How reservation in local polls kick-started Murmu's political rise

Droupadi Murmu, 65, India's first president from a tribal community, has a come long way since her political journey began when she quit as a primary schoolteacher to contest local polls in the small town of Rairangpur in Odisha in 1997.

- 

Her elevation to the country's top constitutional post last year would perhaps have been impossible had not it been for the introduction of a quota for tribal women in Rairangpur Notified Area Council or NAC (now a municipality).

The quota gave her a toehold and the rest is history. Murmu never looked back. She went on to become an assembly member, and a state minister before rising to the president's post.

Murmu was working in Rairangpur following a break after quitting her government job to take care of her kids in 1993 when her popularity as a schoolteacher drew the attention of local politicians. She was fielded as a candidate when one of the wards in Rairangpur NAC was reserved for tribal women in 1997.