Who Is Gamit Ramilaben Raysingbhai? The Tribal Social Worker Who Got Padma Shri

Who Is Gamit Ramilaben Raysingbhai? The 52-year-old tribal social worker is from Tapi in Gujarat. Her work in transforming nine villages to open defecation-free villages has been greatly appreciated. She has also created more than 300 sanitary units and held awareness events on open defecation in the tribal belt.

This year President of India Ram Nath Kovind approved the conferment of the 128 Padma Awards including two duo cases.  Gamit Ramilaben Raysingbhai is also a recipient of the Padma Shri is year. The awards are given by the president at a ceremonial function, which is held at Rashtrapati Bhawan. Out of the total Padma Awards, 107 are awarded as Padma Shri. The social worker from Gujarat was awarded this for her phenomenal work.

"I started social servicing in 2014; I am very happy with the Padma Shri award, now I want to work to sort out the water issue in my Taparvada village," she said in an interview with the news agency ANI.

Padma Awards is India's highest civilian awards and are divided into three sections--Padma Vibhushan, Padma Bhushan and Padma Shri. They are generally given to people from different disciplines and activities like art, social work, public affairs, science, amongst others. The awards are announced on the occasion of Republic Day every year and later conferred in March-April, the same year.

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Along with Raysingbhai, this time the Padma Shri was awarded to 125-year-old yoga practitioner from Kashi, a 91-year-old woman who organised a cloth bank for Kutuch flood survivors, amongst many others.

Who Is Gamit Ramilaben Raysingbhai?

Raysingbhai lived and participated in the panchayat of a hilly village, procurement of ">materials usually was from plains. Even with difficult terrain, she continued her work and slowly created a group of women along with whom she ensured the sanitary matters.

Not only did she contribute to making sanitary units, but she along with her group would also keep a check that people do not defecate in open and use the units instead. According to PIB India, through this process, she also created empowerment amongst women in her village and nearby areas.

She said to ANI that she began with sanitisation for her village and along with the existing ">government policy on making villages free of open defecation, she wanted to work more on it.