‘Baptism by fire’ — in Cuttack, former company honcho Santrupt Misra is building his electoral debut
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Bhubaneshwar: When Santrupt Misra, the 59-12 months-outdated group director of human methods in the Aditya Birla group, stop his significant-profile career in February to be part of Biju Janata Dal (BJD) and contest the Lok Sabha polls from Cuttack, it stunned lots of of his spouse and children and close friends.He can take on sitting MP from Cuttack and former BJD leader Bhartruhari Mahtab, who left the social gathering previous month and joined the Bharatiya Janata Bash (BJP).
Right up until he quit, Misra experienced used virtually 30 many years as a higher-traveling corporate government in various leadership roles in the Aditya Birla group, which he had joined at 28. He rose through the ranks to keep a variety of management positions in the company, such as team director of Birla Carbon and director of Birla Chemicals. He also served on the board of ONGC as an independent director.


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1 would consider that leaving the lure of the corporate environment at 59 and getting a plunge into the uncertainty of politics is a tough conclusion for him.
However, in accordance to Misra, he left after it dawned on him that he could make that option. “My young children were being settled… I experienced discharged my responsibility to my loved ones. I could now manage to make the alternative of coming back to Odisha and serving people today,” he explained to ThePrint at his dwelling in the condition funds, Bhubaneshwar.Politics constantly intrigued him, owning experienced several family members associated in India’s Independence motion. Even right up until a short while ago, quite a few of his family are included in politics — his father was a previous pupil union president, his uncle was the ex-chairman of the Cuttack Municipal Corporation and many of his cousins have been lively in politics, he mentioned.“Politics has been in my blood considering that my childhood,” Misra claimed, including: “I desired to contribute to the growth of Odisha and when this option arrived, I didn’t consider 2 times.”Misra joined the BJD in February this calendar year and was appointed 1 of the party’s nationwide spokespersons before his candidature from Cuttack was declared.
Though a political greenhorn, Misra is common with the state’s electricity corridors. In 2021, the BJD authorities appointed him the chairman of the advisory committee of the Ekamra Kshetra heritage task to beautify the locations surrounding the 11th-century Lingaraj temple in Bhubaneshwar. His wife Alka Misra, an Indian Railway Personnel Assistance officer, was also appointed the chairperson of Odisha Ability Advancement Authority in 2022.In government corridors, they are referred to as the Odia power pair whom Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik roped in to head important programmes of his government.
Also Read: Resentment towards some BJD leaders, but no dent on Naveen babu’s picture in Odisha. ‘He is like our God’
‘Campaigning in 44°C is like baptism by fire’
But he admits the grueling campaigning routine beneath a blazing sunshine is tough. “If you had arrive to my marketing campaign two days back, you would have witnessed 44° Celsius temperature, four hrs in a regional jeep, blazing sunshine above… I am heading as a result of baptism by fire.” His coping mantra — remain hydrated and retain smiling. “I follow the fundamental principles recommended by my daughter, a health practitioner in London, and continue to keep myself hydrated. I pay attention to my cameraman close friend who normally tells me to hold smiling.”He’s also finding out his classes quickly and proving his critics completely wrong. “People visibly see that I can sit for two hrs on the floor in party conferences. I can go in an open jeep at the blazing 44-diploma temperature for 4 several hours and consecutively for two times and still I’m able to smile.”
Misra suggests he selected the BJD over countrywide events like BJP “because of the individuality and manufacturer of politics that BJD main and CM Naveen Patnaik represents – a pretty civil, very experienced, management, which is well balanced, which is not rabble-rousing, which is not unnecessarily significant, negative”. “That brand of politics, that price technique experienced great attraction for me,” Misra said. He was also encouraged by the welfare programmes of the Naveen Patnaik governing administration.“From cradle to the grave, he identified each individual section of the populace and specific them via just one or the other government techniques. There is a great doorstep delivery, steady monitoring of the plan, comments, senior leaders are predicted to go out to the public, redress grievances… this responsive govt, ahead-wanting and long run searching governance has been a terrific resource of inspiration,” he included.
He has a formidable opponent in Mahtab, a six-time MP from the Cuttack Lok Sabha seat. But that does not daunt him. “My freshness, my newness, and my abnormal background…the fact that I am not a common male of politics, will be the icing on the cake. And the cake will usually be the Naveen Patnaik-led Odisha authorities and its programme,” he mentioned.His beginnings
Born in Puri in August 1965, Misra invested the 1st couple of decades of his lifestyle in Odisha’s distant regions and tiny towns wherever his father, a professor, was posted. “For the 1st five several years of our life, my sister and I did not go to faculty. It was far off, and there was no general public transportation. We experienced just one tutor and ended up household-schooled.”He and his sister ended up sent to a federal government school following his family members returned to Cuttack after five yrs. It’s in this city that he completed his faculty and better training.
A gold medallist from Cuttack’s Ravenshaw School, Misra graduated in economics and political science before using up a master’s diploma at Bhubaneshwar’s Utkal University. He has a double master’s diploma in political science and personnel management and industrial relations from TISS.Generally an ace student, Misra was acknowledged as the very best debater in higher education for three consecutive years. He also briefly studied at Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) but experienced to return to Odisha mainly because his mother was unwell. After his master’s, he went to Mumbai’s Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) to review human resource administration, then acknowledged as staff management.At 21, Misra joined the Delhi-dependent J. K. Organisation, which despatched him to a factory in a distant tribal region close to Rayagada on the Andhra Pradesh-Odisha border.
“The manufacturing facility was in a distant location, where the tribals lived… it was a phenomenal encounter in rural India, real India,” Misra reported.There was strain on him from his family to sign up for the civil services but the former corporate honcho was not interested.“My existence has often been full of threat-taking — strange bets, shifting tack wholly …No major ideas and preparations. As I go alongside, I learn and move,” he told ThePrint.It’s a “quirk of fate” that he’s ending his profession at the exact area that he began — Odisha. “I phone it Lord Jagannath’s conspiracy to carry me again to my roots,” he reported.
Immediately after working with the J&K group for some time, Misra went back again to teach at TISS ahead of obtaining a scholarship for PhD in the United Kingdom.Right after his return to India, Misra joined Hindustan Lever in advance of at some point transferring to Aditya Birla Group at 28.Adapting to the tough and tumble of politics
In accordance to the previous honcho, the very best matter about politics is “the really like and affection that you get from the people”. “They give their belief to you.”He’s also touched by how protective and supportive BJD party’s employees are. “The senior leaders are watching out for you because you are new… all of that is phenomenal,” he states.
But he is adapting — just one working day at a time — to the chaos of politics. “In my corporate daily life, I was made use of to extremely tightly structured schedules and time. I consider right here, your time is a thing not below your command. I am obtaining employed to it, and I assume I am undertaking fairly perfectly,” he reported. He’s also acquiring applied to getting active on social media to market himself. “I’m not a social media guy…I feel that my perform has to be my brand. In my corporate profession, everyone knew me for my perform. I do not believe that in self-promotion… I have in no way performed it. Social media is a minimal little bit about self-promotion, let’s not deny it,” he explained.
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