Rotary Peace Fellowship helps IAS officer scale new heights

The Duke UNC Rotary Peace Center, one of the eight Peace Centers worldwide, prepares Rotary Peace Fellows with values and education that can enable significant positive impact on world peace and conflict resolution. It offers them the best faculty, courses, resources and technology from both Duke University and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC).

Rajiv Jalota, an officer of the 1988 batch of the Indian Administrative Service , went to the Duke University in 2003 as a participant of the second batch of Rotary Peace Fellows. Jalota, who had a Masters Degree in Chemistry from Lucknow University, was working in Latur district, Maharashtra, as district collector when he joined Duke for a Masters in International Development Policy. He was truly impressed and touched with the warm welcome the Rotarians gave him and his family.

The Peace Fellows were provided with deep knowledge in international development management and policy formulation. The university was highly rated with an open selection of coursework across a range of elective topics. The rich multidisciplinary knowledge was helpful in Jalota’s future professional assignments as a public servant. His research project at Duke focused on human induced displacement in public projects. This learning left a lasting impression on him about the importance of balancing the needs of the government on one hand and the displaced population on the other. He also used this opportunity to understand global best practices that he could implement when he went back to policymaking in India.

In his words, “the overall experience at Duke was very revealing to me. I was a practitioner to the core but going into the basics of public policy opened my eyes to evidence-based decision making. As soon as I returned to India, I designed a new rehabilitation policy for land acquisition in Maharashtra that became a model for many other states to follow.” At that very point of time, a very big movement against land acquisition — the controversial Nandigram incident — had happened in West Bengal where people had come out on the streets. There were clashes, several people died and a feeling was created across India that land acquisition in the future is going to be very challenging. But in Maharashtra, “we involved the people and land acquisition was done with their total consent. We engaged them in a massive programme of skill development and financial literacy, and that’s why we succeeded.”

Earlier there had been considerable opposition to land acquisition which defeated development. Jalota effectively put the knowledge acquired into practice for the public and the region. “I shall always remain deeply indebted to The Rotary Foundation for its visionary investment in human resource development that will help future generations,” he says.

The knowledge he gained from the course led to his success in fulfilling the responsibilities he took up on his return as managing director, State Industrial and Investment Corporation of Maharashtra, followed by a three year stint as CEO of Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation. Since then, he has held several top posts in both the state and the GoI. As Goods and Services Tax commissioner, he implemented the revised GST bill in India. As additional municipal commissioner in the Mumbai Municipal Corporation, he introduced 24/7 water supply for 1.3 million people and launched the Water Distribution Improvement Programme. He initiated the mapping of sewer connections and improved accuracy of sewerage data on the GIS platform, and the digital mapping of Mumbai’s entire water distribution system.

As chairman of the Mumbai Port Trust, in November 2020, he organised international events such as the India International Cruise Conference in Mumbai and the Global Maritime India Summit with support from the Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways, and the Indian Ports Association.

Jalota designed the Cruise Bharat Mission to promote cruise tourism, which was inaugurated on his superannuation day in September 2024, by the Union Minister for Ports and Shipping Sarbanada Sonowal. Presently, he serves as advisor to the Indian Ports Association.

When Jalota went to the Duke Peace Center, his daughter Suhani was just nine years old. But the great memories of the time spent there, the warmth of the Rotarians and the indelible influence that the Peace course had on her father’s journey as a civil servant, inspired her to join Duke as an undergraduate student of Economics and Global Health. “The spirit of Duke is what I remember and that’s what I went there for,” she says. For Rajiv Jalota, watching Suhani’s progress at Duke has been very satisfying, for she went beyond her classrooms and always sought out newer opportunities An economist and social entrepreneur seeking to improve public health and women’s employment in India, Suhani set up the Myna Mahila Foundation in 2015, a technology-driven social enterprise that focuses on health, employment and research on women. The Foundation was endorsed by Prince Harry and Meghan, and was the only non-UK-based organisation to receive donations instead of gifts from the royal couple. It has supported over 1.5 million women in urban slums. Suhani has received several awards including the Glamour Woman of the Year Award, the Queen’s Young Leader Award for her start-up and its contributions, and was nominated for the Global Citizen Prize: Cisco Youth Leadership Award. She has been involved in various social entrepreneurship initiatives where she has helped develop apps to connect slum residents with jobs and to give them better access to emergency transport to hospitals.

The experience at Duke has enriched the lives of the father-­daughter duo enabling them to create positive change in their chosen fields.

 The writer is a past governor of RID 3240