak publicly about personal discrimination? If she stayed silent, she would preserve bureaucratic neutrality but reinforce the culture that expects women to absorb bias quietly. If she spoke out, she risked being seen as emotional, political or compromising the decorum expected of a civil servant. If she continued to engage, she might shift public consciousness but also risk institutional scrutiny.

This is the modern leadership paradox. Leaders today are expected to be authentic and relatable, yet simultaneously neutral and restrained. A powerful voice can also be policed.

Identity and leadership: The weight of overlapping realities

One of the most significant insights emerging from the case is the impact of intersectional identities on leadership experiences. Muraleedharan is not just a bureaucrat. She is a woman in a system where women remain under-represented, and being dark-skinned in a culture that glorifies fairness is something that she is forced to reckon with till the very end of her career. The leadership career of Sarada Muraleedharan serves as an example of how several aspects of identity interact to create compounded kinds of bias. Her darker skin tone and her status as a woman cannot be considered separately. Introduced by Kimberle Crenshaw in 1989, intersectionality theory explains how these overlapping identities produce distinct types of discrimination that are ingrained in systemic and cultural norms and cannot be fully understood when evaluated separately.

Intersectionality helps students understand that discrimination is rarely a one-dimensional phenomenon. In this case, gender and skin colour combine to create a distinct experience of being judged, doubted, and diminished in ways that men or fair-skinned leaders may never encounter. And that is why her post resonated so widely. It did not describe an isolated incident—it revealed a collective wound.

The case is also about the power of framing and how her post shifted the discourse. The teaching note defines the lens of Entman’s Framing Theory through a well-designed framework. She reframed the insult not as an attack on her but as a societal issue worth confronting. This is the pedagogical strength of the case: it gives students a structured framework to analyse how leaders can use personal stories ethically and constructively.

Another powerful insight arises from Rohr’s theory of institutional ethics, which argues that public servants must uphold both institutional norms and constitutional values such as equality and dignity. This moment pushes students to ask: was Muraleedharan violating neutrality, or was she fulfilling a deeper democratic obligation by calling out discrimination? Are current civil service conduct rules suited for a digital era where silence can equate to complicity? These questions spark discussions on the evolution of policy, communication norms, and ethical expectations within public institutions.

Leadership communication in a digital world

This case is fundamentally about communication – strategic, ethical, and deeply personal.

It teaches students how personal narratives can humanise leadership and that authenticity matters, even in a formal institution. Digital platforms can amplify or distort leadership messages, and leaders must navigate reactions from multiple audiences simultaneously. Readers of the case would quickly realise that communication for leaders today isn’t just about clarity; it’s also about courage, framing, and conscience.

This is not merely a story of bias. It is a story of voice. Ultimately, the case doesn’t provide simple answers. It provides something more valuable: A space to think. A space to understand how individuals in positions of power navigate identity, authority, and communication. A space to confront uncomfortable truths about how society perceives women, colour, and leadership.

And most importantly, a space to imagine a future where leaders can speak honestly without fear that their identity will overshadow their ability.

Know more