Wearing the political hat: Sanchaita Gajapati Raju

Sanchaita Gajapati Raju, yes, the name does ring a bell, especially to the people of North Coastal Andhra Pradesh that saw a vibrant political family, also the royalty that did not harp on past glory but preferred to look towards better future. A couple of weeks ago Sanchaita announced she was joining the BJP party, this despite her mother and father’s association with the Congress party.

Evidently while her father Anand Gajapati Raju’s activities in New Delhi as a parliamentarian and her politically active family kept her well informed about politics; her mother who was also a Member of Parliament introduced her to social service.

“My mother launched Lifeline Express, mobile hospital units that would travel coastal Andhra Pradesh to take surgical facilities to remote villages. Once she made me go with her, even though I would be missing school for a month. She thought it was important for me to know about my roots and see the people and their problems. For the first time, I saw the use of technology that transformed lives. My mother has been a major influence in my life.”
“For me, politics is just institutionalizing social work. I have always admired Prime Minister’s Swachh Bharat programme. The party’s focus on the initiative is in line with my belief in the importance of sanitation and clean drinking water,” she further revealed.

A student of Vasant Valley School and a Law graduate from Delhi University Sanchaita chose to work in the field of sanitation and drinking water – the two important requirements of rural India. She has been the campaigner for Swachh Bharat even before the word was coined. She launched SANA, an NGO in 2011. “I always believed that for social impact, technology can be used to transform lives. In the first year, I asked my parents to fund it. They have always supported my ideas. And thats how I found myself in non-profit world. The breakthrough came when I won the Google Impact award for using technology for social impact in 2013, which carried with it a grant of half a million dollars. This gave me visibility and credibility,” she shared.

Between 2011 and 2013 when SANA was scaling up operations sanitation wasn’t a focus area in India. However, Sanchaita wanted to provide integrated solutions for which she chose her home state. “When I decided to scale up. I wanted to give back to the land where I came from. My mother has a home there in Visakhapatnam where I began my work. It has been an incredible journey so far.”

She spearheaded the installation of SANA Surya Sujala Dhara for drinking water in rural AP; the solar powered water treatment plants that give 1.8 million litres of drinking water annually and the waste water left during the process is used to flush the Haritha -Bio toilets. They are based on DRDO technology and do not need either septic tanks or secondary waste treatment and contribute as source for renewable energy.” Even as she continues working for better sanitation facilities, she was invited to speak for New York Times and also at the UNESCO in Paris on the subject. SANA initiatives are funded by corporates like Oracle.

“We need a cleaner world and a just world where women need not worry that they will be raped when they go to fields to defecate, all humans have basic right to infrastructure, safe drinking water, and I decided that politics is one of the vehicles to impact change,” states Sanchaita, who is ready to take whatever role the party chooses for her at present.

Stressing on the importance of young people to engage with politics she says, “We live in a democracy. With or without your vote the government will be formed. We have our future at stake. You must vote, come together and engage, you must be involved, or you will left out in the future of our country.”