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'''Aruna Roy''' (born 26 June 1946) is an ]n ] and ] who founded and heads the ] ("Workers and Peasants Strength Union"). She is best known as a prominent leader of the ] movement, which led to the enactment of the ] in 2005.<ref>''Blacked out: government secrecy in the information age'', by Alasdair Scott Roberts. Cambridge University Press, 2006.</ref> She has also remained a member of the ].<ref name="hi">{{cite news|url=http://www.hindu.com/2005/06/04/stories/2005060404461200.htm|title=NAC reconstituted|date=Jun 04, 2005|work=The Hindu}}</ref> '''Aruna Roy''' (born 26 June 1946) is an ]n ] and ] who founded and heads the ] ("Workers and Peasants Strength Union"). She is best known as a prominent leader of the ] movement, which led to the enactment of the ] in 2005.<ref>''Blacked out: government secrecy in the information age'', by Alasdair Scott Roberts. Cambridge University Press, 2006.</ref> She has also remained a member of the ].<ref name="hi">{{cite news|url=http://www.hindu.com/2005/06/04/stories/2005060404461200.htm|title=NAC reconstituted|date=Jun 04, 2005|work=The Hindu}}</ref>

Revision as of 01:10, 24 August 2011

Aruna Roy
Born (1946-06-26) June 26, 1946 (age 78)
Madras
OccupationActivist

Aruna Roy (born 26 June 1946) is an Indian political and social activist who founded and heads the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathana ("Workers and Peasants Strength Union"). She is best known as a prominent leader of the Right to Information movement, which led to the enactment of the Right to Information Act in 2005. She has also remained a member of the National Advisory Council.

In 2000, she received the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership. In 2010 she received the prestigious Lal Bahadur Shastri National Award for Excellence in Public Administration, Academia and Management.

Career

Aruna served as a civil servant in the Indian Administrative Service between 1968 and 1974. She then resigned to devote her time to social and political campaigns. She joined the Social Work and Research Center (SWRC) in Tilonia, Rajasthan, founded by her husband, Sanjit Roy. In 1983 Aruna dissociated herself from the SWRC.

While working at the SWRC, Aruna had met Shanker Singh, an activist and theatre artist who uses street theatre, puppetry, song and drama to convey complex leftist ideologies to rural audiences in an idiom familiar to them. In 1987, Aruna and Shankar Singh, with a few associates, moved to Devdoongri, a village in the Rajsamand district of Rajasthan where many of Shankar's relatives live. Here in 1990, they set up the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan ("Workers and Peasants Strength Union") an organization that they described as a "non-party people's organisation". The MKSS has operated out of Shankar's cousin's house in Devdoongri since its inception. In 2011,she emerged among The Time Magazine's 100 most influential people in the world.

Right to Information

In the mid-1990s, under her guidance, the MKSS began a campaign that advocated the public's right to scrutinize official records, a crucial check against arbitrary governance. The MKSS attacked corruption at the grassroots level and sought accountability of public officials in matters related to disbursement of government funds. The fact that the MKSS was founded and led by a woman activist, namely Aruna, commended the organization and its cause to the favour of Sonia Gandhi. Aruna leveraged this advantage further by ingenuously linking the Right to Information with issues related to women's employment, livelihood and empowerment. With Sonia Gandhi's support, the Congress-led government of Rajasthan passed the Rajasthan Right to Information Bill in 2000. Rajasthan, never otherwise noted for its progressive outlook, passed such a legislation, and Aruna received the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership the same year. Aruna decided to use the award money of US $ 50,000 to set up a trust to support the process of democratic struggles.

In 2004, under the leadership of Sonia Gandhi, the Congress party won the national elections and formed the central government. Aruna was inducted into the National Advisory Committee (NAC), an extremely powerful but extra-constitutional quasi-governmental body headed by Sonia Gandhi which effectively supervises the working of the common minimum program of UPA II . Aruna's role was to formulate the Right to Information Act which was passed by the Indian parliament in 2005. She served as a member of the National Advisory Council of India until 2006 and is part of NAC II.


Works

  • Education of Out-of-school Children: Case Studies of Selected Non-formal Learning Programmes in South Asia. Published by Commonwealth Secretariat, 1984. ISBN 0850922550.

References

  1. Blacked out: government secrecy in the information age, by Alasdair Scott Roberts. Cambridge University Press, 2006.
  2. "NAC reconstituted". The Hindu. Jun 04, 2005. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  3. Ramon Magsaysay Award Citation
  4. Thehindu.com
  5. Women who dared, by Ritu Menon. Published by National Book Trust, India, 2002. ISBN 8123738560. Page 169-170.
  6. Aruna Roy BusinessWeek, July 8, 2002.
  7. Aruna Roy National Resource Center for Women, Govt. of India.
  8. Aruna Roy: Magsaysay Award winner Women & Social Transformation, by M. G. Chitkara. Published by APH Publishing, 2001. ISBN 817648251X. Page 371-372.
  9. Visionaries: The 20th Century's 100 Most Important Inspirational Leaders, by Satish Kumar, Freddie Whitefield. Published by Chelsea Green Publishing, 2007. ISBN 1933392533. Page 139.

External links

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