Sudha Patel

Sudha Patel (born 1976) is India’s youngest elected blind female sarpanch. She was elected in June 1995 as the sarpanch of Changa village in Anand district, Gujarat. Patel is the recipient of the prestigious Ten Outstanding Young Persons of World award, Outstanding Woman Panchayat Leader of India award, and was awarded the Jagdish K Patel Award by the President of India. She reveals that she is alive today only because a good harvest the year she was born that prevented her parents from infanticide as some villagers thought her to be lucky as Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth.

Patel is the first blind post-graduate in law from the Sardar Patel University in Anand, Gujarat, India. Due to her gender and her disability, she turned heads when she expressed her desire to become the sarpanch, but won elections to become the first woman sarpanch of her village.

Career Apart from being sarpanch, Patel now works as a project coordinator in a private trust in Anand that works to help children with physical disabilities. She was the honorary general secretary of the Anand branch of the National Association for the Blind and is a member of the Ahmedabad-based Blind People's Association.

As sarpanch, Sudha has focused on infrastructural development, She has conducted rehabilitation projects in around 85 villages of Petlad taluka, registering around 800 disabled people. and has admitted over 80 blind children in schools. Patel's work in arranging for writers to assist visually disabled students in writing the annual SSC and HSC exams is widely acclaimed. She is a recipient of the Outstanding Woman Panchayat Leader Award from the Institute of Social Sciences, New Delhi, and the Neelam Ranga National Award from the National Association for the Blind.