Far from the spotlight, Parameswaran Iyer is working tirelessly towards the goal of building a clean India.
He may be at the helm of one of contemporary India's most successful projects, but you wouldn't sense that by speaking to him.. Such is his humility.
This is Iyer's story, of a transition from government service to World Bank and back, this time in a pivotal role.
In April this year, when he was addressing a large gathering in Bihar's Motihari to mark the anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi's Champaran Satyagraha, Prime Minister Narendra Modi requested news channels to pan their camera to one man seated in the crowd.
"Government officials often remain anonymous and unsung. But there are stories that one desires to tell," said Modi, introducing the crowd to Parameswaran Iyer, the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer heading the Swachh Bharat Mission.
Modi went on to share how Iyer was living comfortably abroad but returned at the request of the government to head a highly ambitious and challenging mission to clean India.
Iyer stood up and thanked the Prime Minister.
Last February, Iyer had left a crowd jaw-dropped when he stepped inside a twin-pit toilet in a Telangana village and removed decomposed faecal matter with his hands.
Iyer's eyes sparkle as he speaks about it now. "We wanted to end the stigma around it [cleaning the pit]. We wanted to show that a year after it has been covered, it's perfectly safe to empty a twin-pit toilet because the faecal matter has turned into manure," he said.
What he is most kicked about is that after him, several officials have taken the lead in cleaning the pits, to set a precedent.
Iyer believes that cleaning up a nation is everybody's business. His formula is simple; he pitches for a "PM-CM-DM-VM model", where the prime minister sets the goals, the chief minister supports it at the state level, the district magistrate leads at the local level, and "village motivators" work at the grassroots level.
Full article in the link below
Posted by: Ravi Narasimhan <ravi.narasimhan.in@gmail.com>
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