Chhavi Rajawat, the young MBA who famously left her sales and marketing career to be elected sarpanch in her ancestral village, Soda, in Rajasthan in 2010, was invited by the Ficci Ladies Organisation (FLO) to speak to its members at The Lalit Great Eastern on Thursday. This is her second term as sarpanch and the young lady is just as determined, just as passionate... and, well, just as stylish! In conversation with FLO Calcutta chairperson Anupama Sureka, Rajawat shared with the audience her learnings on the job. "I am a bridging agent between the government and the village and between the corporate sector and the village," she said.Over the past seven years, Rajawat has learnt that in a village everything is interrelated. "At the moment I am focusing on creating the awareness that if we want to uplift a village, there has to be holistic, integrated development in every aspect of their lives," she said, citing examples of how groundwater contamination was affecting health, income, education and other aspects of life of the people in her village and any developmental approach would have to aim for "holistic uplift" and not piecemeal efforts. Picture by B. Halder