Who is Arvind Kejriwal – Salah Mohammed On the first day of your first job, if you are told: “In the first few years of your service, you should make sufficient money for yourself so that you can appear to be honest for the rest of your life,” how would you feel? These were the words of advice given to Arvind Kejriwal on the first day of his IRS service job by his superior. This article is an attempt to introduce Arvind who has moved India into a new era of freedom struggle. Born in a businessmen family on 16-Jun-1968 at Hisar in Haryana, Arvind spent most of his early life in Hisar, Sonepat and Ghaziabad. His father Gobind Ram was an electrical engineer who held many positions in the corporate world. His mother Gita was a topper at school and so was Arvind. He graduated in Mechanical Engineering from IIT, Kharagpur in 1989. He excelled in studies and was a gold medalist of his batch. He was offered jobs at GAIL and ONGC but he chose to join Tata Steel. His spirituality and his deep sense of moral and ethical values took him first to Nehru Youth Centre, Christian missionaries and later to Ramakrishna mission. Arvind was highly influenced by Mother Theresa and Swami Vivekananda. Arvind says about Swami Vivekananda, “He became a hero for me because he also went out of his house in search of God.” By 1992, he found the job at Tata Steel boring and opted to resign in pursuit of social work. He took up exams for Civil services and joined IRS in Aug, 1992. During the 62-week IRS orientation program in Nagpur, he met his batch mate Sunita, who later became his wife in 1994. His first posting was as Assistant Commissioner of Income Tax at Delhi. He was shocked by the malpractices prevalent in the department and misuse of powers by officers who thrived on corrupt practices. There was ample scope for becoming rich in a very short time but Arvind just could not accept this corrupt lifestyle. Disturbed by the ubiquity of everyday corruption and its oppressive effects on ordinary taxpayers, he started a movement called Parivarthan in 2006 along with two of his friends, Kailash Goduka and JN Pandey. Parivarthan helped citizens to process their IT returns and refunds without having to pay bribe. Parivartan has settled 700 tax-related grievances on behalf of individuals and 2,500 with the electricity board. In Sundernagari, a poor section of New Delhi, Arvind led residents to do a "social audit" of 68 public-works projects, exposing malpractices in 64 of them. Today, residents monitor projects block by block; no project can begin until the contracts' details have been made public. Today, Parivarthan has a much wider agenda for the entire nation. It focuses on participatory democracy that will empower transparency in governance vis-a-vis representative democracy. Arvind got deeply involved in RTI movement. He was one of the leading members of this movement and won many awards and accolades in recognition of his achievements – Ashoka Fellow by the Arlington based NGO Ashoka in 2004, Satyendra K. Dubey Memorial Award by IIT Kanpur Alumni Association in 2005, Ramon Magsaysay Award for Emergent Leadership in 2006. In 2006, Arvind along with Manish Sisodia and Abhinandan Sekhri setup Public Cause Research Foundation to ensure that our society becomes more inclusive, real power vests with the common man and establish empowerment of people through transparent, accountable governance. Arvind Kejriwal along with other eminent citizens has started Swaraj Abhiyan. The membership of this organization that strongly believes in the success of Gram/Mohalla Sabhas and in the principles of people’s governance is growing exponentially due to its popular success stories. This is gift to India from Arvind. I strongly urge every reader to become a member of Swaraj Abhiyan and make people’s governance a reality. His contributions toward the formation of IAC and its success are well documented. He has been one of the cornerstones of this movement and greatly responsible for awakening India to stand and fight against corruption. In addition to awards in RTI domain, he has won many other awards among which, CNN-IBN Indian of the Year in Public Service in 2006, Distinguished Alumnus Award for Eminent Leadership by IIT Kharagpur in 2009, Policy Change Agent of the Year by The Economic Times in 2010, NDTV Indian of the Year in 2011, stand out. Share and Care For Latest Updates Always visit http://satish24k.blogspot.in For Beautiful Wallpapers Always visit http://24ksatish.blogspot.in |
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