The paper sketches the transformation of Piplantri, a small village in Rajsamand district of Rajasthan, having a population of 8,000 residents. The paper revolves around the protagonist Shyam Sunder Paliwal*, the Sarpanch of Piplantri. Piplantri witnessed twenty-five years of imprudent mining activities and extreme environmental indifference. When Paliwal was elected as the Sarpanch in 2005, he inherited a village that was deforested, semi -arid, polluted, environmentally devastated, economically fatigued and socially shattered. Paliwal espoused the cause of social, economic and environmental sustainability and turnaround the village by his exemplary leadership. He demonstrated inclusive, holistic, collaborative, and indigenous leadership with a firm belief that community problems can be best resolved with community engagement. Research questions/ Objectives The aim of this study is to explore the nuances of systems leadership for sustainable development with reference to the process of change and development undertaken in Piplantri by Shyam Sunder Paliwal, the village Sarpanch. Piplantri was an economically and environmentally debilitated village, with a host of accompanying social challenges. Paliwalintroduced a lot of systemic changes to solve the community problems. Thus, practicing the concept of systemic leadershipto initiate a massive systemic change. The paper revolves around the systems leader, Shyam Sunder Paliwal and his initiatives and raises a question whether the changes introduced by Paliwal would be scalable and sustainable or they would dilute over a period of time. Links to Theory: The study is based on the Systems Leadership for Sustainable Development model which "is a set of skills and capacities that any individual or organization can use to catalyse, enable, and support the process of systems -level change" (Drier, Nabarro and Nelson, 2019). It has three interrelated elements, viz. the individual, the community and the system. Systems leadership is the most appropriate approach towards solving community challenges that need collective action and where no single entity is in control. It involves a shared vision for systemic change and mobilizing alliances of diverse stakeholders around the shared vision by empowering extensive collaboration, innovation and action and enabling mutual accountability for progress to shift systems towards sustainability. Phenomenon Studied Paliwal championed the cause of social, economic and environmental sustainability and through his excellent leadership, he was able to turnaround the village. He exemplified inclusive, holistic, collaborative and indigenous leadership, and he was a great believer in community engagement as the best way to solve community problems. Paliwal's leadership style is outlined in the paper, and he is established as a systems leader for long-term sustainability. Context The paper is relevant from the angle of understanding how systems leadership moves beyond the traditional boundaries of leadership and helps resolves complex problems. It highlights the characteristics of systems leaders and provides a guiding framework for leadership capacity building. Besides, it also demonstrates the power local leaders such as Paliwal towards developing a cohesive approach to working together for resolving community problems. Since Paliwal was not anticipating the success of such a magnitude, he did not prepare a blueprint for making these changes scalable and sustainable and that made him a little worried on how to scale and sustain the the changes that he had initiated with great toil an ingenuity. Findings Organisations and policymaking bodies globally have started recognizing theforce of systems leadership as a concept for bringing about systemic sustainable changes foraddressing the complex, dynamic and multidimensional challenges that we face as a community or organisation. However, one needs to understand that as a practicing systems leader both in social or corporate setting,one has develop a broad multi -stakeholder coalitionfor effectively bringing about scalable changes.
