N Vijaya Lakshmi
Dr N Vijaya Lakshmi is a senior civil servant of Government of India and having 24 years of experience in the Indian Administrative Service. She did MA Anthropology from University of Hyderabad and PhD in Management from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi. She has worked extensively on issues related to women’s empowerment and gender equality. She is also a pioneer for initiating several social welfare programmes – i.e. under her leadership, Hisua block of Nawada district declared as the 1st child labour free block of the country in 2002. She worked in several departments and has been instrumental in implementing various development programmes for women, children and marginalized communities. She got several awards for her work which vary from agriculture to animal husbandry to cooperatives to gender equality etc. Under her leadership the Agriculture Department won two successive Krishi Karman awards for highest ever productivity in rice and wheat in Bihar.
She was awarded Distinguished Humanitarian Service Award by Rotary International in 2002-03. She was also recognized for her efforts over implementing a community-based behaviour change programme on health, nutrition, sanitation through self-help groups known as “Gram Varta”, by the commonwealth Innovation Awards in 2016.
