The class monitor is never liked. Other children either uniformly hate or envy that person. So is the case with whistleblowers. But, while in a classroom, every child is a potential wrongdoer — the offence, though, could be as minor as talking in class — a whistleblower who exposes corruption by government or panchayat functionaries in schemes such as the national rural employment guarantee scheme or the public distribution system is disliked only by the wrongdoers while he is a hero and role model for the rest.
Niyamat Ansari is the latest citizen activist who has paid the price for knowing more than the rest of the villagers, thanks to his enterprising use of the Right to Information, and as founder of NREGA sahayta kendras in villages in Latehar district. He earned the backing of activists like Jean Dreze, who have thrown their weight behind Ansari’s investigations into corruption and malpractices in NREGA.
Ansari helped poor villagers get compensation for non-allocation of work under the scheme and only 10 days ago his complaints led to an FIR against the BDO in the area. Rs 2 lakh were found in the BDO’s house. Three days later, goons picked up Ansari, beat him up for an hour and left.
Villagers tried to take him to a hospital 10 km away but he could not be saved.
Two years ago, another activist in the Palamau district of Jharkhand, Lalit Mehta had met a similar end. He was also an associate of Dreze and was part of the social audits he had done in the district to expose corruption. In 2010, about 11 whistleblowers who used the RTI to expose or find potentially unsavoury truths for wrongdoers were killed.
Another whistleblower, Amarnath Pandey in Uttar Pradesh’s Sonebhadra district, barely escaped death last month after his inquiries had exposed wrongdoings. NAC member Aruna Roy has written to Congress president Sonia Gandhi, seeking quick action against Ansari’s killers and also to expedite the whistleblowers’ Bill to protect citizen activists.
She says the RTI has made every citizen a potential whistleblower and hence a potential victim.
The killing of Ansari could have been avoided if the burden of audit was not on individuals like him but on an institution that could be as trusted and credible as the Comptroller and Auditor General of India.
The new model for social audits in villages, under government consideration specifically for the purpose of NREGA, is expected to promote a linkage with the state CAG office. The CAG has already recommended certain changes in the NREGA Act’s sections on social audit, which is now conducted by the Gram Sabha or the entire village. That almost never happens as the dominant classes and castes have the biggest say in any village.
So, the CAG recommended that the audit of NREGA accounts be carried out by either the director, local fund audit, or by CAs appointed by the state government from the list of CAs empanelled with the CAG. The CAG and state Accountant General would have the power to issue directions and instructions to the CAs or the director, local fund audit, regarding the conduct of audits.
That would produce a far better situation than a solitary citizen exposing himself to vicious wrongdoers.
In fact, when such a dispensation is set up through an amendment in NREGA, it should be extended to all village-level schemes through the creation of similar auditing systems at the village level so that no villager is denied their entitlements and more Niyamat Ansaris don’t have to lay down their lives to expose the theft of funds meant for the poor.
