Divya Mittal (File Photo)
Nearly 1,500 residents, most of them from Dalit families, had lived without piped water for 75 years. Mittal said she cried with her, describing it as one of the most moving moments of her 11 years in public service.
In 2023, while serving as the district magistrate of Mirzapur, Mittal took up what govt records had described as an “impossible case” in Lahuria Dah village. Mittal said she visited the site every week to review its progress. “When the tap was turned on for the first time today, tears of joy streamed down almost every face we saw,” Mittal wrote.
The post is characteristic of the ideas Mittal shares across her social media accounts. Her online presence combines reflections on discipline, education, self-awareness and public service with personal memories of places where she has worked. Previous efforts had produced surveys but no solution. The terrain was considered too difficult, the residents too poor and the project financially unviable. But Mittal and her team refused to accept the official verdict. Engineers from the Jal Nigam redesigned the lift water supply system. The project involved sourcing water, pumping it across difficult terrain, building storage facilities and creating a distribution network. An elderly woman held her hand and cried. Her Independence Day message carried the same emphasis on personal responsibility. “Freedom is not a date. Freedom has to be earned every day,” she wrote in Hindi, describing nation-building as a sacred sacrifice in which every Indian must contribute a spoonful of ghee. Across her social media accounts Facebook, X, Instagram and LinkedIn, Mittal presents public service through human experiences. Whether writing about a Hollywood film, a village water project, or India’s Independence Day, Mittal returns to the same idea: meaningful change begins when people stop waiting for ideal circumstances and choose to take ownership.
