Popatrao Baguji Pawar (born 1960) is the farmer sarpanch of Hiware Bazar, a gram panchayat in Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra India. [1] [2] He was the only post graduate in the village. In 2020, he received the Padma Shri honour from the Government of India for his contribution in the field of social work. [3]
He is the Executive Director of Maharashtra state government's Model Village programme. [4] He is credited to have transformed it from an impoverished village into a model of development that the government of Maharashtra wishes to implement across the state. [5] [6]
Pawar led Hiware Bazar's transformation from a drought- prone village to a green and prosperous model village, thus successfully reproducing Anna Hazare's Ralegaon Siddhi model of village development. [7] He featured in an India Today cover story as the person who demonstrated how rural water resources could be revived. [6]
The Hiware bazare gram panchayat, with Pawar as its sarpanch, won the first National Award for community led water conservation in 2007. [6] [8]
In an interview with Nikhil Wagle on IBN Lokmat, Pawar describes his entry into public life as an accident. [9] [10] In relation to the control of malaria he is quoted to have said "Show me one mosquito (in Hiware bazar) and take away Rs 100." [11] He speaks regularly at Policy BootCamp, [12] a flagship summer school in public policy conducted by Vision India Foundation.