THE SWACHH YOGI

Parameswaran Iyer was in Hanoi, Vietnam, watching television with his wife Indira, when Narendra Modi delivered his maiden Independence Day address in Delhi in 2014, calling for a Swachh Bharat (Clean India) mission.

- RAJ CHENGAPPA

He recalls almost falling off his chair when Modi mentioned the lack of toilets and the shame and indignity women faced when they defecated in the open. For a prime minister to bring up a subject not spoken about in polite company, that too from the ramparts of the Red Fort, was unheard of. Param, as his friends call him, was then leading the World Bank’s work on Urban Development and Water/ Sanitation and recalls telling Indira he was keen on returning to India and being part of the programme.

For Param, a Doon School and St Stephen’s College alumnus, sanitation and environment had been something of a religion ever since he joined the Indian Administrative Service in 1981 and was posted in Uttar Pradesh. From 1994 to 1998, he was the founder project director of Swajal, the community-managed rural drinking water and sanitation programme launched by the state. In 1998, he went on deputation to the World Bank as a senior water and sanitation specialist. By 2009, he had decided to quit the IAS and work exclusively for the World Bank, anchoring major sanitation projects in West Asia and then in South Asia. So when he heard Modi’s speech in 2014, he saw it as an opportunity of a lifetime to fulfil the mission of making India open-defecation free (ODF). A year later, on a visit to India, he was sounded out for heading the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) and, by February 2016, he had started work as a Secretary in the Union ministry for drinking water and sanitation which would implement the programme.