IAS Medha Roopam training: How this St. Stephen’s economics grad and capturing champion grew to become NOIDA’s first lady DM
On a July evening when Uttar Pradesh shuffled its bureaucratic deck, a historic headline broke at daybreak: Medha Roopam had turn out to be NOIDA’s first lady District Justice of the Peace. For a district used to concrete, cranes, and energy corridors, the information carried a unique sort of weight—a glass ceiling quietly shattered by a younger IAS officer who had constructed her life on precision, grit, and an unflinching sense of goal.
Medha Roopam: An IAS within the making
Born in Agra in 1990, Medha grew up in a household the place public service wasn’t a profession selection, however nearly a genetic inheritance. Her father, Gyanesh Kumar, an IAS officer from the 1988 batch and later India’s Chief Election Commissioner, embodied the quiet dignity of governance. Household gatherings had been much less about small speak and extra about how coverage choices altered lives on the bottom.Her education started in Naval Public Faculty, Ernakulam, later shifting to St. Thomas Faculty, Thiruvananthapuram for greater secondary training. The south Indian ethos of rigour and self-discipline left its mark. However it was at St. Stephen’s Faculty, Delhi College, that her worldview sharpened.As an Economics (Honours) pupil, Medha dissected fiscal insurance policies, development paradoxes, and the chasm between planning tables and poverty traces. She cracked the UPSC Civil Companies Examination in 2013, bagging an All India Rank 10 with Psychology as her elective topic—a mix of data-driven evaluation and human understanding that might turn out to be her management type.
Medha Roopam: The markswoman’s self-discipline
Lengthy earlier than the corridors of energy, Medha mastered one other sort of focus—the sort that comes with holding a rifle regular. She educated within the 10-metre air rifle occasion throughout her college years and rose to win three gold medals within the Kerala State Capturing Championship, representing the state in national-level tournaments.The game taught her precision, persistence, and a capability to filter out chaos—all qualities that might later serve her effectively in districts the place governance was typically a high-stakes balancing act.
Medha Roopam’s profession: A path of precision, stress and steadiness
Medha Roopam’s administrative journey has been much less about polished boardrooms and extra about rolling up sleeves in Uttar Pradesh’s hardest districts. She began out in Bareilly and Meerut, studying the true grammar of governance—not from textbooks, however from chaotic area places of work and public grievances that arrive quicker than options.As District Justice of the Peace of Hapur, she wasn’t one for token bulletins. Beneath her watch, the Ayushman Bharat scheme didn’t simply sit in recordsdata; greater than 1.3 lakh golden playing cards reached actual palms, and immunisation drives stopped being photo-ops and began touching practically each family.Then got here Kasganj, the place nature examined paperwork. Floodwaters swallowed roads and reduce off villages, however Roopam ditched the SUV and rode a tractor by means of submerged lanes, coordinating rescue and aid on the spot. In a state the place catastrophe administration typically means conferences and memos, she selected mud and knee-deep water.Later, as Further CEO of Higher NOIDA Authority, she swapped flood zones for land offers and investor impatience. Jewar Airport and Movie Metropolis tasks introduced their very own storms—land disputes, group pushback, and deadlines that didn’t care about paperwork’s tempo. Roopam realized to stroll the tightrope between ambition and floor actuality, preserving tasks shifting with out letting guarantees sink in pink tape.
A brand new chapter in NOIDA
Now, as NOIDA’s first lady DM, Medha steps right into a district the place ambition runs quicker than visitors, expectations are excessive, and each resolution is beneath a magnifying glass. But, her journey—from economics school rooms to rifle podiums to disaster-hit villages—suggests a method of management that’s grounded, people-focused, and unafraid to behave when it issues most.For NOIDA, this isn’t simply historical past being made—it’s an opportunity to observe how a scholar, shooter, and civil servant may redraw the boundaries of governance in one in every of India’s most stressed cities.TOI Training is on WhatsApp now. Observe us right here.
