Indian diplomat embarks on a mission to serve

Faiz Ahmad Kidwai, the consul general of India in Jeddah, is on a mission to serve his people.
Kidwai joined the Indian Administrative Service when he was 23 years old rather than begin a career in engineering. “It gives you experience in many different areas,” said Kidwai in an interview with Arab News.
He has since served as a collector, district magistrate, head of village panchayats (councils), director of a World Bank project and the director of the Indian president’s secretariat responsible for administration, estates and constitutional affairs.
Explaining his reasons for joining the civil service, Kidwai said: “The kind of authority and powers you have, if used properly, can benefit a lot of people.”
Some assignments were only a few months, which was too little time to make a massive difference. “A tenure of less than two years is just not enough to plan and execute a program especially if it is a district assignment. However, in the state headquarters in the secretariat a period of one or two years would be enough to understand the work and make some meaningful contribution.”
He said more needs to be done to help villages, where most of the Indian population lives. “We need to focus on villages and make them self-sufficient, to minimize the trend of urban migration as envisaged by Mahatma Gandhi, the father of the nation.”
Kidwai began his training in one of the most remote areas of the country, Bastar, in Madhya Pradesh. He said that during his time there, he realized that the area needed a lot of development, especially education and health services.
There has been progress in some areas in India. For example, the village council in the Zilla district has a three-tier structure with grassroots governance. The government has given these villages a great deal of funds for projects overseen by democratically elected local representatives.
He said the Indian government has increased funding for these councils over the past 20 years. “The experiment is still underway and has gone well so far. It has helped to bring about more transparency in the whole system and in executing good schemes and good plans for the common man.”
He said a local council in Gujarat is providing free Wi-Fi for all its villagers. It also has CCTV cameras in the village. “These panchayats are also introducing new innovations which are helping the villagers solve the problems of water and power.”
Seoni, a district in Madhya Pradesh, where he was first posted as district magistrate was adjudged the best in the state in the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, an Indian government education program.
Kidwai said soil and water conservation remains a major problem in India. Although the country receives good rainfall, it is sporadic and some places have either droughts or floods. He said the government has formed partnerships with the private sector to preserve water and prevent soil erosion.
Kidwai said efforts are underway to improve nutrition and health programs in the country with aid from the World Bank and other organizations, but the size of the population has made it difficult to reach everyone.
However, there are many innovative health programs including hospital deliveries, pre and postnatal care, and attention to children’s nutrition. “Our pulse-polio program has been a very successful model and lauded all over the world,” he said.
In response to a question, he said the Roshini project at the presidential estate, was an environment-friendly concept. The estate, where the president of India and his staff lives, has more than 1,500 employees.
The waste generated through the president’s gardens is converted into compost, kitchen waste is converted into organic manure and reused in the gardens, and rain water is collected to replenish ground water.
He said several measures were taken to conserve energy. “One was to have an energy audit to see how energy could be saved. We implemented that in our air-conditioning, lighting and use of electricity. We also used renewable sources such as solar energy and in fact, managed to run a whole auditorium on solar energy. The vehicles on the estate were battery operated and charged through solar panels,” he said.
In addition, more than 6,000 trees were planted. The estate won an ISO-14000 One Certification, which measures the environmentally friendly status of a particular office or township. “We got an independent audit done and received a certificate under this scheme.”