Aruna Roy
Aruna Roy | |
|---|---|
| Born | May 26, 1946 |
| Occupation | Activist |
Aruna Roy (born 26 May 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.[1] She has also remained a member of the National Advisory Council.[2]
In 2000, she received the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership.[3] In 2010 she received the prestigious Lal Bahadur Shastri National Award for Excellence in Public Administration, Academia and Management.[4]
Birth and schooling
Aruna was born in Chennai on May 26, 1946, to a secular couple from Tamil Nadu, Hema and Elupai Doraiswami Jayaram. Hema herself was born to an brahmin couple, with her mother being an Iyer and her father, an Iyengar. Aruna's maternal grandparents, though belonging to the brahmin sect, brought their children with modern ideals, and Hema had her schooling in a Christian school. Jayaram came from a family of lawyers, with his father and uncle holding law degrees from England. Jayaram also had many social activists in his family, with he himself involved in the Indian Independence movement. Post Independence, Jayaram served as a civil servant to the Government of India. He was serving as a legal advisor to the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research when he retired from service. The Hema-Jayaram couple had four children, three girls and one boy, and Aruna was the eldest. The couple was living in New Delhi mostly, and Aruna was put under the care of her grandparents when she started her schooling in a Catholic convent in Chennai. Soon she returned to Delhi, where she was put in the elitist Convent of Jesus and Mary, with its pupils being mostly non Indians. After five years there, she was sent to Kalakshetra, an arts school in Chennai, where she learnt Bharatnatyam and carnatic music for two years. After that, she was admitted into the Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry, before joining Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, New Delhi, where she had her precollegiate education.[5]
Higher Education
At 16, Aruna joined Indraprastha College in Delhi, registering herself in the English literature course. There she was exposed to Renaissance, Tolstoy, Sappho and Shakespeare. Completing this course in 1965, she registered for post graduate work in University of Delhi, where she met her future husband, Sanjit "Bunker" Roy. Post post graduation, she took up teaching Nineteenth Century English Literature in Indraprastha College. Teaching was not her calling though, and later in 1967, she took the Indian Administrative Services examination, which she cleared in one attempt. She was one among the 10 women who were in the 100 that were selected. [5]
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.[6][7][8] In 1983 Aruna dissociated herself from the SWRC.
Right to Information
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 body headed by Sonia Gandhi which effectively supervises the working of the common minimum program of UPA II. [9] 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. She is also highly critical of India against Corruption and campaigns to highlight corruption in modern Indian polity, she herself is a beneficiary and pillar of that corrupt political system now. Her description of Anna Hazare 's Jan Lokpal Bill as being extra-constitutional is a sheer example how a well meaning activist is converted by the lucre of the modern Indian polity, she being member of extra-constitutional body headed by Sonia Gandhi herself.
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.
Currently she is drafting the Lokpal Bill against the Anna version of Jan Lokpal Bill which ll be table in the parliament for the discussion.
References
- ^ Blacked out: government secrecy in the information age, by Alasdair Scott Roberts. Cambridge University Press, 2006.
- ^ "NAC reconstituted". The Hindu. Jun 04, 2005.
{{cite news}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - ^ Ramon Magsaysay Award Citation
- ^ Thehindu.com
- ^ a b Kalaw-Tirol, Kalaw (2000). "Biography of Aruna Roy". Ramon Magsaysay Award. Retrieved Aug 30, 2011.
- ^ Women who dared, by Ritu Menon. Published by National Book Trust, India, 2002. ISBN 8123738560. Page 169-170.
- ^ Aruna Roy BusinessWeek, July 8, 2002.
- ^ Aruna Roy National Resource Center for Women, Govt. of India.
- ^ 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
