Another MGNREGS activist killed for exposing corruption
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COMMENTS 
People who seek to ensure proper implementation of social justice programmes such as the national employment guarantee scheme and the right to information are killed by the powerful lobbies they expose. And the government is doing nothing to protect them
Exposing fraud in the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) cost 35-year-old Niyamat Ansari his life. He is one of several people who have been murdered for exposing irregularities in the scheme, the country’s biggest and most important employment programme that guarantees 100 days of employment to any rural household that demands it.
Ansari was a close associate of Jean Dreze, the economist and activist who was among those who conceived the scheme when he was a member of the National Advisory Council (NAC).
Ansari headed an organisation that ensured MGNREGS workers received their payments through banks and post-offices. This meant that the ritual siphoning off of this money, a fairly widespread practice, could not take place. In 2009, he led an agitation that ensured the administration paid compensation to 78 workers of Kope village who had not been provided work. The MGNREGA has a provision for compensation if work is demanded and not given within a stipulated period.
In February 2011, Dreze and Ansari exposed embezzlement in the MGNREGS in Ranikala gram panchayat. In response to this report, an FIR was lodged against the main culprit, Kailash Sahu, former block development officer (BDO) of Manika. More than Rs 2 lakh was recovered from him and his accomplice, the panchayat sevak of Ranikala. The BDO and panchayat sevak were caught because their names were on the fudged records, but Shankar Dubey, a notoriously corrupt local contractor is still free.
Members of various people’s organisations and senior social and human rights activists have demanded a judicial probe into the case and have set up a fact-finding committee.
Senior social activist and friend of Niyamat Ansari, Gurjit Singh said: “The murder of Niyamat once again reminds us that social activists are not safe in the state.”
Jean Dreze pointed to the earlier murder of another MGNREGS activist in the state, Lalit Mehta, in May 2008. “There have been a series of such incidents going back to Lalit Mehta who was murdered a few years ago in the same area… The latest incident is just the logical conclusion of the complete impunity that has been given to criminal elements in Jharkhand.”
NAC member Harsh Mandar said incidents like these showed “what a high-risk business it has become for an individual to say, ‘I will not accept corruption’.”
MGNREGS and RTI activist Nikhil Dey said: “Citizens have got access to information which is damaging for vested interests. There are powerful vested interests that are becoming more and more powerful through a combination of violence, crime and money. Every RTI activist is a whistleblower because a citizen can access that information and then blow the whistle on corruption. The whistleblowers Act has to deal with that scenario.”
Anis Vanaik, a researcher at Jawaharlal Nehru University, has compiled a list of 40 cases of MGNREGS-related violence in 11 states. In January 2009, workers of Aira Kake Mau of Hardoi district, Uttar Pradesh, who were protesting in front of the sarpanch’s house demanding the payment of wages under the MGNREGA were mercilessly beaten up by goons of the sarpanch. Rajeswar Das, a CPI (ML) activist from Deoghar district in Jharkhand, who was active in exposing corruption in the MGNREGS, was attacked and murdered by goons; his wife was seriously injured in the attack. Similarly, Kamleswar Yadav, an activist from Jharkhand, and Narayan Hareka, naib-sarpanch from Orissa were murdered for fighting against corruption in the MGNREGS. Kailash Nayak from Ganjam district of Orissa has been missing since August 2008; he applied for work under the MGNREGS in July 2006 and then filed several RTI applications to find out why work was not given. He went missing during a series of hearings of his case in the State Information Commission, in 2008 (http://infochangeindia.org/legislations-actually-work-for-the-poor.html). Also see http://infochangeindia.org/Where-is-NREGS-heading.html.
Activists are seeking quick passage of a Bill to protect whistleblowers. Officially known as the Public Interest Disclosure and Protection to Persons Making the Disclosure Bill, 2010, it is intended to protect whistleblowers, facilitate the disclosure of information, and uncover corruption and deceptive practices that exist in government organisations. The Bill was passed by the Union cabinet on August 9, 2010. It now has to be passed by Parliament.
Source: The Indian Express, March 4, 2011
The Hindu, March 3, 2011
http://www.twocircles.net, March 3, 2011
IBNLive, March 3, 2011