Aruna Roy and the Birth of the People's Movement in India

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Aruna Roy and the Birth of the People’s Movement in India
INTRODUCTION
Corruption has been a major problem driving underdevelopment and poverty in many countries. Embezzlement or underutilization of resources by the corrupt government officials, occur in several sectors of the society. This is a case study about an activist, Aruna Roy, who encountered massive corruption in her long service in the Indian government and formed an organization to fight corruption. The organization managed to mobilize people to convince the government to allow them the right to information, which would help uncover corrupt dealings in the government projects (Roy & Nikhil). The campaign was positive in its approach though the sluggish judiciary and legislature hampered implementing methods of curbing the corrupt practices. However, other approaches to this problem that would have led to a positive outcome exist.
I has been divided this paper into three sections: in the first section, I will give the history of the movement started by Aruna Roy and why she chose the civil-mobilization strategy in fighting corruption. The second section will give the benefits, challenges, drawbacks of her approach and analyses of her approach. The third part will consist of the alternative approach to fighting corruption and strategies to implement in future similar projects.
HISTORY OF THE MOVEMENT
Aruna Roy is a longtime Indian social activist, together with Nikhil Dey and Shanker Singh, famously founded a social and grassroots organization known as Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathana (MKSS), which aimed to address problems faced by peasants and workers. The MKSS led a revolutionary campaign in 1995, which led to the enactment of the Right To Information (RTI) act in 2005 (Sahoo 58). Before joining the social service, Aruna Roy was a civil servant in the Indian Administrative Service, where she became aware of the massive bureaucratic corruption and the many problems facing the peasants and workers in the countryside. She saw how the actions of corrupt officials hampered the government’s desire to help the poor (“Aruna Roy.” 2016). Driven by her unsettled conscience, she did quit her job and joined her husband who was already in the social service. This exposed her more to the challenges poor people were facing, as her husband’s organization was working directly with rural population.
Her long time service in the government brought to light several corrupt practices that she realized undermined the fight of poverty. The public officials assigned to supervise government construction projects used to underpay construction workers (BPB). The laborers would get wages way below the fixed minimum wage set by the government. The officials would then pocket the rest of the money. In addition to underpayment, the laborers did not get consistent work through the year. The project would remain on paper while the money embezzled by the officials (Savyasaachi, Ravi 133-134). According to BPB, there was also increased unemployment, government retrenchment, and withdrawal of the state from social responsibility.
Similarly, the poor people rec...