Attacking the right to ask

The police, with unseemly haste, buried the unidentified body, carrying it back 25 kilometres to the scene of the crime, after a hurriedly conducted post-mortem. But the murder did not stop the research. Twelve days later, the social audit established that a large proportion of the Rs 73 crore spent in the district had been siphoned off by contractors, officials and the well-entrenched development mafia. The people of Palamou knew that their entitlements were being pocketed by the corrupt. But they have been helpless victims.

It is not just Lalit Mehta. There are reports of threats to activists seeking information from different parts of the country. In Rajasthan, Social Audit teams have faced planned attacks in the districts of Banswara and Jhalawar, in the last six months. According to K.N.Tripathi, member of the State Employment Guarantee Council of Jharkhand, Somay Gagarai, the District Convenor of the Congress, for NREGA West Simbhum was killed about two months ago, for trying to access facts on NREGA expenditure in his Block, through an RTI application. Twenty-six days after Lalit’s murder, Kameshwar Yadav, a CPI Liberation NREGA activist was killed in Giridih District, Jharkhand for similar reasons. In Orissa’s Koraput District, Narayan Hareka, Naib Sarpanch and member of the Orissa Adibasi Manch, was run down by a tractor on his way home, after he had spent a day trying to get NREGA information from the Block Office.

... contd.