Strapline: P Balamurugan, an IFS officer in Rajasthan, sold newspapers for a living and gave up a corporate job to bring positive change in the government
Promotion
Would you take up a newspaper boy job just to pursue reading? Would you want to study hard being surrounded by seven siblings, an undereducated mother and an alcoholic father? And after managing to scrape through these hardships to earn a job paying Rs 3 lakhs a month, would you give it up to become a bureaucrat?
Starting from a young age by distributing newspapers at every doorstep in Keelkattalai, Chennai, to completing an engineering degree, this Indian Forest Services (IFS) officer has done it all. Currently undergoing training as a probationary officer in Dungarpur Forest Division in Rajasthan, P Balamurugan describes his life as an “adventure”.
Ask him his decision to give up a job in a multinational company to settle for a modest salaried government job, he says, “I don’t feel bad about it. I am the…