After winning the hearts of many people by offering them help in their hour of distress, India's external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj's wholehearted effort has been recognised by Foreign Policy magazine. She has been named as one of the 15 'global thinkers' of the year.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi congratulated Sushma for for her noble efforts. Sushma is in the company of 14 other thinkers, including Hillary Clinton, Angela Merkel and Justin Trudeau.
Since she took office, Sushma has tirelessly not just responded to tweets seeking help, she has actually taken prompt action to ensure people's problems are solved. No problem is seen as too small or too big for her attention. And she's even worked for the public while ailing and from a hospital room.
The external affairs minister has helped both Indians and non-Indians. Some months ago she commiserated with a British couple who were having trouble getting their daughter - born of surrogacy - a British passport. Most notably, she was instrumental in coming to the rescue of 10,000 migrant workers who were going hungry in the Gulf after either being laid off or because their salaries were withheld. It is in fact this episode that Foreign Policy took special note of.
"In July, Sushma Swaraj tweeted to roughly 6 million followers that 10,000 Indian workers employed inside the kingdom faced a 'food crisis.' What followed was a week-long social media operation in which Sushma posted information for migrants about rations provided by the Indian Embassy, claims for unpaid wages, and government-organized transportation home," wrote Foreign Policy describing what put Sushma on the list of influential decision-makers of 2016.
Sushma, whom the Washington Post called "Supermom of the State", underwent a kidney transplant recently. Now she is recovering fast and being moved out of the intensive care unit of the Delhi's AIIMS.
While many leaders did not like to disclose their diseases and keep it as a secret like former Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa, the minister herself announced on Twitter last month that she was in AIIMS because of kidney failure. Soon after several people offered to donate a kidney to her. She has a fiercely protective fan base. When a graduate student recently tweeted Swaraj for help with an Australia visa, several people chastised the student for bothering the minister while she was in hospital. She is always ready to help the distressed souls.
