Do you prefer to hop on to a two-wheeler to buy groceries every day? An IAS officer in Meghalaya is showing the way how grocery shopping should be done. The deputy commissioner of Meghalaya’s West Garo Hills Ram Singh posted a picture of him buying local vegetables after having walked around 10km to source them.
Sharing an image of him buying vegetables, he wrote about the beauty of Tura and how he buys vegetables without producing greenhouse gases and by encouraging local produce.
“21kgs of weekend organic Vegetables shopping, No plastic, no vehicular pollution, no traffic jam, Fit India, Fit Meghalaya, Eat Organic, Clean & Green Tura , POSHAN , 10km morning walk..”
Ram Singh, who hails from Himachal Pradesh, is reportedly a 2008 batch IAS officer of the Assam-Meghalaya cadre and has been serving as the deputy commissioner of West Garo Hills since 2017. After posting the video, Singh has since became a social media sensation as the pictures of him buying grocery went viral on Facebook.
Not the first environmental-friendly initiative
As Deputy Commissioner, Ram Singh has taken other green measures such as addressing deforestation for commercial plantations by encouraging villagers to plant different varieties of trees. He also helped renovate government secondary schools in the district by providing them with solar-powered classrooms and low-cost water harvesting system.
How IAS officers have ruled social media
Recently, the actions of many IAS and IPS officers went viral on social media. Before resigning as District Collector of Thrissur, TV Anupama helped carry a heavy box of voting equipment during the Lok Sabha elections, winning hearts of many netizens. Kannan Gopinathan, a 2012-IAS officer from Kerala, received praise for taking a personal leave from his job to help out during the 2018 Kerala floods. Earlier this year, IAS officer Nidhi Choudhari’s sarcastic tweet on Mahatma Gandhi also went viral, prompting many political parties and leaders to demand her immediate suspension.
