Dr. Kiran Bedi (born on 9 June 1949) is a true trailblazer, admired and loved by many in India. It is difficult to know where to begin when talking about someone like her, who has excelled in so many different fields.
Born into an extraordinary family with visionary parents, Kiran is the second of four daughters. She graduated from the Govt. College for Women in Amritsar in 1968 with a Bachelors Degree in English. She went on to get a Masters in Political Science from the Punjab University in 1970 and served as a lecturer at Khasla college. She went on to get a LLB degree from Delhi University in 1988, and a Ph.D. from IIT Delhi in 1993. During her college years, she was also a great tennis player, and won the Asian Lawn Tennis Championship at the age of 22.
Kiran Bedi became the first women officer in the elite Indian Police Service when she joined in 1972. Her humane and fearless approach has contributed greatly to innumerable innovative policing and prison reforms. The most memorable moment of her career came when she served as the Inspector General of Asia’s biggest jail—the Tihar Jail—in 1993. When she joined her posting, she declared that she would turn this unlivable jail into an Ashram in six months. She introduced many classes and programmes for the inmates including those on basic education, meditation, yoga besides functions like mushairas, kavi sammelans, dramas and games, which involved the jail inmates.
Kiran’s innovative steps in policing and her initiating reformative activities in whatever posting she was given has brought her recognition both in India and abroad. Among the many awards she has won are the President’s Gallantry Award (1979), Asia Region Award for Drug Prevention and Control (1991), Ramon Magsaysay Award (1994), Fr Machismo Humanitarian Award (1995), Joseph Beuys Award (1997), ACCU-IEF Award (1998), Serge Sotiroff Award (UNDCP) (1999), Bharat Gaurav Award (1999), Morrison Tom Gitchoff Award (2001).
Kiran Bedi became the first woman, and the first Indian, to be appointed to the prestigious post of United Nations Civilian Police Adviser. Of course, for the large number of fans following her career, this was nothing unexpected.
Kiran Bedi is also a noted author. Kiran Bedi has also been very active in community service. She has often said, policing is also social service from a position of power. Crime prevention has always been a priority in all her postings, and she, despite her demanding official work, has initiated a large amount of voluntary service in various fields of social development, which have a direct bearing on crime prevention and crime correction. She set up ‘Navjyoti’ in 1986 for working in the field of drug abuse treatment and rehabilitation. Navjyoti has till now treated over 12,000 drug addicts. After the receipt of the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 1994 Kiran set up India Vision Foundation to work in the field of prison reforms, crime prevention, education, rural development, physical and mental disabilities, sports promotion etc.
Shopping Cart
