Golaghat district in Assam may be far away from a petrol pump in Uttar Pradesh but the distance between the two disappeared this evening on a stage at IIT Delhi. Akhil Gogoi acknowledged an unusual debt to Manjunath Shanmugam, the IIM graduate and Indian Oil manager who was killed in November 2005 by the petrol mafia for cracking down on adulteration.

Recipient of the second Manjunath Shanmugam Integrity Award today, 31-year-old Gogoi, a farmers activist in Assam, said he didn’t know who Shanmugam was and how he died until he was told by a friend to apply for the award. “It’s only then that I came to know,” he said, that he was a kindred spirit. “So I came to Delhi not so much to receive the award but to pay my respects to his spirit.”

Gogoi, as general secretary of the Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti of Assam (KMSSA), has been working for the cause of farmers in Assam since 2002, particularly the forest-dwellers in Golaghat bordering Nagaland. According to the citation of the Manjunath Shanmugam Trust — which instituted the award to honour and encourage efforts by individuals and institutions working to uphold values of truth and honesty in public life — Gogoi remained steadfast in his fight against corruption and malpractices inherent in various “development works” of the government.

His work highlighted irregularities in the Panchayat system, Rural Development schemes and the Public Distribution System (PDS).

“It started when over 5 lakh people were evicted from the forests by the department without any provision for rehabilitation. I was a university student then and with two more friends we mobilized the people and took out a rally. It had an effect. That is when my fight started. We keep mobilizing people and that’s the key to our efforts,” he said.

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