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How the Mazdoor Kisaan Shakti Sangathan in Rajasthan demanded and got information on minimum wages and government infrastructure programmes, sparking off, in the process, a national movement for freedom of information
Advocacy on the right to information has been addressed most effectively in the rural areas of India, where peoples' movements have shown how information can empower common people in their daily lives. The Mazdoor Kisaan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS) has led the way. The MKSS, born in 1990, is a massive grassroots organisation that grew out of a local struggle for minimum wages and the realisation that change for the local people will only come through a political process. People in Rajasthan have always had difficulty getting paid the minimum wage. Politicians would always promise to secure the minimum wage in return for votes. However, these promises never translated into lasting change and, over time, campaigners realised that they had to obtain the relevant documentation, in particular the muster rolls. The right to information and the right to survive thus became united in peoples' minds. Initially, demands to see the muster rolls were met with refusal on the grounds that these were ‘secret documents'. These refusals led to a long agitation for the right to access information. By 1994, the MKSS hit upon a new, empowering strategy, based on the idea of a Jan Sunwai or ‘public hearing'. The MKSS brought people together and simply read out official documents that they had procured, either through surreptitious means or from officials who had no idea of their import. The documents related to construction records for school buildings, panchayat bhawans and patwari bhawans, dams, bridges and other local structures. A serious effort was made to ensure that the debate was transparent and accessible to the outside world. The government boycotted the first four hearings. To ensure openness and publicity, anyone could attend and each hearing was chaired by an independent outsider. Local officials and public representatives were invited, including those likely to be criticised. Despite the expense, the proceedings were videotaped. This deterred speakers from misrepresenting information and put them on oath as they knew what they said could be referred to later. When the records were read out it was sometimes immediately obvious that they contained false information. Examples were items like bills for the transport of materials over 6 km when the real distance was only 1 km, or people listed on the muster rolls who lived in other cities or were dead. The documentation also proved that corrupt officials and others were siphoning money and that minimum wages were being paid only on paper. The exploitation of the poor in two ways -- by denial of their minimum wages and through corruption by some of the village middle class -- was revealed at the Jan Sunwais in front of the entire village. People who would have been intimidated on their own now had a platform where they could speak out. This process also brought together the poor and sections of the middle class who had not previously supported them but now spoke out against corruption, which they realised hurt them too. With publicity by activists and support from the press, this local movement provoked a statewide, and indeed national, reaction from local functionaries. By this time, people had begun to understand the need for information in order to combat local corruption and exploitation and to take control of their lives. They also came to realise that a `social audit' of funding and disbursement at the village level would bring into question the whole functioning of democracy and accountability, requiring macro-level policy answers. There was a surge in demand for a legal entitlement to access documents in order to counteract bureaucratic and official resistance. After a long battle, the government announced a change in the Panchayat Act, so people could inspect local documents pertaining to development works. Early in 1999, when the government of Rajasthan constituted a committee to draft a right to information law or executive order, the MKSS travelled through the five divisional headquarters of Rajasthan, holding consultations, street-corner meetings, performing street plays and reaching out to large numbers of people. Apart from mobilising people and creating pressure, the street meetings also became platforms for democratic debate, eliciting local views on the draft orders passed by the government. The meetings would end with the sale of postcards addressed to the chief minister urging the government to pass legislation on the right to information immediately. The main strength of this approach was its power to illustrate to the poor and illiterate the relevance of the right to information to them personally. Although it was a struggle of the rural poor, it caught the attention and got the support of a cross-section of the country's media, lawyers and jurists, academics, and even bureaucrats and legislators, many of whom came together to form the National Campaign on the People's Right to Information (NCPRI). Contact: Aruna Roy
Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathana,
Village Devdungri
Post office- Barar Rajasmand
Rajasthan
Tel:01463- 88246; 0240-334854
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