Aruna Roy

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Aruna Roy
President of the National Federation of Indian Women
Assumed office
2008
Preceded byDr. K. Saradamoni
Personal details
Born (1946-06-06) 6 June 1946 (age 77)
Madras, British Raj
NationalityIndian
Spouse
OccupationActivist, professor, union organiser and civil servant
AwardsRamon Magsaysay Award, 2000
Lal Bahadur Shastri National Award, 2010

Aruna Roy (née Jayaram, born 6 June 1946) is an Indian social activist, professor, union organiser and former civil servant. She is the president of the National Federation of Indian Women and founder of the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan.

Early life and education

Aruna was born on 6 June 1946,

egalitarian principles.[2]

All her grandparents were highly educated and included an engineer, a magistrate and a lawyer.

sub-caste.[2] Jayaram's family too had a history of social and political activism.[3][6] He was sent to Shantiniketan and later became a lawyer by profession.[Notes 2][5][6] He participated in the Indian independence movement, became a civil servant after independence and eventually retired as the Legal Adviser for the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research.[3][6] Jayaram also worked as a film and music critic and published reviews in various newspapers.[6]

Aruna was the eldest of four siblings and had two sisters and a brother. The children were brought up to be multilingual and the family spoke three languages at home, namely Tamil, English and Hindi.

University of Delhi.[7]

Following her education, she did not want to become a

National Academy of Administration for a year's course followed by a year of supervised training called probation. Her batch had 100 successful candidates and the course included an intensive study of economics, law, languages and basic administration. It also included horse riding and guidelines on courtesies and etiquette from the British period. She along with other students in her batch had rebelled against various aspects of the curriculum and were able to introduce some reforms which were implemented for the batch after theirs.[7]

Career and activism

Civil services (1968–1974)

Aruna was a part of the

Union Territory of Delhi as she had married a person who lived in that region.[7][9]

Roy's first assignment in Delhi was that of a

Indian Constitution, if implemented, was the correct standards for providing decent and equitable treatment to citizens. She was aware before joining that there was corruption in the system but thought that it was possible to enact reform from within. In contrast, after around 7 years within the system, she came to see the organisation as a hidebound institution where feudal and colonial values were nurtured. According to her, while it was possible for honest officials to not engage in collusion, the only recourse they had at most times was silence and inaction.[10]

She states that corruption didn't exist just in the form of graft but also in decision making and identified three primary problems with the organisation; one that of inability of to engage in ethical disagreement over a policy or decision that would "lead to people's lives being damaged", another being the negative consequences of addressing malpractice by politicians or even others in the bureaucracy and the third being the requirement to carry out orders regardless of any negative impact it might have. She describes the institution to have developed an elitist approach, with those granted promotions for liaisons with powerful politicians and being of little help to those most in need such as the poor. Concluding that the institution was not moving in the right direction and that it wasn't possible to bring change from within, as hierarchy suppressed all protestations and contradictions, she decided to eventually leave the civil services. Through the IAS, Aruna was however able to gain an understanding of the workings of the State and develop connections among a network of educated and influential people whom she considered to be honest officers.[11]

Barefoot College (1974–1983)

Roy had consulted with her family and friends before resigning from the IAS but most of them discouraged her from doing so. In 1974, she took a six-month leave to join her husband at the Social Work Research Centre (commonly known as the Barefoot College) and witnessing a relation of equality between her husband and the people there, compared to the deferential treatment she had received as a bureaucrat. Later in the same year, she submitted her resignation from the civil service after waiting for her brother to finish college as she was a major contributor to the income of her parents' household. Aged 28, she moved to the village of Tilonia where her husband was working.[7] Tilonia was a small village located in Rajasthan, 100 km away from the capital of Jaipur, where her husband had established the Barefoot College in 1972 for social and economic development of the village. He had recruited many individuals from top tier educational institutions and it would later come to be known as one of India's most professional development organisations.[12]

In Tilonia, there was a significant shift in lifestyle and outlook for Roy.

Indian Institute of Technology. The employees shared household and organisational duties among themselves which included everything from cooking to setting up facilities for children's education and income-generating programs for villagers.[7] Over the course of the years, Barefoot College would various technologies including solar power in a number of villages and educate rural residents on the concept and operation of these sophisticated systems.[12]

Initially, Roy experienced resistance in finding acceptance in the village. Her attempts at bringing new ideas about childbearing and schooling were dismissed by the women there. Though the attitude was welcomed by her as she was no longer being treated as an authority but rather as an equal. According to her, it is essential for deprived people to be the agents of their own change and that her job was to serve as a catalyst rather than a leader.

unskilled labour. Roy describes Tilonia to have been her real alma mater and the villagers to be better teachers than those in Delhi and at the IAS.[17] According to her, the IAS training was inadequate for understanding the complexities of socioeconomic change that were occurring in the rural areas, and that the villages represented neither the romantic notions of a rural life nor the simplistic view of a sexist caste-ridden conservative society, both common stereotypes among the urban well-to-do population.[16]

The Barefoot College operated as an apolitical service aimed at economic self sufficiency and acted as an alternative for the unavailable government services.

labor strike in the neighbouring village of Harmara. Led by a dalit women named Naurti Bai, the strike had gathered 500 minimum wage workers who refused to return to work or accept any payment until their full wages including pending dues were paid. She convinced the strikers to end their protest and in the process befriended Naurti, from whom she came to learn about the effectiveness of using information in mobilising people. The Barefoot College initiated the Sanjit Roy vs. the Government of Rajasthan case over the non-payment of minimum wages, while Roy attempted to raise the issue of reforming the organisation into one that could support collective action.[7][18] Several meetings were held over the following period that led to disagreements among the members and no breakthroughs were achieved.[7] In 1983, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the workers in the minimum wage case, in what was considered a landmark judgement and Roy decided to leave the Barefoot College in the same year, in search of a different platform for grassroots empowerment in rural India.[7][18]

Interceding years (1983–1990)

Between 1983 and 1987, Roy moved around working with various tribal and women's group in Rajasthan and neighbouring states, looking to encourage collective action.

mela (women's festival) in Rajasthan to act as its counterpart, with the view of starting a forum for rural women as the international women's movement was largely centered on middle class urban women. The mela was organised with the help of the Barefoot College, Seva Mandir and the Institute of Development Studies. It was the first women's rights congregation in India which focused on poor rural women and saw the attendance of thousands from all across the country. The festival featured games, competitions, arts and crafts, workshops and socio-political discussions, and concluded with a prabhat pheri (morning invocation walk), a protest demonstration in the nearby town of Kishangarh against the rape of an 11-year-old child.[19] The mela was the first instance of a public discussion on violence against women in that area and is described to have marked a shift in attitude where the onus for shame was laid on the perpetrators rather than the victims.[20]

In the summer of 1987, Roy accompanied by like-minded associates from the Barefoot College, moved to the village of Devdungri, 180 km away from Tilonia, with the intention of building a new organisation. Devdungri was chosen as their home base, as one of them,

Ministry of Human Resource Development for studying the participation rates of the rural poor in the government's poverty alleviation programs.[21] The grant became the starting budget for the organisation and each of them received a government assigned minimum wage of ₹14 a day, which formed the household budget. Devdungri was located in a drought prone and environmentally degraded region, and the living conditions of the occupants were not much better than those of the farmers and labourers that resided in it, which made them adopt a Mahatma Gandhi-inspired minimalist ascetic life.[7]

For Roy, the move to Devdungri was a more significant shift in terms of perspective than the one from the civil services to Tilonia; it involved an effort to create an organisation capable of collective action that would operate on a model of citizens' participation rather than through a bureaucracy.[7][21] The group intended to first integrate themselves in the village and only then, if possible, establish a platform with the initiative of the villagers. Of all the members, Roy found it the hardest to gain acceptance and trust in Devdungri. In contrast to Singh, whose relatives and background was known in the village and who was soon seen as one of them, she had the image of an outsider and was seen with some suspicion. Though Roy was well versed in the local dialect and the norms of village life from her previous experiences in Tilonia, she had gossip floating around related to her having been a civil servant who had chosen to live in meagre circumstances among them, which the villagers were reluctant to believe. She states that transparency and honesty were crucial for her in gaining their trust. In particular, she had to work hard among the women in an attempt to get them out of the mindset that they had to play a secondary role. She shared in with them in their sorrows and grievances, helped and supported them through personal crises and eventually engaged them in protest action, starting with issues they cared about the most, such as violence against women. Roy however states that it wasn't as difficult as one would expect to mobilise them as they were working and present in public life, and did not have to be brought out of their homes into the public sphere.[21]

In 1988, the three activists, Roy, Dey and Singh mobilised a campaign in the neighbouring village of Sohangarh against a powerful landlord. The landlord had retained 25 hectares of land that was granted to the village for community use in contravention of land ceiling laws. He demanded payment from the villagers which they were no longer willing to accept. Over the course of the next two years, the landlord tried to force the villagers into compliance with intimidation and violence. In the end, the activists acquired a ruling in favor of the village from the

forested conservation area which the villagers could for firewood and cattle grazing, while the activists helped secure a grant from the Wastelands Department for the conversion of the land. The area would go on to be known as a model for forest and water conservation in Rajasthan.[7][22] The success established the credibility of the trio and acted as a demonstration of the effectiveness of collective action that they had been trying to encourage in the area.[22]

The team soon became sought for another issue; people from the area including Devdungri and several neighbouring villages were pooled to work on a famine relief project but weren't receiving their full wages due to corruption at the local level. The activists initially counseled the workers to carefully track all the work they did and keep a record of them, but even after an engineer confirmed the veracity of the records, the workers still did not receive they legally mandated. Once the first step did not work, the team organised a campaign of non-cooperation, in which the workers refused any payment unless their full wages were paid. The workers could not be sustain it for long as they needed daily wages and only two of them struck it out till the end. Instead they organised a protest around the magistrate's office in Rajsamand district. The protest received media attention and unnerved the local administration, a representative from the state government arrived at the district and assured them that wages would be paid. In the aftermath, the local officials reduced the wages by 20% and the workers took the case to court but only the two who had decided to not accept any payment won the case and were paid their dues. The results were unsatisfactory and the team which had gathered a core group of activists and villagers started contemplating new strategies. Through the spring of 1990, they held deliberations for several months on creating a new political advocacy organisation that could sustain large scale protests and demonstrations.[22]

Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (1990–2004)

Poster featuring the MKSS symbol; a red and black emblem with one male and one female fist, raised in unison.[23]

On 1 May 1990, the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (transl. Workers' and Peasants' Power Collective; MKSS) was founded in a public gathering of approximately 1,000 people camped in tents outside the town of Bhim in Rajsamand district, Rajasthan.[23] Aruna Roy, Nikhil Dey and Shankar Singh were the three primary activists of the organisation and formed its core leadership.[24] The foundation was the organisation was laid in 1987 when the three activists had first started organising the rural poor in the village of Devdungri.[25] Formed to operate as a non-party political organisation that could mobilise collective action in order to secure the rights of the rural poor, it was structured as a non-bureaucratic and non-hierarchical organisation with no designated leader. It was not registered as a society or a trade union and had no formal constitution. It did not have any membership fees and raised funds solely through contributions from volunteers and supporters, maintaining a policy of not accepting donations from governments, corporations or any institutional funders. Membership relied on participation and developed into four layers.[23]

The first layer was that of a core group of 15–20 full-time workers, followed by a second layer of 40 members who regularly participated in agitations and organisational activities. The two groups formed the primary decision-making body and relied on a

pacifist.[23]

People's hearings

Right to Information movement

The MKSS began by fighting for fair and equal wages for workers which shaped and evolved into a struggle for the enactment of India's Right to Information Act. Aruna Roy is a leader of the

Right to Information Act in 2005.[26][27]

Later career (2004–present)

Aruna Roy has been at the forefront of a number of campaigns for the rights of the poor and the marginalised. These have included, most prominently, the

Right to Food.[29] More recently, she has been involved with the campaign for universal, non-contributory pension for unorganised sector workers as a member of the Pension Parishad[30][31] and the NCPRI for the passage and enactment of the Whistleblower Protection Law and Grievance Redress Act.[32][33]

She served as a member of the

National Advisory Council (NAC) until 2006 when she resigned.[34][35] She was also appointed the 2016 professor of practice in global governance at McGill University, in Montreal.[36][37]

In 2018, along with the MKSS collective, Roy published a book chronicling the history of the Right to Information movement in India titled The RTI Story: Power to the People.[38][39][40][41]

Honours and awards

With the

Community Leadership.[42] In 2010 she received the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Award for Excellence in Public Administration, Academia and Management.[43] In 2011, she was named as one of the hundred most influential people in the world by Time magazine.[44] In September 2017 the Times of India listed Roy as one of the 11 Human Rights Activists Whose Life Mission Is To Provide Others with a Dignified Life.[45]

Selected works

Academic

Non-fiction

Miscellaneous

References

Notes

  1. ^ India became independent in 1947, a year after Aruna's birth.
  2. ^ Shantiniketan was a school founded by the nobel laureate and polymath Rabindranath Tagore.
  3. K. M. Munshi
    for Indianising education
  4. ^ M.N. Roy was a revolutionary during the British Raj, an exponent of the philosophy of "radical humanism" and the founder of the communist parties of India and Mexico.

Citations

  1. ISBN 978-81-7028-858-9
    .
  2. ^
    ISBN 978-1-137-49205-0
    .
  3. ^
    ISBN 978-1-317-62395-3
    .
  4. ISBN 978-1-137-49205-0
    .
  5. ^
    The Tribune. Archived
    from the original on 6 January 2014.
  6. ^
    ISBN 978-1-137-49205-0
    .
  7. ^
    Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation. Archived from the original
    on 31 March 2012.
  8. ^ Dasgupta, Arundhuti (9 February 2019). "An activist who won't be labelled: Aruna Roy on speaking up for the poor". Business Standard.
  9. ^ a b Athimoolam, N. (2021). A Bureaucrat from a Hamlet. Blue Rose Publishers. p. 6.
  10. ISBN 978-1-137-49205-0
    .
  11. ISBN 978-1-137-49205-0
    .
  12. ^
    ISBN 978-1-137-49205-0
    .
  13. ISBN 978-1-137-49205-0
    .
  14. ISBN 978-1-137-49205-0
    .
  15. ISBN 978-1-137-49205-0
    .
  16. ^
    ISBN 978-1-137-49205-0
    .
  17. ISBN 978-1-137-49205-0
    .
  18. ^
    ISBN 978-1-137-49205-0
    .
  19. ISBN 978-81-321-0329-5
    .
  20. ISBN 978-81-321-0329-5
    .
  21. ^
    ISBN 978-1-137-49205-0
    .
  22. ^
    ISBN 978-1-137-49205-0
    .
  23. ^
    ISBN 978-1-137-49205-0
    .
  24. ISBN 978-3-319-95837-8
    .
  25. ISBN 978-1-84813-387-7
    .
  26. ^ Blacked out: government secrecy in the information age, by Alasdair Scott Roberts. Cambridge University Press, 2006.
  27. ^ MKSS As a Role Model Archived 22 February 2014 at the Wayback Machine, Civil Society Magazine. Jan 2012
  28. ^ "Matersfamilias | Saba Naqvi | Aug 24,2015". outlookindia.com. Retrieved 27 August 2015.
  29. ^ "Right to Food- A Fundamental Right". National Human Rights Commission, India. Retrieved 10 March 2020.
  30. ISSN 0971-751X
    . Retrieved 27 August 2015.
  31. ^ "Forgotten Brethren | Harsh Mander | Apr 20,2015". outlookindia.com. Retrieved 27 August 2015.
  32. ^ "Aruna Roy seeks early passage of grievance redress, whistleblower bills". 19 December 2013. Retrieved 27 August 2015.
  33. ^ Roy, Aruna. "The Fate of RTI After One Year of Modi is a Bad Omen". The Wire. Archived from the original on 18 October 2015. Retrieved 27 August 2015.
  34. ^ "NAC reconstituted". The Hindu. 4 June 2005. Archived from the original on 1 March 2006.
  35. ^ "Daughter of the Dust | Urvashi Butalia | Oct 16, 2006". outlookindia.com. Retrieved 27 August 2015.
  36. ^ "Professor of Practice Profile: Aruna Roy". ISID. Retrieved 17 November 2020.
  37. ^ "Professors of Practice in Global Governance". ISID. Retrieved 17 November 2020.
  38. ^ "New book on RTI an ode to unknown soldiers of the struggle". The Week. Retrieved 17 November 2020.
  39. ^ "Book review | 'The RTI Story: Power to the People' a memoir-cum-textual tome". The New Indian Express. Retrieved 17 November 2020.
  40. ISSN 0971-751X
    . Retrieved 17 November 2020.
  41. ^ Ahluwalia, Sanjeev (27 April 2018). "Book Review: Read it to know the pain and joy of activism". Deccan Chronicle. Retrieved 17 November 2020.
  42. ^ "Ramon Magsaysay Award Citation". Archived from the original on 7 May 2012. Retrieved 7 May 2009.
  43. ISSN 0971-751X
    .
  44. ISSN 0040-781X
    . Retrieved 27 August 2015.
  45. ^ Anjali Bisaria (7 September 2017). "11 Human Rights Activists Whose Life Mission Is To Provide Others with a Dignified Life/". Times Internet.

Further reading

External links

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