Ermelinda Dias, doesn’t this name sound familiar? In less than two decades this young lady fromthe village of Carmona has achieved much that many would wish to emulate. She has studied and travelled throughout theworld and taken up tasks few would dare. At present she is the Director of Doordarshan Goa and is also theDirector of the Press Information Bureau (PIB) Goa.
If Melinda, as she is popularly known has reached a stage inlife where she can pause and take stock of her past, it is mainly due to herunquenching thirst for knowledge. Melinda who yearned to be a doctor followingher father’s footsteps by a quirk of circumstances answered the IAS exams.
Convinced that answering the IAS exam was the bestalternative, especially when she was unsuccessful in getting her admission atthe Goa Medical College (GMC), she lost no time to clear her graduation. Shehad by now lost 2 academic years in chasing the medical mirage. On the other hand the Central Govt wasreducing the upper age bar for Civil Services Exam under the perceived need tocatch them ‘young’. Melinda therefore resorted to a most unusual method ofeducation for a civil services aspirant. She enrolled herself as a private candidate for a one-sitting B.A.degree at Osmania University, Hyderabad, where she cleared all the 13 papers ofthe B.A. (External) Exam in one year. With a degree in hand, she appeared forthe civil services exam and cleared it with History & Economics (asOptionals) in 1993.
Though ranked 143,which was high enough to get her into the IAS,IFS or IPS, fate had other plansfor her. That very year the UPSC brought forward the time-line for submissionof preferences for the different services. Melinda overlooked this change inrules for submission of her preferences. In fact she went by the rulesprevailing earlier and filed her preferences after the results were declared.The UPSC refused to accept the delayed submission of preferences. With this she lost the Service that shevaliantly qualified for with her rank of 143 and was allotted the IndianInformation Service (IIS).
It is not a surprise that even though this young lady wasthe first Goan to clear this exam, the Government of Goa did not move an inchto help her get what was rightfully hers. With a tinge of sadness she says “Goasuffers from the syndrome of ‘ghar ki murghi dal barabhar’. Eduardo Faleiro who was an influentialMinister in the Union Government at that time did nothing to help me”.
In 2000 she wasposted as the News Editor of Doordarshan, in Mumbai. It was in the throbbingcity of Mumbai that she found her calling in environmental reporting. Her storyon the utter lack of sanitation facilities in Asia’s largest slum in Mumbai wonher a prize and an attachment with the Geneva-based Water and SanitationCollaborative Council in 2002.
In 2004, Melinda was chosen by the Ministry of Environment& Forests to work as Deputy Secretary on deputation where she handledInternational Co-operation for Sustainable Development, and had the opportunityto travel to different countries and be exposed to the international politicsand economics of environmental issues, especially climate change.
But Melinda says her best exposure to the politics ofenvironment was during the Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen in Dec. 2009,when she had the opportunity to be part of the Prime Minister’s Media Team toCopenhagen. Currently she is the recipient of the South Asia Climate ChangeAward Fellowship, 2012, selected by Panos, South Asia, and is busy researchingfor stories on climate change.
