Hindustan Times (Lucknow) - Hindustan Times (Lucknow) - Live
YOUNG & LEADING A SENA!
Twenty-year-old Nidhi Mishra, a young crusader against injustice to women and the poor, is in seventh heaven these days. The HT Woman Award 2017 has come as a great booster to her struggle.
“HT Special Award is an acknowledgment of my efforts towards women empowerment and also recognition of my organisation Garib Pariwar also called Aasmani Sena( blue brigade). This inspires me to continue my fight against injustice” Nidhi tells HT City. She lives in a small rented house in Kheri Town.
Nidhi was just 19, pursuing her first year graduation, when she decided to tread on a tough path. When most of the students preferred to focus on academics, she chose to fight against the system, which often failed to benefit the poor particularly women.
Talking about early days, she says, “Living in utter poverty and hardships, I passed my high school with 74% marks and hoped to earn a scholarship besides a laptop, which was promised by the Samajwadi Party government. I made several rounds of DIOS office but no one helped me. What shocked me more was that there was no transparency in the work culture.” Nidhi faced problem in studying further. “I was lucky that DK Joshiji, a member of Taj Trapezium Committee in Agra, supported my education and I secured 74% marks in Intermediate with distinction in Hindi and Home-Science.”
She joined graduation as a private student. “By that time, digitisation of ration cards was in full swing. I noticed that poor and illiterate women in Kheri were struggling with the new system. Mismatch of names in ration and Aadhar cards created a lot of problem. Some of them found their names missing from the list but they did not get any help.”
It was then she decided to help these women who were highly dependent on ration cards for their livelihood. “I met officials to understand the data management system and came to know that numbers of ration cards approved were far less than the number of BPL families and no official was ready to listen to us,” she tells HT.
On January 1, 2016 she launched a massive agitation under the banner Garib Pariwar at the Collectorate to press for ration card grievances of Kheri women. “All the protesting women wore blue sarees while I had worn a blue salwar-kurta. Media widely covered the agitation and their group got the name Aasmani Sena. My first major agitation was a big success with increase of 10% quota of ration card for Kheri town. Besides, the missing names were also incorporated.” She gives credit to district magistrate Akashdeep and the then DSO Rakesh Tewari for their prompt action. Nidhi recently led a protest against baraat ghar, on education system besides other issues.
Nidhi says that the motive behind her agitations was never to disrupt peace, law and order but to draw attention of authorities towards the anomalies.
The young crusader credits her parents Ram Prakash Mishra and Urvashi Mishra for being her guiding force. “I am the eldest in my family with two sisters and two brothers and all inspire me to do something for the society. Initially, no one took us seriously but there was an honesty of purpose in my intention. Some even ridiculed me when we were just 10 women. Today we have 1,600 women members with no office-bearers. I am just mukhya sevika in my outfit,” she says.
On her future plans she says, “I look forward to devoting my life to social service. Next, I want to launch awareness programmes for education, environment and cleanliness. We need to focus on the education of poor rural kids which is my next aim.” Before signing off she tells that she has no political ambitions and just want to serve the people.