Campaign for right to information in Rajasthan exposes rot in system in villages

A village dharna against corruptionIt is one of the poorest parts of drought-prone Rajasthan. Where scanty rainfall makes farming possible for only four months in the year. Where men and women migrate to distant towns and villages in search of work as construction labourers.A region where just 26 per cent of men and 1.4 per cent of the women are literate. Where every household is burdened with an average debt of Rs 3,200. Where the cycle of life is bound up with the endless cycle of famine, drought and scarcity. A poor, backward and benighted region.A place where you'd expect villagers to demand better wages and more government aid. But what villagers of five blocks of the four districts - Rajsamand, Ajmer, Pali and Bhilwara - in central Rajasthan are asking for, instead, is something much less tangible: the right to information.Like all great ideas, this one's disarmingly simple. In an area where people are dependent for their survival on public-welfare programmes like the construction projects under the Jawahar Rozgar Yojna (JRY), it is vital that the funds allotted actually reach the intended beneficiaries. Local people are demanding the right to inspect records, construction-site muster rolls, bills and vouchers for development works carried out in their own villages - a demand that strikes at the very root of a system that protects and fosters corruption.In one stroke, what till yesterday was an elite urban concern has become a volatile issue linked to the right to livelihood. For, as things stand today, even a construction-site muster roll can be considered a government document covered under the archaic Official Secrets Act of 1923. As former Supreme Court judge and chairman of the Press Council of India Justice P.B. Sawant observes, "The barrier to information is the single leading cause for corruption in society. It facilitates clandestine deals, arbitrary decisions, manipulation, and encourages embezzlements."Nowhere is this more true than in village- and taluk-level administration. Where the first corrupt nexus is formed between the elected sarpanch, the lowest government functionary, the gram sevak, and the junior engineer. All grants for employment-generating construction projects are routed either through the Central or state bureaucracy to the gram panchayats. And at the village level, it is the sarpanch and the gram sevak who pass every bill and construction muster roll. The works are then given technical clearance at the block level by the junior engineer.The stories that follow are all from three districts of Rajasthan, yet they are typical of what happens in villages all over the country. At around Rs 8,000 crore a year, poverty-eradication schemes account for the largest expenditure in the Union budget after defence.Rajiv Gandhi had once estimated that only 17 paise out of every rupee earmarked for development actually reaches the people. People in the field believe it's less than 10 paise.That is why the Rajasthan campaign, led by the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS), is important. For, if thieves who had entrenched themselves in the system are finally being nailed, it is only due to the sustained campaign for information. After forcing the administration into releasing details of specific development projects, the MKSS conducts jan sunwayis (public hearings). Bills, vouchers, entire muster rolls are read out at these hearings; villagers scream in protest as they hear their names listed in construction sites where they have never worked. Fake construction companies are unearthed. For instance, one jan sunwayi exposed the non-existent Bhaironath & Co which had, in the span of one year, been billed for construction materials worth Rs 36 lakh. The administration, however, concedes a fraud of only Rs 12 lakh - still a huge amount for one panchayat.Most crucially, the jan sunwayis unmask corrupt officials who have to endure the public humiliation of returning money to jeering villagers. In Bhim block, Rajsamund district, a junior engineer who was eventually suspended paid Rs 18,000 owed to over 50 labourers from his own pocket. In Jawaja block of Ajmer district, five Dalit families testified that their gram sevak took a cut of Rs 1,500 each from their Indira Awas Yojana grant. In less than 48 hours, the gram sevak returned their money. Aware that information was becoming the most lethal weapon against the bureaucracy, in early 1995 gram sevaks in Ajmer district struck work following reports that the state Government might pass legislation granting the right to information.But the villagers too are paying a price for demanding accountability. Pyaribai, Leelabai and Ganga Panasi worked as labourers for two months at the construction of a girls' school in Bhim, Rajsamand district. However, when an enquiry was launched into projects in their block, their names were found in a false muster roll naming them as labourers on a check dam during the same period. For no fault of their own, the three women's wages were withheld - the ultimate act of cruelty for a daily wage earner. "We have to pay for an official's corrupt ways," they say. Harassment is the usual response of officials under scrutiny. Jetibai of Sanghawas village in Rajsamand, along with some villagers, gave an application for auditing the construction costs of a school built two years ago for which several workers have still not been paid. Jetibai claims that instead of looking into their grievance, the administration has filed FIRs against 10 villagers for "disturbing the peace". Behind this move, she sees the hand of the illicit-liquor contractor. "They are all in it together. The liquor contractor funds the sarpanch, who then tries to crush us like ants." Having worked at construction sites for several years, she remembers countless occasions when, under the instructions of a junior engineer or sarpanch, she was asked to mix sand in cement. Jetibai may be unlettered but she has understood rural power dynamics. "The sarpanch and gram sevak are now scared because we are saying hamara paisa, hamara hisaab (our money, our accounts)."RAM Singh has studied up to the Xth standard, Tulsa Singh till the VIIIth and Chunni Singh is self - taught-sufficient education for the three farm-labourers of Badkochra panchayat in Ajmer district to spend over a month copying by hand every bill, muster roll and voucher of construction projects in their panchayat for the last three years. They cross-checked every detail and found discrepancies amounting to Rs 1,67,775 - a fraud of over 30 per cent of the allotted funds. Their effort has paid off, with the administration launching an enquiry in their panchayat in September. But, as Chunni Singh says, "Even during the enquiry they harass us. The officer gives a date, but when villagers gather to give evidence, then he does not show up."Forced to investigate itself, delay tactics are bureaucratic weapons. Worse is the kind of pressure put on Kesar Singh, a former jawan, who's at the centre of a scam unearthed in Asan panchayat of Ajmer. In 1991-92, Kesar supplied construction material worth Rs 40,000 to nine works in his panchayat but was paid only Rs 25,000. He chased the payment at all levels of the administration; finally he went to the MKSS. Once the MKSS got involved, they demanded an enquiry into all the nine works. The sarpanch, gram sevak and junior engineer panicked, and pressure was put on Kesar to withdraw his complaint. "First they offered me the Rs 15,000 owed to me, and eventually went up to Rs 40,000," says Kesar. When bribery did not work, the gram sevak and the junior engineer, who belonged to Kesar's Rawat community, called a caste panchayat of 15 villages and declared him an outcast. Kesar has still not got the Rs 15,000 he set out to recover. But there are three cases against him, which Kesar says is an attempt to browbeat him. Says the doughty former soldier who fought in the 1971 war: "The administration constantly tries to harass me. I found it easier to fight Pakistan than our own government." If villagers feel that way it is because against all democratic norms, Indian officialdom functions behind an iron curtain of secrecy. So when rural folk cry out, "Le kar rehenge hum is baar, soochna ka adhikar (This time we will not stop till we have the right to information)," it sends a shudder down the bureaucracy's spine.But this people's movement is, for the first time, beginning to pierce the iron curtain. So much so, that the Rajasthan Government was forced to issue an order on April 6 this year allowing inspection of records and copying by hand - but not the crucial right to photocopy. Says Shankar Singh, a village activist: "In an illiterate society, the right to photocopy is essential. Deny that and the order looses its teeth."Nonetheless, Rajasthan has set a valuable precedent and now the idea is catching on in other states. On October 2, Bilaspur division in Madhya Pradesh opened the public-distribution system - a cesspool of corruption throughout the country - to public scrutiny. This time round the right to photocopy has also been granted. The move was initiated by the Bilaspur Commissioner Harsh Mander, an IAS officer with close links to the MKSS. He promises to open a new government department to public audit every two months. What's more, the Madhya Pradesh Government has already prepared a draft Right to Information bill which it promises to pass in the winter session of the state Assembly.But such promises are more easily made than kept. The Rajasthan movement has revealed that with the exception of rare officers, the bureaucracy will resist any such move. Says MKSS leader Aruna Roy: "By asking for accounts, you are asking for a shift in power - from the state to the people." What the movement has also demonstrated is that without openness, poverty-eradication schemes will not work. In village after village where the MKSS is active, for the first time, the extent of the rot in the system has been exposed. The Rajasthan revelations suggest that the string of financial scandals that has rocked the Union government in the past year may well be dwarfed by the routine theft of development funds - in the very heart of rural India.Clearly, this is a battle that the bureaucracy will fight to the finish. For, their strength will ebb away as ordinary people gain a voice. The Official Secrets Act, which protects them today, was framed by the British in 1923, as a safeguard against an increasingly rebellious colonial people. Fifty years after Independence, the act still shields the Indian government from its teeming millions. And allows corruption to reach monstrous proportions. The United Front Government has committed itself to introducing legislation to secure the right to information and a draft bill has already been circulated by Justice Sawant to all state governments for their comment. Without the right to know, India's undernourished millions will continue to sustain a parallel economy, where the fat of development funds are skimmed off by officers and middlemen who flourish behind a wall of secrecy.Published By: AtMigration Published On: Nov 15, 1996 00:00 IST--- ENDS ---

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Campaign for right to information in Rajasthan exposes rot in system in villages

A campaign for the right to information in Rajasthan exposes the rot in the system in villages across the nation.

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