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Interviews | Aruna Roy, social activist and founder of the MKSS. interviewed by Sneha Philip and Smarinita Shetty (IDR)
Aruna Roy, social activist and founder of the MKSS. interviewed by Sneha Philip and Smarinita Shetty (IDR)

Aruna Roy, social activist and founder of the MKSS. interviewed by Sneha Philip and Smarinita Shetty (IDR)

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published Published on Jan 29, 2022   modified Modified on Jan 31, 2022

-IDROnline.org/ TheWire.in

"The problem with Indian democracy is that despite the presence of millions of voters, the pool of decision makers get smaller and narrower at the top."

Aruna Roy is a social activist and founder of the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS). Her work and leadership led to the enactment of the Right to Information (RTI) Act 2005—a landmark act that empowers citizens to demand transparency and accountability from government institutions.  

Over the last four decades, she has been at the forefront of several other people-led movements as well including the Right to Work campaign which led to the institution of MGNREGA, and the Right to Food movement. In 2000, she received the Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership.

In this interview with IDR, Roy talks about building and sustaining participatory movements, the role of sangharsh (struggle) in driving change, and the power of the collective voice. She explains why the right to freedom of expression is critical for India, why civil society must fight to sustain it, and hopes for a free and open society where the young can function without fear within the boundaries of constitutional morality.

* Could you tell us a little about your early years and early influences?

I was born a year before Independence. This placed me squarely alongside the journey of the new and nascent country that we call India, or Bharat. I grew up in Delhi—I’m a Dilliwali as they say. My family was progressive and privileged by education—my mother had studied mathematics and physics, my father had been to Shantiniketan when he was a young boy of 10, and my grandmother had done her senior Cambridge. Issues of equality were part of the daily routine. Regardless of their class, caste, or literacy levels, everyone who came home sat together and had tea from the same cups. I did not realise at that time that this was not ‘normal’. I grew up celebrating all festivals and listening to the stories of great human beings.

I was sent to Kalakshetra in Chennai to learn classical dance and music, and to a range of schools after that. I studied English literature and completed my postgraduation from Indraprastha College, Delhi University, in 1967. I taught a year in my college and, in 1968, joined the civil service as part of the union territories cadre. I was posted in Pondicherry, and then in Delhi. I resigned in 1975 to come to Rajasthan to work with the rural poor.

There are several reasons I have worked all my life. My mother was an extremely intelligent and accomplished woman. She did not however participate in public life, which frustrated her, because she believed that women were not less capable than men. But in a man’s world, women were always looked down upon as domestic accoutrements. This was extremely distressing for my mother, and it became deeply ingrained in me that a woman has to have a life beyond the domestic sphere.

It is one of the fundamental postulates on which I have built my life—a woman must have a place where she can express herself with freedom. You could say that my first politics was feminism. The second was caste politics. My father, grandparents, and great-granduncle had fought discrimination, particularly related to caste. Understanding caste, untouchability, and the rigidity and discrimination of the caste system were part of my growing years. And since I grew up in Delhi shortly after Partition, religious discrimination and violence, and the havoc they cause, were also part of my emotional memory.

I joined the civil service because I felt that it was possibly a place where one could actively work to reduce discrimination and inequality in society. When I left the civil service, I started working with a nonprofit called the Social Work and Research Center, or Barefoot College, in Tilonia, Rajasthan.

In those nine years I de-schooled myself. I learned about cross-cultural communication and about poverty, caste, and gender seen through the lens of those who suffer discrimination. I understood what prevents the poor from upward mobility. I learned from extremely intelligent working-class men and women.

I learned a lot from one woman in particular—Naurti, who has stayed a friend for more than 40 years. She is Dalit, and a little younger than me. She was a wage worker when we first met. She chose to become literate, a labour leader who led the fight against unfair minimum wages, an acknowledged leader of women’s rights, a computer operator, and a sarpanch. I was part of her campaign on minimum wages. I took the law to her through an awareness programme, and she organised the people. Finally, in 1983, the Supreme Court delivered a landmark judgement on minimum wages—Sanjit Roy vs the Government of Rajasthan—invoking Article 14 and Article 23 of the Constitution. Naurti has been a comrade and together we have fought against sati and rape, and for the RTI, MGNREGA, and other rights-based programmes. She is an extremely courageous woman, and we continue to be friends and equals.

At Tilonia, I learned about the need for an organisational structure for participatory management. It is critical to build democratic ways of functioning with equality. How do you facilitate participation and what are the non-negotiables? The first principle is that you have to listen, and you have to accept dissent. You must also accept that in order to reach a consensus, you have to give up something. This happens only if there is a structure to do so.

As I grew in my politics, I realised I didn’t want to be a development-wali. I wanted to be a participant in the struggles to access constitutional rights. I went to central Rajasthan to work with the workers and set up the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS), along with like-minded friends—Shankar Singh and Nikhil Dey. MKSS is a sangharsh (struggle) based organisation. It is located in a mud hut in Devdungri and doesn’t take any institutional funds. It is where the demand for the RTI was crafted and began, as did other struggles. It has been a long journey. At this moment, we are struggling for an accountability law, and are on a yatra to all the 33 districts in Rajasthan to ask the government to implement its electoral promise. I still work and struggle.

Please click here to read more. 

Image Courtesy: The Wire.in, please click here to access

IDROnline.org/ TheWire.in, 29 January, 2022, https://thewire.in/rights/interview-we-are-losing-our-right-to-protest-aruna-roy


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