Democracy and Right to Information: Aruna Roy

Aruna Roy: Winner of the Ramon Magsaysay award for the year 2000

"When I first joined a street protest rally, like a typical middle class person I was too self conscious about what other people would think of me" says Aruna Roy. "But believe me, nobody looks at you when you are a part of a crowd of over 1000 people" she adds on how that thought transformed her.

Winner of the Year 2000 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Service, considered for the Asian Nobel Prize, Aruna Roy spoke on "Democracy and Right to Information" in Pune. An IAS officer by training, she resigned as a junior officer in mid 70s, realising that elite officials had little impact upon the lives of poor villagers. She then joined Social Work and Research Centre (SWRC) in 1974 set up by her classmate Bunkar Roy and began assisting in the village-level development projects. She worked at the SWRC in Tilonia in Rajasthan till 1983.

Her experience there led to the realisation that poor people must not only be the agents of their own improvement, but, they must also act politically to achieve it. She then moved to Devdoondri in 1990 and along with her fellow activists set up the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathana (MKSS). Insisting that local workers be paid the legal minimum wage, they began helping villagers to assert themselves. They also forced a land-grabbing feudal lord to return land to the entitled poor and organised open-air hearings of official records of state development projects. Shocking revelations followed: toilets, schoolhouses, health clinics, wells, irrigation canals and roads projects recorded as paid for but never improved or constructed. The famine and drought relief never reached the right people. Such revelations led embarrassed officials to apologise and even return the stolen funds. Information on bills, vouchers, employment rolls was the key to every success.

When the officials resisted opening their books for scrutiny, Aruna and MKSS launched a series of rallies for Right-to-information. Soon, with support from the press, prominent intellectuals and political reformers the movement took off on a national scale. The Right-to-information laws have now been passed in Rajasthan and three other states and a comprehensive national law is now pending before the Government of India.

Aruna feels that politicians are neither pro-people nor anti-people and ''Political power is different behind the scenes in which the politicians and bureaucracy are hand in glove. The biggest crisis we face today is a democratic framework with dwindling participation of people and a system of governance cloaked in secrecy and devoid of accountability to the people" and adds on democracy today "through democratic institutions they can decide for themselves and therefore control their lives." And finally she leaves us with a point to ponder - "The poorest and the most disadvantaged people have shown us through their struggles that there is much that is possible if we make governance our common concern. What about the rest of us?"

Aruna Roy can be contacted at:
Email: mkssrajasthan@yahoo.com

Text & Photographs: Harikrishna