Ubagarampillai Sagayam ( ; born 3 July 1962[1]), usually referred to as

U. Sagayam, is a civil servant in the state of Tamil Nadu in southern India, noted for his anti-
corruption activities.

Sagayam, whose office door bears a sign reading "Reject bribes, hold your head high" (in Tamil,
Lanjam thavirtthu,nenjam nimirtthu; ), has repeatedly
antagonized influential politicians and their supporters in Tamil Nadu.[2] In 2011, he was
appointed to oversee state elections in the Madurai district; his strict enforcement of the laws
against vote-buying played a role in the change of state government. Beginning in 2012, his
investigation of complaints of illegal granite-mining in the Madurai area led to charges against a
number of politicians and businesses, including a mining company founded by a scion of one of
Madurai's most influential political families.

Sagayam's efforts to eliminate corruption have led to his being transferred over 20 times in his
two decades of public service. They have also won him a reputation for probity; in the words of a
DNA correspondent, "[T]he common man's collector has become the hero of the local folklore".[3]

Contents
[hide]

1 Early life and education

2 Career

3 Madurai

o 3.1 Granite quarrying

4 References

Early life and education[edit]

Sagayam is the youngest of five sons of a farmer from Perunchunai village, Pudukkottai, Tamil
Nadu. He attended a Tamil-medium panchayat elementary school[2] and then a Government
Higher secondary school at Ellaippatti.[citation needed] He eventually received master's degrees in social
work and in law.[4]

Career[edit]
Sagayam passed the civil service examination, but was not chosen as an officer in the Indian
Administrative Service (IAS). He then took the Tamil Nadu Public Service Commission exams;
this allowed him to join the IAS in 1991 as subdivisional magistrate of the city of Ootacamund,
a.k.a. Ooty. In Ooty, Sagayam became embroiled in a dispute with the district collector, whom he
accused of favouritism toward the operators of large tea estates. Sagayam was relieved of his
post and transferred to another.[2]

By 2000, Sagayam was additional district magistrate in Kanchipuram. There, he closed the Pepsi
bottling plant and forbade the sale of its output after dirt was found in several bottles. He also
took on the so-called "sand mafia", responsible for unauthorized mining of sand from the bed of
the Palar River, a practice that increases erosion and the incidence of flooding. Sagayam ordered
a halt to dredging, and declined to rescind his order despite threats of physical violence.[2][4][5]

In 2004, Sagayam, now working as deputy commissioner of civil supplies in Chennai,

discovered that subsidized gas cylinders intended for domestic use were being illegally used by
restaurants. He confiscated 5000 such cylinders.[2]

By 2009, Sagayam had been named district collector of the Namakkal district. In that year, he
posted details of his personal assetsa bank balance of Rs 7,172 and a house in Madurai, jointly
owned with his wife, worth Rs 9 lakh (Rs 900,000)on the district website. Although this
information