India likely to get its first tribal President

BHUBANESWAR: From a Santhal village in Odisha’s remote Mayurbhanj district to a Class-3 state government employee to a schoolteacher to a politician to India’s first woman tribal governor, Droupadi Murmu’s rise has been meteoric.

But on Tuesday, one day past her 64th birthday, Murmu’s ascent from relative obscurity received perhaps its crowning moment, when Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president JP Nadda announced that she was to be the ruling NDA’s candidate in the presidential polls, which means, bar the most unforeseen of circumstances, Murmu is on the cusp of becoming the first tribal woman to be President of India.

Contacted by HT over the phone, Murmu said the moment she was told about the decision, she was teary eyed. “Though my name was being discussed for long, I had never expected it. I think this is evidence of ‘sabka saath, sabka vishwas’ policy of PM Modi,” she said.

Murmu was born in the Baldaposi

village in the Kusumi block of Odisha’s Mayurbhanj, a district which has a 58% tribal population, the highest in Odisha. Her father, Biranchi Narayan Tudu, was a farmer in the village. She completed her graduation from the Ramadevi Women’s University in Bhubaneswar with a Bachelor of Arts degree, and in 1979, began work as a junior assistant in the state’s irrigation and power department. After marrying Shyam Charan Murmu, a bank officer, Murmu quit the government job in 1983, to look after her two sons and daughter.

She then moved to Rairangpur, and in 1994, became an assistant honorary teacher at the Sri Aurobindo Integral Education Centre. Three years later, firebrand and passionate about politics, Murmu was prodded by her family to take the political plunge, contesting and winning the councillor election of the Rairangpur notified area council. With the post of the vice chairperson of the council reserved for tribals, Murmu became it’s deputy head. That same year, she was named the vice-president of state ST morcha of the BJP.