Monday, March 07, 2016

A Foot Soldier: IAS Jitendra Kumar Soni’s “Charan Paduka” is now a Rajasthan govt scheme

Jitendra Singh Soni, IAS
IT’S named Charan Paduka Scheme. Target? To provide shoes to the underprivileged school children. And the man who began this innovative way of empowering the under-privileged is a 2010 batch IAS — Jitendra Kumar Soni, the former district collector of Jalore, Rajasthan. Launched in January this year, the scheme has now been adapted by…
the government of Rajasthan with a direction to the collectors of all 33 districts of the state to replicate the scheme, according to reports published in various local and national newspapers.
Back in January, India’s leading newspaper The Times of India carried an article titled, "Touched by sight of barefoot school kids, Jalore collector takes up cause”. In the following month, Sunil Kumar Sharma, Rajasthan government’s joint secretary in charge of primary education, issued a formal order asking all district collectors to follow this scheme of distributing free shoes to underprivileged school children. 
Son of a watchmaker, Soni was brought up in a humble background in Dhanasar village in Rajasthan’s Hanumangarh. After completing his post-graduation in political science, he passed the civil services examination and became an IAS. He was allotted the home cadre and became assistant collector in Pali district. He also served as a sub-divisional officer in Sirohi and then collector in Jalore. He is currently district collector and district magistrate in Jhalawar. Soni is 34 years old. 
Soni’s idea of distributing free shoes to the under-privileged children came when he saw a number of kids coming barefoot to schools during the winter month of December. He then asked the Gram Panchayats to collect information on the number of kids without shoes. The officer connected a few donors and bought non-branded shoes costing about Rs 200 per pair. 
BoI has decided to highlight Soni’s work as it would be an inspiration for many more young officers to give back something meaningful to the society. Dear reader, do you have any example of officers, across services, executing an idea as innovative as Charan Paduka? if you know, do write about them in the comment boxes below.

15 comments:

  1. Congratulations sir, for your commendable work

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  2. Great sir...all jalore missing you very much.

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  3. nothing new. govts of karnataka,andhra etc have been distributing shoes along with mid day meal scheme. hilarious that this fact not known in rajasthan,bihar,etc

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  4. Well done..really a good job.the country and people needs officers only like u. 👍

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  5. 12 lakh 50 thousand tendu patta collectors get a pair of shoes in Chhattisgarh

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  9. CG Govt. has been conducting the distribution of free charan padukas since long ago. It distributed charan padukas to 47 thousand tendu patta collectors in 2010-11.

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  10. छत्तीसगढ़ में चरण पादुका वितरण की योजना काफी लंबे समय से चल रही है. अभी तक लाखों आदिवासी परिवारों को चरण पादुका का वितरण किया जा चुका है. तेन्दूपत्ता संग्रहण कार्य में लगे 12 लाख 53 हजार परिवारों में से प्रत्येक परिवार की महिला सदस्यों को गत वर्ष 2014-15 में चरणपादुकाके रूप में उच्च गुणवत्ता की चप्पलें वितरित की गई थीं.

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  11. छत्तीसगढ़ में चरण पादुका वितरण की योजना काफी लंबे समय से चल रही है. अभी तक लाखों आदिवासी परिवारों को चरण पादुका का वितरण किया जा चुका है. तेन्दूपत्ता संग्रहण कार्य में लगे 12 लाख 53 हजार परिवारों में से प्रत्येक परिवार की महिला सदस्यों को गत वर्ष 2014-15 में चरणपादुकाके रूप में उच्च गुणवत्ता की चप्पलें वितरित की गई थीं.
    वर्ष 2015-16 में 12 लाख 32 हजार जोड़ी चरण पादुका 142 रूपए प्रति जोड़ी की दर से क्रय कर वितरण की कार्यवाही की जा रही है.

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  12. Currently Sri Ganganagar (Rajasthan) Collector Mr. P C Kisan had done n doing wonderful work for underprivileged chidren involvled in drug addicts and theif using an innivative way of library and Chess competetions.

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