A note on Kiran Bedi, whose name has cropped up for Chief Ministership of Delhi. It will be a scoop for BJP. She is one woman whom all Delhi loves:
She sailed through college and a masters degree and, in 1972, at the age of twenty-two, won the women's lawn tennis championship of Asia. That same year she entered the police academy and, in 1974, became the first woman to enter the elite Indian Police Service. Kiran Bedi is remembered as a strict up-right police officer, a terror to corrupt Delhi policemen and criminals, and also as a woman with a soft heart.
She redirected former bootleggers to honest livelihoods by arranging friendly loans and assistance. Women's peace committees, set up at her initiative, promoted neighborhood harmony. As community participation rose, crimes fell. Observing the link between drug addiction and chronic criminality, Bedi set up community-supported detoxification clinics, a model she later developed for wider application as deputy director of the Narcotics Control Bureau.
In 1993 Bedi became inspector general of prisons (Delhi) and took charge of Tihar, India's largest prison complex. In this brutally overcrowded purgatory dwelled more than 8,000 prisoners, 90 percent of whom were unconvicted and merely awaiting trial. Bedi rapidly transformed Tihar. Today its inmates follow a positive regimen of work, study, and play. Illiterate prisoners learn to read and write. Others earn higher degrees from cooperating colleges. In prison workshops, prisoners keep their skills tuned and earn wages to save in Tihar's new bank. Bedi is a recipient of the Magsaysay Award.
In 2007, in spite of being the senior most officer, she was not appointed as the Director General of Police in Delhi as she would not toe the line of her political masters. She was side-lined as the Director General of Bureau of Police Research and Development. Bedi opted for voluntary retirement. She was a part of Anna Hazare's 'India against Corruption' campaign but did not enter politics as Arvind Kejriwal did.
(Based partly on Wikipedia's page on Kiran Bedi)
'Himmat Hai' (I dare)
