This is a
post on Murmu, the name would strike a bell, our Hon’ble President but this is
on another Murmu !
Respected Droupadi
Murmu is our current President of India.
She was a teacher and is now the 15th and current
President of India since 2022. She won the 2022 presidential election as a
candidate of the Bharatiya Janata Party.
She is also the youngest person to occupy the post and the first
President born in an independent India. Previously, she served as the 8th
Governor of Jharkhand from 2015 to 2021, being the longest serving Governor for
that state. She was a member of the
Odisha Legislative Assembly from Rairangpur Assembly constituency from 2000 to
2009, and was Minister of State (Independent Charge), Government of Odisha. She
married Shyam Charan Murmu.
This post
on Chandrani Murmu ! ~ elected
to the Lok Sabha, from Keonjhar, Odisha in the 2019 Indian general election as
a member of the Biju Janata Dal. Chandrani Murmu is currently the youngest
Indian Member of Parliament in the 17th Lok Sabha. Murmu won against
BJP's Ananta Nayak, who has previously won twice, by a margin of 66,203 votes.
She succeeded Sakuntala Laguri to win the election from Keonjhar for the BJD
once again. The youngest MP in the 16th Lok Sabha was Dushyant Chautala
representing the Indian National Lok Dal from Hisar in Haryana.
Away in
the globe, Hanah Lahe is just 24 but she is already a leading voice for change
in the former Soviet Baltic state.
Hanah
Lahe can’t remember the fall of the iron curtain. Estonia’s youngest MP grew up
surfing the web and consuming American television. Just nine years before her
birth, it was all so different. When borders reopened after the end of Soviet
rule in 1991, Estonians rushed to stare at
bananas, enthralled by the arrival of this new,
exotic fruit. “People were standing in line sometimes not even to buy, but just
to have a look at them. Those who would buy them would not even eat them
because it was such a big thing,” says Lahe, 24, recounting a story her
grandmother told her. “When a plastic bag from another country that had a big
brand name arrived, people would use it all the time.”
Freedom,
after half a century of Soviet occupation, held no immediate assurances.
Criminal gangs were known to wander around Tallinn in the turbulent years of
the early 1990s. Foreign visitors were relatively few and far between. Finnish
tourists, allowed to cross the Soviet Union’s sea border, recall seeing
ramshackle houses and children in rags roaming the streets of Tallinn.
It has
been nearly a year since Lahe, representing the liberal Reform party of the
prime minister, Kaja Kallas, was elected an MP, and in that time she has
emerged as one of the Baltic country’s most outspoken, energetic and
interesting politicians. She landed her
first big victory within months of her election, at just 23, when she led the
fight to legislate marriage equality. Estonia went on to become the first
ex-Soviet country to legalise same-sex marriage, a groundbreaking piece of
legislation that came into effect in January 2024.
Lahe is
now challenging other status-quos. The climate crisis remains a muted topic in
Estonia, largely thanks to a deep-rooted car-loving culture at odds with
Tallinn’s much-lauded free public transportation for residents. Cars remain
something of a status symbol for new wealth and Estonia has the EU’s
second-highest share of cars older than 20 years. Lahe, a former youth delegate
at Cop27 in Egypt and a founder of a circular economy support group in
Estonia’s parliament, still sees herself as an activist taking on mainstream
attitudes and “big egos”. She refuses to own a car, instead using public transport
or walking.
Lahe and
like-minded Estonians have their work cut out if the Baltic state is to make
real progress on the climate. The country remains an outlier in the EU, with no
climate-based laws, though the government – a coalition led by Reform with
Estonia 200, a new liberal party, and the Social Democrats as junior partners –
is drafting a climate bill that could be pushed through this year. A new car
tax is to come into force in 2025, despite public opposition. The reforms could
raise an extra €120m a year.
Despite
her relative inexperience, Lahe understands the importance of communication.
Like Kallas she understands social media, but while the prime minister posts
behind-the-scenes footage of her day-to-day duties on Instagram, Lahe goes a
step further, using social media as a tool to gain traction on protests. In June, she set up a temporary garden space
outside Estonia’s parliament in protest over the large number of empty “asphalt
heat island” spaces devoted to parked cars. Her pop-up went viral and caught
the wider public’s attention. The prime minister even dropped by. Fierce
climate opponents couldn’t resist having a look.
The other
crisis on Lahe’s mind – like all politicians in the Baltics – is Russia’s war
on Ukraine. “My generation’s heart aches for Ukraine, not because we lived
through a war, but because we have the negative imprint of Russian invasion
from our heritage. It matters to everyone who is Estonian how things are going
in Ukraine,” says Lahe. She is clear: Ukrainian victory is the only path to
securing Europe: “There really isn’t any other option.”
Domestically,
battles lie ahead for Lahe, who as a young person in politics feels she has to
prove herself “more than a regular politician”, particular since she chooses to
go against many of her country’s cultural norms
Back home in India, Chandrani
Murmu was born on 16 June 1993 to Sanjiv Murmu, a government employee and
Urbashi Soren, daughter of former MP Hariharan Soren (who won from Keonjhar on
behalf of the Congress in 1980 and 1984). Murmu completed her degree in
Mechanical Engineering from Siksha 'O' Anusandhan University, Bhubaneswar, in
2017.
As the functioning of
Parliament shifted to the new building, Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modiji mentioned the oldest member of Lok Sabha - 93
years old Samajwadi Party MP Shafiqur Rahman Barq - and the youngest - 30 years
old Chandrani Murmu of Biju Janata Dal (BJD) - who became an MP at the age of
25.
Young minds do bring
in lot of fresh ideas !
29.2.2024
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