Bhubaneswar, July 24 (IANS) President-designate of India

Inside Droupadi Murmus world: Passionate teacher, disciplinarian, vegetarian #IndiaNEWS #National ,Politics,Top Story
By Quaid NajmiMumbai/Pune/Bhubaneswar, July 24 (IANS) President-designate of India Droupadi S. Murmu is not new to records and several are already to her credit in a dizzying political career spanning barely a quarter century, zooming from a Municipal Councillor in 1997 to the countrys First Citizen in 2022, for which she will take the oath on Monday (July 25).
With this, Murmu will be the first tribal, second woman, post Pratibha Patil (2007-2012), and the latest President with a teaching background after Dr. S. Radhakrishnan (1962-1967), Dr Zakir Hussain (1967-69), Dr Shankar Dayal Sharma (1992-1997), K. R. Narayanan (1997-2002), and Pranab Mukherjee (2012-17), ascending to the countrys highest office.
A stern disciplinarian, as acknowledged by her daughter Itishree Ganesh Hembram, her teaching experience may prove handy brooking no nonsense from errant politicians, but without wielding the proverbial cane!
At 64, Murmu will be the youngest-ever President, pipping the record-holder, Neelam Sanjiva Reddy (1977-1982), who also took office at 64, by a couple of months.
As Murmu prepares to enter the majestic Presidential Palace, her thoughts would stray to her humble beginnings in the small village of Uparbeda, Odisha, where she is born in a Santhal tribe family, and had two brothers Bhagat (deceased) and Taranisen, who is now her close aide.
A brilliant student, she later went on to become the first graduate from the tribal hamlet where once her father Biranchi Tudu and grandfather Narayan Tudu lorded as Sardars (head-men).
While leaving her primary school, the headmaster mechanically asked what she planned to do in life, the little Droupadi innocently replied, public service, but five decades later, he realised that she had fulfilled her childhood ambition.
After her schooling, uncle, Kartik Charan Majhi, a former MLA and Minister (1967), took her to Bhubaneswar to enable her complete her higher education, and graduated as a B. A. (1979) from the Rama Devi Womens College.
That year, she secured a clerical job in the Odisha government and worked there for several years and meanwhile, got married to a Bank of India employee, Shyam Charan Murmu, who lived in Pahadpur, around 10 km from Uparbeda.
Their first child, a daughter died aged three, devastating the young couple, who later had two sons Lakshman and Sipun, and a daughter Itishree, though whom the Murmu family later established a Maharashtra connect.
Murmu soon quit her government job to care for the family but took up teaching as honorary Assistant Professor at Sri Aurobindo Integral & Educational Research, in Rairangpur.
In the early 1990s, she was noticed by some senior Bharatiya Janata Party leaders as a rare, educated, working tribal woman and cajoled her to take up public service.

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