Aruna Roy: Unedited material collected for Effective People by Prof TV Rao

Case Study: Aruna Roy

Profile brief

Aruna Roy (born 26 May 1946) is an Indian political and social activist who founded and heads the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathana (“Workers and Peasants Strength Union”). Aruna Roy is best known as a prominent leader of the Right to Information movement, which led to the enactment of the Right to Information Act in 2005. She has also remained a member of the National Advisory Council.In 2000, Aruna Roy received the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership. In 2010 she received the prestigious Lal Bahadur Shastri National Award for Excellence in Public Administration, Academia and Management. Aruna Roy was born in Chennai in a Tamilian family to Elupai Doraiswami Jayaram and Hema. She is the eldest of four children and has two sisters and a brother.

Childhood and Earlylife and Education

Hema and Jayaram had four children, three girls and one boy. Aruna, the eldest, was born on May 26, 1946, in her grandparents' home in Chennai. For much of her childhood, however, the family lived in New Delhi. Here she and her siblings were raised to be free thinkers.

Aruna was only three and a half years old when she entered her first school, a Catholic convent in Madras, while vacationing with her grandparents. Returning to New Delhi, she spent the next five years as one of many Indian children attending the conservative Convent of Jesus and Mary, run by French and English nuns. Aruna's father then decided she needed to learn about her own culture. He sent her to Kalakshetra, a famous art school in Adayar, Madra. Aruna remained there for two years, learning art and classical dance (Bharata Natyam) and Indian Carnatic classical music. Kalakshetra was affiliated with the Theosophical Society of India, some of whose figures, along with the philosopher J. Krishnamurti, had greatly influenced E. D. Jayaram.

After Kalakshetra, Jayaram placed his daughter in a school called Aurobindhu Ashram in Pondicherry, which boasted a flexible structure. She was unhappy there and, after a year, was transferred to Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan in New Delhi. Although the language of instruction was English, great emphasis was placed on Indian culture. It was there that Aruna completed her precollegiate education.

The Jayaram family spoke Tamil, English, and Hindi at home. Upon her father's urging, Aruna learned French at the convent school in Delhi and at the Alliance Française. When they were young, the children had books read to them by their parents and listened to classical music from the West and from north and south India. That was Jayaram's influence, while Hema exposed them to veena music. It was important to them that their children take up some form of classical music. Aruna learned Carnatic, or South Indian, classical singing.

Both Jayaram and Hema made sure their children did not grow up harboring prejudices against any form of religious expression or art. They encouraged them to have an open mind and to appreciate the various ways different cultures express themselves. Jayaram was an atheist but Hema herself was a believer, although not a very devout one.The family celebrated Christmas as well as the birth of the Buddha and various Hindu festivals.

Mahatma Gandhi wielded a tremendous influence on the family's life. . "I have lived with Gandhi all my life,"  Aruna had said in one of her inteviews.

Aruna was a voracious reader who, as a child, preferred to read books rather than play with friends. She remembers that she read whatever she could lay her hands on. Although most of her family's monthly income went to education and household expenses and very little to clothes, there were always books and other reading materials at home, some of them passed down through the family.

She later majored in English from Indraprastra College in New Delhi. It was an old-fashioned school, not much different from what it had been in her mother's time. The extracurricular activities did not go beyond the usual fields such as literature, social welfare, and drama-not very exciting prospects for a girl of Aruna's vast and varied interests. But she reveled in the school's unlimited number and variety of books. She read history and philosophy and everything from Sappho to Shakespeare to Tolstoy.

After college in 1965, Aruna went straight to the University of Delhi for two years of post-graduate work.

Marriage and Career

One of her classmates there was Sanjit "Bunker" Roy whom she would later marry. Bunker Roy was captain of the university tennis team and India's number one squash player. Bunker was one of the Brahmo Bengalis, a group founded by Raja Ram Mohan Roy in the 1830's after his sister was killed in sati. The Brahmo Bengalis were among the first to speak out against the caste system and to advocate education for women. Among his relatives, Bunker counted Roman Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Sikhs, Hindus, Parsis, and Muslims as well as freedom fighters.

After earning her master's degree, Aruna refused to settle for the kind of life that awaited most other Indian women of her circumstances: homemaking. She was determined to be different. In an article she wrote in 1996, she said, "As a woman, I wanted to work and not get married and pass into the limbo of passivity."

Teaching and journalism were two of them, but neither appealed to Aruna. Since she preferred a career that was not in the private sector, the civil service was the only option left to her. So, while teaching nineteenth-century literature for a year at Indraprastra College, she reviewed for and took the Indian Administrative Services (IAS), or civil service, examinations in 1967 at the age of 21.

Of the one hundred people from all over India who qualified for the IAS that year, Aruna was one of only ten women. Aruna and the ninety-nine other new IAS members were sent to the Academy of Administration in northern India for a year's training. They were trained in basic administration, economics, law, and languages.

After the academy, the trainees were sent to districts as IAS officers, there to apprentice with collectors, as the heads of the district administration are called. An IAS officer wields substantial power and influence in the district to which he or she is assigned, and is expected to help solve the area's social problems. Since she spoke Tamil, Aruna was sent to Tamil Nadu in the south of India. Next, She was sent to North Arcot, which became her first experience of living in a rural community. Convinced at first that she was meeting the truly poor and hearing their voices during her visits to the villages, she soon realized how little she actually knew about rural realities. There were more men than women in the IAS at that time. Aruna had to establish her credibility again and again, by making sound decisions and, sometimes, by such "masculine" activities as driving a jeep.

In 1970, Aruna and Bunker were married in a simple ceremony to which she wore a plain cotton sari. Before the wedding, the couple had agreed on conditions that would govern their married life. They would have no children to tie them down; they would not be financially dependent on each other; they would not impose their beliefs on each other; and they would both be free to do whatever they wanted.

By the time of her marriage, Aruna had become a sub collector in Pondicherry. Upon returning to her post, the people took to calling her Madame Roy, because it was a former French territory, which she definitely preferred to "Sir." In Pondicherry, she was in charge of land records and court cases, especially those involving land repossession

Turning points

·         Aruna herself soon became part of the Delhi (Union Territory) administration, working first in the office of the deputy commissioner as a subdivisional magistrate; next in the office of the chief secretary as deputy secretary for finance; and then, in 1973, in the office of the lieutenant governor as secretary. By this time, she was becoming deeply disillusioned. She had entered the IAS feeling that "the government will provide the framework for working effectively for social justice within a strictly legal framework." What she saw instead was senior civil servants currying favor with powerful politicians in order to advance in their careers; the feudal trappings of a civil service that posed obstacles to any meaningful change; and the aloofness of the bureaucracy to the poor, who lacked access to officials. She saw, for example, how the government evicted a powerless old woman from her land and paid her a pittance for it, and how a man who made palm wine could not get a license to sell it because eleven families in Delhi controlled the entire market.

Aruna realized that the problem resided partly with the people, because they had not learned how to speak up for themselves. But it also resided in the system, because the officials had been trained to think of themselves as above the people. She blamed the system for its wrong orientation and wrong priorities.

There were, however, two people whom she admired as model civil servants. One was S. R. Shankeran, a bachelor who was secretary of Rural Development to the Government of India. More than his professionalism, it was his courage to speak out and the simplicity of his lifestyle that Aruna admired. He lived on a modest budget and donated the rest of his salary to children who needed help with their schooling. The other was M. K. Bezboruah, who entered the civil service at the same time Aruna did and rose to Secretary to the Tariff Commission, Government of India. A conservative man, he enforces the law without fear or favor and has been fighting corruption within the system.

·         Aruna took her time in deciding the next step in her career. She could remain in the IAS and continue to "work from within." She could do research in the social sciences. Or she could join her husband Bunker, who in 1972 had established the Social Work and Research Center (SWRC) in Rajasthan. She sought the advice of friends and family. Her mother-in-law, herself a working woman, advised her not to leave the IAS with all its privileges. Taking a six-month leave to join Bunker at the SWRC in 1974, Aruna saw firsthand what he was doing. She felt envious of the relationship of equality he enjoyed with the people, in contrast to the deferential treatment she received as a civil servant. She came to a decision. She would leave the IAS as soon as her brother finished college. Thus, later in 1974, she resigned from the civil service and joined her husband in Tilonia, Rajasthan. (Hoping she would reconsider, the IAS did not act on her resignation until the following year). Meanwhile, not only did she have to learn to speak Rajasthani, she also had to learn the politics of development and gender. Unaccustomed to community living, she found her first year very difficult and confusing. This was not because of the poor living conditions but because she had to adjust and even change her mental perception. "I had to change from talking to listening. And I had to learn that the IAS training I had been given, in being an instant expert, had to be discarded if I wanted to understand the complexities of socio-economic change," she said.

·         Aruna and SWRC

At that time, the SWRC was funded by several agencies both in and outside India, among them the Tata Trust, Oxfam, and Christian Aid, along with certain British agencies and the Indian and Rajasthani governments. The SWRC was among the first organizations in India to focus on professionalizing rural development work and to introduce community-based, participatory research and technology. It broke new ground in other areas as well. It introduced the concept of the barefoot health worker in Rajasthan and experimented with a primary education program with day and night shifts to enable all the children to go to school. The SWRC also sponsored in 1975 the very first "development bazaar" in India, bringing together traditional artisans to convey development messages.

Aruna lived with the seventeen other SWRC employees, many of them from the middle class. Aruna had to deal with hostility from the prosperous sectors of the village, but this helped her to gain a better understanding of the caste system prevailing in Rajasthan. She had loved crafts since her days in Kalakshetra and was familiar with looms and woodcraft, so she particularly enjoyed the time she spent with the lower-caste Dalit community, who were weavers and leather workers. But she also wanted to work with the scheduled castes and the artisans.

During her nine years with the SWRC, Aruna says, "I really was educated-in processes, in methods, in human relationships, in understanding women." Female empowerment was also on the SWRC's agenda. Aruna learned that, despite appearances, Rajasthani women had power of their own and were not afraid to use it. . From the women of Rajasthan she imbibed courage, a sense of humor, and equality. "They never thought they were less than me in any way whatsoever," she says. They were "very intelligent, astute, extremely compassionate human beings" who gave her love and affection she will never forget. In particular, she singles out an old woman named Dhani Bhua, who fetched water for the SWRC and was like a grandmother to her, protecting her from the nasty men in the village and teaching her ways of winning people over.

Learnings

Aruna sometimes refers to Tilonia as "my alma mater" because being there was "like going to the university all over again. It gave me space and time to learn." She learned, for example, that "the strength of collective decision making and political responsibility is not only a question of recognizing other people's ability. It is also recognizing one's own limitations." She learned that "you can never evaluate anything standing from outside; you have to evaluate yourself first." And she also learned that "the internal and external ethics of an organization must be the same; you cannot talk about minimum wages for poor people and not pay minimum wages to your own workers." A more basic lesson of Tilonia was this: "You have to relate to people as human beings."

It was during this period that Aruna also began to realize how effective information can be in mobilizing people. Her awakening was inspired by a Dalit (lower caste) woman named Naurti. In 1981 Naurti, a worker from the nearby village of Harmara, gathered five hundred men and women and convinced them not to accept their government wages until everyone was receiving the legal minimum wage and all back payments were made. A revenue officer contacted Aruna, asking her to convince the workers to end their protest and to accept their wages. Aruna did as she was asked but made friends with Naurti in the process. The government then instigated departmental action against the responsible sarpanch (the elected head of the village). The SWRC filed a writ in the Supreme Court of India on behalf of Naurti's cause. In the matter of "Sanjit Roy vs. the Government of Rajasthan," the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the workers and all back payments of wages were made in full. The case represented one of the first writs filed before the Indian Supreme Court by Rajasthan concerning the nonpayment of minimum wages.

In the feminist-activist Naurti, who saw "with remarkable clarity that every cause was both personal and collective," Aruna found not only a teacher but also a friend and fellow traveler. "Naurti," she later wrote, "has taken me on a journey where we have had to explore social realities in a manner in which I was forced to learn newer methods of talking, listening and responding to poor people's needs. But more basic was learning to face my own fears of public inquiry, of public criticism, of ridicule, of my timidity about street politics and the dynamics of caste and mohalla neighbourhood politics."

Later life

For the next four years, Aruna worked with women's groups in Madhya Pradesh, Jaipur, and all over Rajasthan. She also traveled to Nepal, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. In between these trips, she returned to Bunker and Tilonia, helping out as needed. One of the significant events during this time was the mela (fair) held in Rajasthan in 1985, which she helped organize, along with the SWRC, the Institute of Developmental Studies in Jaipur, the Seva Mandir from Udaipur, and the State Government's Women's Development Program. The mela was designed to be India's counterpart to the international women's conference held that year in Nairobi, Kenya, to which Aruna had been invited. One thousand women came from all over India to participate in the four-day event, nine hundred of them from the rural areas and one hundred from urban districts.

Regardless of language and caste barriers, they formed connections with one another and bonded. The event ended with a rally to protest the government's failure to act on a report of rape of a minor. It was a sign that changes were about to come.

Aruna and MKSS and RTI

The MKSS was an unconventional organization. The activists did not wish to be registered as a society or even as a trade union, since their group had no hierarchy and no leader. Even today no written formal constitution or document exists on the MKSS. Its initiators are careful not to fall into the trap of speaking development jargon, lest they be alienated from the people they wish to serve. The MKSS does not accept donations from any institutional body, Indian or foreign, although it does accept contributions from sympathetic individuals. There are no formal membership fees. Membership is determined by people's active participation in MKSS activities. Aruna maintains that while the organization realizes there are people who would willingly pay for membership, such a system would not be advisable because "they might be all the wrong people who may even work against the ethics of the organization." If there is a leadership structure at the MKSS, it is embodied by a central committee of twenty-five people who attend every meeting and make the major decisions. The task of presiding at meetings is rotated among them and, says Aruna, "all the literate ones take turns keeping the minutes."

From the start, the members decided that they would tackle one or two specific issues every year. Their first major issue was the minimum wage. There is a common definition of "minimum wage" throughout India but, says Aruna, there are different rates for different kinds of labor, skilled and unskilled. A federal law on the minimum wage exists in the country, but every state government can prescribe its own rates. For years now, the MKSS has been fighting for a federal law that would correlate wages with the consumer price index.

In one of MKSS's earliest cases, the Rajasthan state administration promised to look into the wage issue, effectively ending an MKSS-led hunger strike. Aruna estimates that the government spent over 50,000 rupees to dispel a strike that had been called over the issue of 1,600 rupees in wages. Eventually, the Government of India's Department of Rural Government stepped in and forced the Rajasthan state government to pay the full minimum wage, or else it would cancel any further grants to the company in question. As word of these events spread, many workers in other areas began to receive full minimum wages as well.

In 1991, the MKSS opened a grocery store in Bhim as a means of providing the people quality goods at affordable prices. The activists raised capital through loans from villagers, which were paid back in two years. Store prices were kept low because the store sought only a 1 percent net profit and employees worked only for the minimum wage. Since the clientele was not literate, salesmen at first announced the prices of their wares on a microphone to attract buyers. Fearful of losing their customers, the town's other merchants set up a stereo system in front of the store to drown out the hawkers' voices. The plan backfired when more people were drawn to the noise and thus discovered the MKSS store. That first shop was quickly followed by four more, which forced competing merchants to lower their prices and, consequently, eased the local cost of living.

Both the minimum-wage protests and the fair-price shops gained the MKSS a strong following not only among peasants and landless workers but also from the rural middle class.

In the winter of 1994, the work of the MKSS entered a new and groundbreaking phase when the activists initiated the concept of jan sunwais, or public hearings, as a means of fighting corruption and asserting the people's right to information. For centuries, state authorities had been victimizing the people through acts of graft, extortion, nepotism, and arbitrariness. The people had suffered all of this in silence for the most part, not having tools to fight the system, even as political leaders, reform-minded officials, and social activists emerged now and then to try to fight on their behalf. Lacking a systemic approach to fight corruption, previous campaigns against corruption in the area had fizzled out as suddenly as they had appeared.

RTI
Initially there was no provision for RTI in the Indian Constitution. In 1994, however, MKSS raised the issue of the right-to-information for the first time at the grass-roots level.

The issue was ignited by an old man's request for assistance in collecting wages that he claimed were long past due. In response, MKSS activists went to the block development office to look up his records. There they unearthed disturbing evidence of corruption in the funding and execution of relief-related public works projects. They meticulously recorded the pertinent information. These discoveries led MKSS to initiate a series of jan sunwais, or public hearings, so that this information could be publicly shared, allowing villagers to voice out whatever evidence they had concerning corruption and giving public officials a chance to defend themselves. The first jan sunwai was held on December 2,1994, in the village of Kot Kirana in the Pali district of Rajasthan. At that time, elections for the panchayat, the elective local body for a village or a small group of villages, were scheduled for the following month.
Through the jan sunwais, the MKSS made four demands of the state government: (1) transparency, i.e., the public display of all documents pertaining to government-funded development projects; (2) accountability, i.e., fixing responsibility upon those who have defrauded the people; (3) redress, i.e., the return of defrauded funds so that the money can be used for what was intended; and (4) people's audit, i.e., the regular perusal by citizen-appointed auditors of government accounts for anomalies and graft.

In April 1995, Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, the chief minister of Rajasthan, made a surprise announcement in the state legislative assembly. For a fee, he said, any citizen in his state would be able to obtain photocopies of official documents pertaining to local development projects. Aruna and her fellow activists pressured the government for a full year to implement this promise. By April 1996, however, there was still no action and officials in Rajasthan, unwilling to do anything that would put their careers at risk, continued to refuse requests for records in defiance of the chief minister's announcement.

In response, the MKSS decided to launch a dharna, or sit-in agitation. For this event they chose Beawar, a small town strategically located in the center of Rajasthan. Following MKSS's example, other states have held their own successful jan sunwais.

Through the years, the MKSS has also made its voice heard on human rights and women's issues. As Aruna puts it, "We cannot dissociate ourselves from them because you can't say that you fight for minimum wages but not fight violence against women. In any case the MKSS membership is 60 percent women." The MKSS has spoken up against cases of rape, which Aruna believes is an assertion of men's power over women rather than simply an instance of perverted sexual gratification. The MKSS encourages victims of rape to speak out. In one large rally against rape in Rajasthan in which MKSS participated, for example, nineteen poor women declared before the assembled crowds that they had been forcibly raped.

Achievements

Of all her achievements in the last twenty-five years, Aruna Roy is proudest of the fact that her work continues to thrive upon honesty and transparency, without compromising her values. Not one to rest on her laurels, she continues to work for the promulgation of the people's right to information from the grass roots. "Our right to information leads us to the right to govern ourselves. It's the beginning of a hard struggle," she once said. "Manzil abhi bahut door hain. (The goal is quite far off.) I assure you we shall succeed."

She recently told an Indian journalist, "Many collectives of the poor people struggling for change gave us the ideas and commitment to bring about meaningful change. I owe my ideas to the clarity of others, my courage to being with people who confront injustice with fearlessness and equanimity, my hope to the persistence and resilience of men and women struggling to get themselves heard, my generosity to the poor family that shared its last roti (bread) with me, and my sense of well-being to the many who have supported me in difficult moments of my life."

  

A civil servant in New Delhi before turning to community work, Roy has been instrumental in persuading the legislatures of eight states, including Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Goa, and Tamil Nadu, to implement Right to Information Acts. Modeled in part on the Freedom of Information Act in the U.S., the laws give citizens the right to demand access to a wide range of government information, from municipal budgets to records of state purchases of everything from weapons to grain. That information has opened the way for villagers to improve their lot by shining a light on the squandering and diversion of subsidies and other resources intended to help them.