Chandigarh: Urvashi Gulati, who took over as Haryana’s chief secretary earlier this week, has followed in the steps of her sister, Meenakshi Anand Chaudhary, who was chief secretary during the Bhupinder Singh Hooda government’s first tenure. And as things appear now, their younger sister, Keshni Anand Arora, also an IAS officer in the Haryana Government, could follow suit.
This is remarkable in a state whose sex ratio is one of the lowest in India. In Haryana, inter-caste marriages often result in murders and women lag behind on most social development indicators.
That hasn’t stopped the sisters from pursuing careers in the state bureaucracy. Chaudhary, now 63, is the first woman to have become the state’s chief secretary. She retired in 2006. Before taking over as chief secretary, 57-year-old Gulati was financial commissioner and principal secretary, rural development and Panchayat Department of the state. During her tenure, Haryana successfully implemented the Nirmal scheme, an initiative to improve sanitation in villages. It won the Haryana government recognition from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), an award from the President of India and an entry in the Limca Book of Records.
Arora, who now heads the state tourism department, says, “We three were not born with silver spoons in our mouths. Our family had moved from Rawalpindi during Partition. We are from a middle class family and our father was a professor of political science in Panjab University. During his career, many of his students made it to the IAS. When Meenakshi was pursuing her BA, one of the family’s well-wishers suggested that since his pupils had made it to the administrative service, he should prepare his own children for the same.”
Not surprisingly, all three sisters opted for political science as a main subject in the exam. “There was no television in our house. My mother played a pivotal role. She would cut articles from newspapers and help us revise our answers. We were categorically told that multiple attempts at IAS were not for us. We had to make it in the first attempt, else pursue a different career,” recollects Arora.
The commitment paid off when Chaudhary and Gulati secured ranks in the top 20. They are from the 1969 and the 1975 batches, respectively. Arora was All India Rank 2 in the 1983 batch. The sisters have since had impressive careers in the state bureaucracy.