In recent years the right to information campaign has made big strides in several countries. However a special feature of this campaign in India which has captured international attention is the inspiring start it got at the grass roots level. It is 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 elites. This struggle was spearheaded by an organisation of workers and peasants called the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathna (MKSS).
The story of MKSS in the villages of Rajasthan is an inspiring example of how much a small number of dedicated activists can achieve and that too without any funding from institutional sources.
An important part of the grassroots struggle of the MKSS consisted of a series of dharnas or sit-ins to assert the demand for 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 of the famous of these dharnas took place in the city of Beawar in Central Rajasthan in May 1996.
It became known for the very enthusiastic participation of people and became a living testimony of the extent to which ordinary people including the poorest had absorbed the importance of RTI. Another important aspect of this dharrna was that some of the most senior journalists of India had participated in this dharna and expressed their solidarity with the movement.
These senior journalists included such famous names as Ajit Bhattacharjee, former Editor of The Indian Express and at that time the Editor of Grassroots and Vidura and Director of the Press Institute of India, Nikhil Chakravartty, the Editor of Mainstream and Prabhash Joshi, the Editor of Jansatta. A local newspaper Nirantar and its editor Kumawat made a very important contribution to this dharna.
This writer was also present there and remembers the great enthusiasm of the people, despite the very hot weather and water scarcity.
Now this month in October 2024 many activists and people who participated in this dharna as well as the younger generation are coming together for a festival of democracy in Beawar and this is a good time to recall some aspects of those inspiring days.
All through this period MKSS had continued to function from one or two huts in Devdungri village (located in Bhim block of Rajsamand district). Its members are spread over many villages of Rajsamand, Ajmer, Pali and Bhilwara districts and neighbouring areas.
Right from the earliest days when a core group of Aruna Roy, Nikhil Dey and Shankar came to live in Devdungri village, fair payment of legal wages at relief work sites has been an important concern of MKSS. Frequent complaints of violation of minimum wage laws disturbed these social activists and they repeatedly brought these violations to the notice of higher authorities. However, even when the Relief Commissioner met some of the victims of this injustice and promised justice to them, the proper wage was not paid.
More and more workers started getting organised to obtain the legal wages. Despite their poverty and pressing needs some of them even refused to accept anything other than the legal wage. There were prolonged hunger strikes and forcible evictions by policemen.
In the middle of all these struggles 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 had started utilizing their local contacts to obtain official records about various development works.
After obtaining government records MKSS activists went to villages to see to what extent real work had been done and what materials had been used. They spoke to villagers about whether they had actually got employment and what wages they had received. A comparison of these statements of villagers and on-the-site inspection with the government records clearly revealed whether the development funds had been spent properly.
In most places where investigations were done evidence of large-scale corruption began to emerge clearly. This evidence was used with devastating impact at public hearings in which ordinary villagers acquired the strength to confront and question powerful vested interests.
- The first such 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 this area then. Similarly payments had been made for materials never purchased. Needless to say, the anicuts constructed in this way were washed away by rains.
- The second public hearing held in Bhim block exposed how payment amounting to over 3 million rupees had been made to a fraudulent 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 hearings at Vijaypura (Rajsamand district) exposed the sale of high value land at a dirt-cheap price to outsiders without even consulting villagers.
As these public hearings went from success to success, resistance grew to the availability of any official records and no official records 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 and requests to get official records relating to development and relief works.
Any success in exposing corruption will in fact make it increasingly difficult to get such records in future. It was important therefore to initiate struggle for getting the legal right to obtain information. Then it will not be necessary to depend on the whim and fancy of concerned officials to get information. Instead it will be possible to go to the concerned official or department and ask for information as a right. The struggles of MKSS in exposing misuse of development and relief funds were pushing it logically towards a wider struggle for people’s right to obtain information.
Thus this wider struggle had strong roots in local people’s effort to get justice. It is in the course of these efforts that peasants and workers got convinced about the need for people’s right to information. It is not the educated elites who told peasants and workers about the importance of this right. Rather they discovered this significance themselves in the course of their own struggles and it is the educated elites who later grasped the importance of this issue from them.
When the late Nikhil Chakravarty, one of India’s most distinguished journalists went to a dharna organised by Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathna (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.”
Indeed many people who saw the initial struggles of MKSS in Kot Kirana and Vijaypura, Jawaja and Bhim regarded these as village-level or panchayat-level issues. But activists of MKSS had the foresight to pick up crucial issues emerging from these struggles and link these to a wider process of social change.
The first signs that something bigger was emerging had started becoming evident in the six week long dharna at Beawar in April-May 1996. To the surprise of many observers this dharna for right to infirmation received very enthusiastic support from a wide cross-section of people in this town. Some workers (including a child worker who visited the dharna very day) donated a part of their daily earnings while vegetable vendors were generous in donating potatoes and tomatoes.
This success was followed by a truly courageous effort of a small number of social activists with very meagre resources to travel all over Rajasthan to hold a number of dharnas in support of this right to information.
The first signs that something bigger was emerging had started becoming evident in the six week long dharna at Beawar in April-May 1996
The MKSS provided the main strength to this 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.
This further strengthened the feeling that the demand for people’s right to information has a very wide relevance for different sections of society. These hectic dharnas succeeded in taking the message of the people’s right to information to almost all parts of Rajasthan.
This effort culminated in a bigger dharna in Jaipur where activists announced openly that it will end only if the right to information is legally recognised by the state government with respect to all development and relief work taken up by panchayats.
The dharna at Jaipur drew national attention. It was now becoming clear that the small grassroots efforts started by MKSS less then a decade back were already leading to state-level changes and were likely to have a national impact.
In fact soon after the MKSS demand for panchayat-level right to information in Rajsamand was accepted by the state government, there was a spurt of activity at the national level with many seminars, conferences and talk of right to information legislation in many states and even at the national level.
The advice of MKSS members was sought in enacting right to information legislation in Karnataka which was then widely regarded as one of the better legislations on this subject in the country. MKSS members also played an important role in the campaign for good legislation on right to information at the national level. Their expert opinion was later obtained by the Parliament’s Special Committee on right to information legislation. MKSS members helped to co-ordinate the activities of many groups working on this issue. They played an important role in organising the first ever National Convention on People’s Right to Information in Beawar this year.
The Rajasthan government also consulted MKSS as well as other social activists. While enacting this legislation, at a later stage it ignored some of the important recommendations. Nevertheless it was some consolation to know that Rajasthan at last had a state-level legislation on this subject. MKSS now tried to use this legislation to good effect to expose corruption and other irregularities.
As a result of this new legislation, the effectiveness of the jan sunwais increased further. The ultimate test of the struggle against corruption is whether it can recover the money back for proper use. The moral force of some jan sunwais organised by MKSS increased to such as extent that the person accused of corruption agreed on the spot to return the money. In Surajpura and Rawatmal villages, for example, the sarpanches agreed to return over rupees one lakh each.
At the same time some problems have continued to persist. In Harmara MKSS activists had to make over 60 efforts to get information while in Janavat very frustrating efforts were made by some officials for almost one year to try to avoid giving crucial information. However the patience and perseverance of MKSS activists eventually succeeded in breaking the resistance of these official.
The biggest exposure took place in the public hearing for Janawad panchayat (Rajsamand district) held in 2001. Here the careful scrutiny of a part of the development work constructed during the last six years 1994-2000 revealed a massive corruption of Rs. 45 lakhs. This exposure motivated the government to set up its own detailed inquiry headed by a senior official Shri Bannalal.
The Bannalal Committee after a more complete review of the development work in Janavad panchayat during 1994-95 to 1999-2000 revealed corruption and misappropriation of Rs. 67 lakhs out of the total spending of Rs. 123 lakhs.
Such a huge corruption and misappropriation was confirmed despite giving the benefit of doubt to officials/ sarpanch in some important contexts such as the quality of the material used, the size of the foundation etc. It became clear that the people of these villages particularly the weaker sections had been deprived of irrigation, drinking water, wage payments, health, education, housing and other basic needs because of this corruption.
The crops were drying up due to shortage of irrigation while the money meant for small- scale irrigation and water harvesting works was being swindled. Women had to walk upto 3 or 4 km to bring drinking water while the money meant for water tanks was being misappropriated and a public well was being used for the private benefit of one of the biggest landowners. The poorest people were being deprived of shelter while several members of one of the richest families were grabbling houses meant for ‘below poverty line’ families.
As many as 49 development works (out of the 141 examined by the committee) simply did not exist or existed only on paper (so that 100 per cent of the money shown in official records for these works had been misappropriated). What is very clear form this experience is that Jan Sunwais and Right to Information can be very useful in fighting corruption as well as in securing the close involvement of people in protecting their rights as symbolised by the slogan of ‘Hamara Paisa, Hamara Hisab’ (be accountable to us, it is our money). As a paper prepared by the MKSS stated:
“All over Rajasthan hundreds of thousands of small development works have been undertaken in the name of the poor, eg. roads, schools, wells, tanks and all kinds of construction activities. The main beneficiaries of these schemes, however, are not the poor but a mafia of contractors, bureaucrats and village leaders who are looting public funds for private gain. This is also the basis of a fraudulent nexus between development works and the electoral system, whereby local leaders are allowed to misuse public funds in return for delivering votes. The casualty is not just development but also democracy. During the jan sunwai, the people have an opportunity to openly question the use and misuse of development funds in the area, and to initiate action against any fraud that may be identified.”
Meanwhile the RTI idea had spread far and wide in the country and several demands were being made for good and effective law to be enacted soon. All these efforts fell in line after the UPA government with its commitment to RTI was elected to power in 2004 and finally a nationwide India’s RTI law, known as one of the better RTI laws at world level, finally became a reality at the national level in 2005.
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*Honorary convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now; was first (honorary) convener of the National Campaign for People’s Right to Information; has contributed several books, booklets and articles on this subject
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