add value to others

1. Leadership & Management in Health online course
University of Washington 1
LEADERSHIP & MANAGEMENT IN HEALTH
Knowing What Has Value to Others
Ms. P. Amudha, India
I was working with the UNICEF with water and sanitation and we had this data of census talking
about sanitation coverage of different states. And we saw one of our states in India, Bihar,
which is supposed to be the worst state indicator better than Tamil Nadu. Bihar had 17 percent
sanitation coverage, and our own state had only 15 percentage. So this was—I thought was a
good information, which if I can give it to the highest level of policy maker, they will be shaken.
You are saying Bihar has the most underdeveloped state, but they had better sanitation
coverage than Tamil Nadu, which we think are the most developed state. If this small thing will
put our leaders to shame, they will act faster.
So, we tried to prepare a small presentation and send it to the chief minister of the state. And
the chief minister: “Oh. How can this happen? How can Tamil Nadu be worse than Bihar? OK,
we will do a program where we will incentivize people going for sanitation.” They took it up a as
a state program—that’s how we used our statistics information to move our leaders to take
action against sanitation, which was other ways neglected.