Tell them it cannot be done, and they will do it with the flourish of a well-executed tennis shot. Naturally, almost effortlessly. Ms Shashanka Ala and Mr Bhupesh Chaudhary, the IAS couple posted in Mizoram, have been making heads turn by their remarkable achievements in the remote regions of this North-Eastern state. These include effectively handling malnutrition, making life easy and comfortable for school children and making chilli production a sweet affair for the farmers.
Among other things, Ms Shashanka has brought down the malnutrition among school children by a whopping 50 percent.
On this Independence Day in Mizoram, the couple was honored with the Chief Minister’s Award for Excellence in Public Administration. This is not a small recognition. The two do not even belong to Mizoram, but have brought sea-change in the lives of people living several hundred kilometers away from Aizwal.
The Comfort Factor
Aizwal, Mizoram’s capital, is also its island of comfort, giving the appearance of any other modern city. But to understand the hardships, lack of opportunities and crushing daily grinds of the people of Mizoram, one has to move away from the capital, in the state’s hinterland. This is where Shashanka and Bhupesh were posted.
Recalls Mr Bhupesh, “I was a District Magistrate of Siaha (some 400 kilomtres from Aizwal) for 18 months. Basic necessities like reliable phone connection or proper internet speed eluded me all this time. During this period, five Additional District Collectors came to and made a fast exit from Siaha, showing how desperate they all were to return to the comfortable lifestyle of Aizwal. Nobody wanted to stay. It was a challenge for us.’’
Just to give one example of the many hardships people of Siara must be completely used to by now, the back-breaking bus journey from here to Aizwal takes roughly 12-14 hours. And the bus is the only public transport available for the poor folk living in this back-of-the-beyond region of Mizoram. The bus journey, however, would pale before numerous other problems the people here have been facing for decades.
But the couple, unfazed by the lure of cozy Aizwal, decided to stay put. They had seen the kind of acute hardships people around them were facing stoically, and decided to bring meaningful changes in their lives.
Till recently, Mr Bhupesh was posted as the District Magistrate of Siaha, a picturesque but extremely backward area. Ms Shashanka, on the other hand, was the District Magistrate in Lawngthlai, situated in Siaha’s neighborhood.
Different Lessons From a School
The couple’s fresh brush with reality came rather obliquely. They had put their son in an `anganwadi’ school, and one day Shashanka discovered that he had come back home with half-cooked `dal’ and rice. On inquiring, she found out about the acute shortage of freshly grown vegetable in the entire region.
As Ms Shashanka told Indian Masterminds, the areas under her jurisdiction were devoid of several basic needs. Even the agriculture yield here is quite low. “Firstly,’’ she said, “ this area is depended entirely on the Assam-Silchar Road for almost all of its requirements, for both perishable and non-perishable goods. That got me thinking.’’
Ms Shashanka decided it was best to lead the way with an example. And what better way to start the good work then from her official residence? Putting her sprawling official residence to use, she directed her staff to grow fruits and vegetables in its compounds.
Putting Malnutrition On the Mat
She then roped in a couple of schools, and in no time all the schools in Lawngthlai were growing vegetables and fruits. This took care of the food and nutritional needs of school-children of the area.
To put things in perspective, before Ms Shashanka launched her `Kan Sikul, Kan Huan (My School, My Farm) initiative, the malnutrition in the region had resulted in 35.3 % stunted, 21.3 % underweight and 5.9 % severely-wasted children under the age of five.
Thanks to Ms Shashanka’s efforts and the resultant success, the malnutrition among the school-children of Lawngthlai has now dropped from 35% to 17.93%!
Mr Bhupesh Chaudhary, Ms Shashanka’s husband, also did something equally remarkable in the nearby Siaha region. The schools under his jurisdiction, he discovered, were lacking in proper infrastructure, thus failing to give `holistic experience’ essential to a school student. For instance, most schools were lacking in elementary needs like libraries and sports facilities.
Healer For the Injured Schools
Speaking with Indian Masterminds, Mr Bhupesh said he decided to immediately sort out these shortcomings, as they were stopping the kids to reach their full potential.
The first, and the biggest, problem to prepare healthy infrastructure for the schools was funds. “I did not receive anything from the state Government,’’ he remarked, but added that this setback did not discourage him. At this point, he looked at a couple of out-of-the-box strategies. These are the things which differentiate an effective bureaucrat from the one who is barely efficient.
Deciding that the physical transformation of schools in his area cannot wait endlessly for the Government’s help, the IAS officer put himself in the driving seat. “ We got the funds through convergence, that is by channelizing resources from MNREGA, SSA (`Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan’) and the CSR. This finally led to our success, and to the transformation of our schools,’’ he added with a well-deserved sense of pride.
“We got the funds through convergence, that is by channelizing resources from MNREGA, SSA (`Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan’) and the CSR. This finally led to our success”
It is not surprising therefore that Mr Bhupesh Chaudhary has received- along with his wife- the Chief Minister’s award for Excellence in Public Excellence, for his initiative `Kawng Kawhhmuthu (Our Children, Our Future).
What A Chilli
Mr Bhupesh’s achievements are not limited to schools. What he did for the formers of his region, no other bureaucrat before him could do.
Why, he helped increased their income as much as 14 times. And all this by focusing on a very special kind of red chilli grown in the Siaha region of Mizoram.
This chilli goes by a rather eye-catching name of `Birds Eye’ (one doesn’t know if it also catches a bird’s eye, because then it’s likely to a painful affair for the feathered victim).
For a long, long time the farmers of Siaha would sell `Birds Eye’ to the traders of Assam and Silchar at atrociously low price. But Mr Bhupesh realised its true potential. This particular chilli scores very high on Scoville Scale, which is a measure of its spiciness and is direcly proportionate to the price it commands in a market. But in Siaha, it was being sold for a song.
Mr Bhupesh set up self-help groups and co-operative societies and trained the farmers to demand and get best price for the `Birds Eye’. What was being sold for Rs 50 a kilo before Mr Hitesh’s arrival on the scene is now fetching several hundred rupees a kg!
While Ms Shashanka Hails from Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, Mr Bhupesh was born and brought up in Panipat, Haryana. Both of them are from AGMUT cadre. Both have completed their tenure in Lawngthlai and Siaha, respectively. Ms Shashanka now is the Additional Secretary of Labour, Employment, Skill Development and Entrepreneurship and the Director of State Training Institute. Mr Bhupesh is at present Additional Secretary, ICT.
Looking back, this amazing IAS couple should be mighty proud of what they have done for the children, farmers and local population of a region which is so cut-off from the mainstream of Mizoram that even the State Government officials shudder at the prospect of a posting there.
One is reminded of an altogether different- but somehow connected- event of several decades ago, which the great conservationist Jim Corbett mentioned in his classic work `Man-Eaters of Kumaon’. Describing the scenario in the chapter `The Muktesar Man-Eater’, while he was chasing a man-eating tiger, Corbett comes across an eight year old girl who was taking a bullock to her uncle, all alone and on a road “on which men were afraid to walk except when in large parties, and on which in four hours I had not seen another human being.’’
Corbett safely escorts the girl to her uncle’s house. A few days later he dispatches the final bullet to the dreaded man-eater and concludes the chapter by writing: “The shooting of a man-eater gives one a feeling of satisfaction. Satisfaction at having done a job that badly needed doing. Satisfaction at having outmanoeuvred, on his own ground, a very worthy antagonist. And, the greatest satisfaction of all, at having made a small portion of the earth safe for a brave little girl to walk on.’’
Mr Bhupesh and Ms Shashanka too have done an equally remarkable thing- but on a much bigger scale and benefiting many lives.
