Perambalur Collector, Darez Ahmed, Another Sathyarthi In The Making?

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I read this news in The Hindu today:

Perambalur Collector receives PM’s award! 

'Perambalur Collector Darez Ahmed has received the ‘Prime Minister’s Award for Excellence in public administration.’ Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave away the award, which carries a purse of Rs. 1 lakh, in appreciation of his service in protecting girl children. 

Mr. Darez Ahmed had evolved various programmes to check foeticide and female infanticide. . Focus on ante-natal care included a special surveillance to check foeticide.'

  

I suddenly remembered reading about him just a couple of days back in a Tamil weekly magazine, 'Ananda Vikatan'.

Perambalur is a municipality town near Cuddalore and Salem (Tamilnadu).  Wikipedia gives more interesting details about this town!

This post is about the present Collector of Perambalur, Darez Ahmed, who is making a difference here, particularly for the upliftment of girl children and women.  Let me write in detail about his amazing work. Now, to the Vikatan article:

Normally, school children and teachers get tensed up when they come to know that their area Collector will be visiting them soon.  It is the opposite here...all of them are happy to receive him.

Darez Ahmed, took the post of the Collector of Perambalur 4 years back.  He was not acting like a man with a prestigious post but was mingling with people and children like an ordinary person.  He roams all over the villages and talks to people like a family member.  Everybody loves him.  You can notice it from the pictures below.

Hearing about the award for their Collector, the whole Perambalur is happy and celebrating.

His office has stopped more than 450 child marriages of all religions.  He stopped a marriage of a particular religion and faced the wrath of their people from the whole of Tamilnadu.  Still, he was firm on his stand and said that every child should be married only after they reach the marriageable age. 
After stopping the child marriages, he made the girl children to study further and some are doing their engineering/medical courses now.  He arranged for their stay in the schools and colleges from the Govt. fund.

The Collector participated in the recently held Perambalur marathon titled, 'Run to protect girls'

He is one among them.

He has started a programme now, called 'Super 30', through which children who are good in their studies in Govt. schools, are selected and makes the teachers to coach them to compete in the entrance exams to join medical and engineering colleges.  At present, more than 300 children are being coached here.  He has warned the errant teachers to work sincerely and so, the admission in govt. schools is increasing around 26% every year. He has started grading the schools according to their performance and sometimes visits them and takes classes to check the standard of teaching in the particular school.  This programme is called 'sigaram' means 'peak'.  He insists the villagers to send their children to aanganwaadis so that they have good, healthy food.

He has made arrangements to offer loans (education loan) for the children doing their higher studies from his district.  More than 10,000 students have availed this facility until now.

He has helped the cotton growing farmers to get good rates for their produce.  He gives priority to the problems of the local farmers.

People seem to be very comfortable with him and he, with them.

He has helped many children who have got serious problems with his own money for special treatments.  He is a down to earth person.  Travels in buses, auto rickshaws etc. to mingle with the locals.

He has arranged for the annual book fare in his district which is praised by the locals.   

He had been receiving accolades for the past 3 years, like 'Best Collector' award, award for helping 'special children'  from our earlier Chief Minister. 

Now, he has received the Prime Minister's award for 'Excellence in Public Administration'.  But he says that 'his officers followed his orders sincerely and so the acknowledgement goes to them too'.

Let us congratulate him and look forward to many more acknowledgements for his sincere work.

I felt so happy while writing this positive post. We need more people like him in the future. Hope many people read this post and know about him. Our whole country needs a good leader like him. I am a dreamer, you know!


P.S.: Sathyarthi is an Indian children's advocate and an activist against child labour.  He was awarded 2014's Nobel peace prize.

I had written about one more sincere Collector here. Have a look please.



Edited to add on 24.4.2015: I came across this news about the Collector now, thanks to the 'Frontline' magazine. He is a Medical graduate. The article says explains how his department stopped child marriages and later helped the girls to do higher studies.  Interesting article.  It also says:

Recalling the fight against child marriage in Perambalur, Dr Ahmed told Frontline that it all began after he read the magazine’s Cover Story essay by the Nobel laureate Amartya Sen titled “Many faces of gender inequality” (Frontline, November 9, 2001). The seven types of anti-female bias mentioned in the essay, which talked about 100 million missing women, triggered the Collector’s initiative.