Ragpicker's Son Who Reached IIT Madras and Became an IFS Officer Credits His Mother
Gautam Padibhar cleared JEE without coaching, studied at IIT Madras, and later joined the Indian Forest Service. He says his achievement belongs first to his mother.
Sakhubai Padibhar never attended school, but she understood what education could do for her children. To keep them in school, she worked as a daily-wage labourer in her village and later as a ragpicker in a Mumbai slum. Financial hardship, hunger and sleepless nights followed her, and she also coped with an accident and health problems, yet she kept working for her family.
Her son, Gautam Padibhar, went on to study at IIT Madras and later joined the Indian Forest Service. He attended Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya in Jalna, Maharashtra, cleared the Joint Entrance Examination without formal coaching, and completed his BTech at IIT Madras.
Engineering was not the end of his journey. Gautam appeared for the UPSC Indian Forest Service Examination 2022 and secured All India Rank 139. He joined the service as part of the 2023 batch of the Chhattisgarh cadre and now serves as Director of Kanger Valley National Park in Chhattisgarh.
He recently shared an emotional moment on Instagram: his mother visited his office and sat in his official chair. For Gautam, that chair represents the years of sacrifice she made. He said his mother gave him the spirit to fight, the drive to work harder and the freedom to dream big, and described the achievement as hers first and foremost — a tribute to the woman who made his dreams possible.