How reservation in local polls kick-started Murmu's political rise

Droupadi Murmu, 65, India's first president from a tribal community, has a come long way since her political journey began when she quit as a primary schoolteacher to contest local polls in the small town of Rairangpur in Odisha in 1997.

Her elevation to the country's top constitutional post last year would perhaps have been impossible had not it been for the introduction of a quota for tribal women in Rairangpur Notified Area Council or NAC (now a municipality).

The quota gave her a toehold and the rest is history. Murmu never looked back. She went on to become an assembly member, and a state minister before rising to the president's post.

Murmu was working in Rairangpur following a break after quitting her government job to take care of her kids in 1993 when her popularity as a schoolteacher drew the attention of local politicians. She was fielded as a candidate when one of the wards in Rairangpur NAC was reserved for tribal women in 1997.