As Beawar in Rajasthan gets ready to celebrate the Festival of Democracy, Bharat Dogra reaches back into the past to detail the small steps by poor villagers which evolved into a nationwide call for transparency in governance, leading to the enactment of the landmark RTI law in 2005
In recent years, the right to information campaign has made big strides in several countries. A special feature of the campaign in India which captured international attention is the inspiring start it got at the grassroots level. It was the simple peasants and workers of Rajasthan who first emphasised the importance of this right and took the message of its importance to the educated elite. The struggle was spearheaded by an organisation of workers and peasants called the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathna (MKSS). The story of MKSS is an example of how much a small group of dedicated activists can achieve, even without any funding from institutional sources.
An important part of the grassroots struggle of the MKSS was a series of dharnas or sit-ins to press for the Right to Information (RTI). These sometimes continued for several weeks and provided a democratic space where people from various walks of life (including the weakest sections) could come and voice their support for RTI. One famous dharna took place in the city of Beawar in Central Rajasthan in May 1996. It revealed the extent to which ordinary people, including the poorest, had absorbed the importance of RTI.
Another important aspect was that some of the most senior journalists of India, including Ajit Bhattacharjee, former editor of The Indian Express and at that time editor of Grassroots and Vidura and director of the Press Institute of India; Nikhil Chakravartty, editor of Mainstream, and Prabhash Joshi, editor of Jansatta, participated in the dharna and expressed solidarity with the movement. A local newspaper, Nirantar, and its editor Kumawat made an important contribution to the demonstration, too. This writer was among those present on the occasion, and remembers the enthusiasm of the people despite the very hot weather and water scarcity.
Now, in October 2024, many activists and people who participated in that dharna as well as the younger generation are coming together for a festival of democracy in Beawar. As such, it is a good time to recall some aspects of those inspiring days. All through this period, MKSS was functioning from a couple of huts in Devdungri Village (in Bhim Block, Rajsamand District). Right from the earliest days, when the core group of Aruna Roy, Nikhil Dey and Shankar came to live in Devdungri, fair wages at relief work sites was an important concern of MKSS. Frequent complaints of violation of minimum wage laws disturbed the social activists and they repeatedly brought these instances to the notice of higher authorities. However, even after the relief commissioner promised justice, the proper wages were not paid.
More and more workers started getting organised to obtain legal wages. Despite their poverty and pressing needs, some even refused to accept anything other than the mandated pay. There were prolonged hunger strikes and forcible evictions by policemen. It became increasingly clear to MKSS activists that some method of obtaining government records was necessary to expose corruption in relief works and elsewhere. Much before any legislation was enacted or government orders were passed, they started utilising their local contacts to obtain official records about various development works.
After obtaining government records, the activists went to villages to see to what extent real work had been done and what materials had been used. They asked villagers whether they had actually got employment and what they had been paid. A comparison of this information with government records revealed whether the development funds had been spent properly. In most places, evidence of large-scale corruption began to emerge. This evidence was used with devastating effect at public hearings and ordinary villagers acquired the strength to confront and question powerful vested interests.
- The first public hearing at Kot Kirana village (Pali District) in December 1994 exposed how people shown to be employed in the construction of anicuts were not even living in the area then. Similarly, payments had been made for materials never purchased. Unsurprisingly, the anicuts were washed away by rains.
- The second public hearing held in Bhim Block exposed how payment of over Rs 3 million had been made to a company which existed only in the form of a bank account in the name of the wife of a block-level employee!
- The third public hearing at Vijaypura (Rajsamand District) exposed the sale of high value land at dirt-cheap rates to outsiders without even consulting villagers.
As these public hearings exposed scam after scam, resistance grew to making official records available, and no documents could be obtained for the next public hearing at Jawaja (Ajmer District). It was by now also becoming increasingly clear to the MKSS that it is not always possible to use local contacts to get paperwork relating to development and relief works. And exposing of corruption would only make it more difficult to get such records in future. It was important therefore to initiate a struggle for make obtaining information a legal right. Thus, from a localised community’s efforts to get justice, a wider struggle was born. Peasants and workers, in the course of the struggle, became convinced about the people’s right to information, and the educated elite grasped the importance of this issue only later.
When the late journalist Nikhil Chakravarty attended a dharna organised by the MKSS for right to information, he said, “This appears to many to be a small struggle. However, I remember that during the Freedom Struggle, many such struggles appeared as small efforts initially but gradually they gathered the strength to bring very big and significant changes.” The first signs that something bigger was emerging came at the six-week-long dharna for right to information at Beawar in April-May 1996. A wide cross-section of people in the town participated enthusiastically in the demonstration. Some workers (including a child worker who visited the dharna very day) donated a part of their daily earnings, while vegetable vendors contributed potatoes and tomatoes.
The success was followed by a truly courageous effort of a small group of social activists with very meagre resources who travelled all over Rajasthan and held dharnas in support of the right to information. The MKSS provided the main strength to the effort while activists from several other organisations also made important contributions. People from many different walks of life and diverse movements came to these dharnas to offer support. Meanwhile, the RTI idea had spread far and wide in India and several demands were being made for an effective law in this regard. All these efforts fell in place when the UPA Government came to power in 2004. Finally, an RTI law, considered among the best of its kind globally, became a reality at the national level in 2005.
(The writer is a senior freelance journalist based in Delhi. He is honorary convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now and the first honorary convener of the National Campaign for People’s Right to Information.)
from Webdoux