Author and bureaucrat Sajjan Yadav is an officer of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) 1995 batch, Arunachal Pradesh-Goa-Mizoram and Union Territory (AGMUT) cadre. His last book, titled India’s Vaccine Growth Story: From Cowpox to Vaccine Maitri, is a national bestseller that was translated and published in Spanish as well as sixteen Indian languages. He has also extensively published in reputed international and national journals, magazines and newspapers.
Yadav earned his doctorate in public health from the prestigious London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), a master’s in public policy from the University of Minnesota, USA, and an MBA from the Faculty of Management Studies, Delhi University. He is currently additional secretary in the department of expenditure, ministry of finance, Government of India.
Yadav has a rich and diverse experience of thirty years in policy formulation and implementation, as well as in senior leadership positions in the Government of India and state governments. In the Central government, besides the finance ministry, he has also worked in the ministries of health and family welfare, women and child development, heavy industry, and public enterprises and corporate affairs. Important assignments handled by Yadav in the past include tenures as mission director of the National Nutrition Mission (POSHAN Abhiyan), director of the National Rural Health Mission, commissioner of food and supplies in Delhi, CEO of Delhi Jal Board, VAT commissioner, commissioner of excise, entertainment and luxury tax and commissioner of the East Delhi Municipal Corporation. He has worked in the states of Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram and Rajasthan, and the Union Territories of National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu.
He has further served as district magistrate/deputy commissioner of East Kameng and Tawang districts of Arunachal Pradesh, and of the South Delhi district of NCT of Delhi. Yadav has been conferred many awards for exceptional work in public service, including the National e-Governance Award for 2017–18 and the President of India’s medal for outstanding work in census operations.