Attacking the right to ask

The NREGA has provided an entitlement for the first time. The RTI has given a tool to uncover corrupt practices. The Social Audit is a mandatory process, under the NREGA Act, giving the people a chance to establish the truth and push for change. For the first time a corrupt mafia is threatened by a legally mandated process, which looks at details and places irrefutable documentary proof in the public domain. The corrupt nexus is reacting with pre-meditated, calculated violence.

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.

On June 10, 3,000 people marched through Ranchi asking for justice and truth. They wanted the CBI to probe both the murder and the NREGA corruption in Palamou. They demanded that accountability be fixed and the guilty be booked.

The Indian Express on June 13 carried a story on the reports of the Collector and the SP (District Palamau) on the murder of Mehta and the social audit going on in the district. Apart from a range of other alleagtions, their reports accuse Jean Dreze and others of attempting to malign the state government and falsifying statements. This objectionable report is yet another reason why a CBI inquiry should be instituted immediately. Jean Dreze is a member of the NREG Council and is mandated to help audit the scheme by the law of the land. What he did was legitimate and legal. It is absurd that he is being accused by responsible government officers in this fashion.

Social audit and RTI are legal provisions created to encourage people participation, with an obligation on the state to enable such participation. If the state becomes a mute spectator to attacks on activists using these provisions it is no less than leading lambs to the slaughter. The State must act decisively to make sure that all these efforts result in the strongest action against corruption and violence. The rest of us must ensure that they do so now.

The writers are NREGA-RTI activists and founding members of the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan. Aruna Roy was in the IAS between 1968 and 1975

mkssrajasthan@gmail.com