User:Lokiisgood/Aruna Roy

Aruna Roy

Aruna Roy
Born	26 June 1946 Chennai
Nationality	Indian
Occupation	Social Activist
Organization	Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS)
Awards	Ramon Magsaysay award, 2000 Lal Bahadur Shastri National Award, 2010

Aruna Roy (born 26 May 1946) is an Indian social activist known for her efforts to fight corruption and promote government transparency. She is also the founding members of Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS). A staunch supporter of the movement for public access to information, Roy was instrumental in the enactment of legislation in India guaranteeing the rights of citizens to scrutinize official records. A nationwide grassroots campaign launched by MKSS led to the adoption of right-to-information laws by nine states in the early 2000s, and a national right-to-information act was approved by India’s parliament in 2005.

Early life

Aruna was born on May 26, 1946 to Hema and Jayaram Iyengar in her grandparents' home in Chennai. But for much of her childhood, the family lived in New Delhi where she and her siblings were raised to be free thinkers. Both Jayaram and Hema made sure that she did not grow up harboring prejudices against any form of religious expression or art. They encouraged their children to have an open mind and to appreciate the various ways different cultures express themselves and decided to raise them to respect all religions. The family celebrated Christmas as well as the birth of the Buddha and various Hindu festivals. Mahatma Gandhi wielded a tremendous influence on the family's life. Her father was a great admirer of Gandhi, and he frequently quoted him to her and told stories about this great Indian. "I have lived with Gandhi all my life," says Aruna. "He was a living memory when I was born. Gandhi was everywhere when I was young and in a sense he is today."

Aruna was a voracious reader who, as a child, preferred to read books rather than play with friends. She remembers that she read whatever she could lay her hands on. Although most of her family's monthly income went to education and household expenses and very little to clothes, there were always books and other reading materials at home, some of them passed down through the family. Her father was also a member of several libraries and always brought books home for his children to read. No restrictions were placed on the books the children could read and Aruna grew up with Aesop's fables, the Russian witch Baba Yaga, and the Panchatantra folk stories in English.

She married her fellow classmate, Bunker Roy in 1970 in a simple ceremony. Before the wedding, the couple had agreed on conditions that would govern their married life. They would have no children to tie them down; they would not be financially dependent on each other; they would not impose their beliefs on each other; and they would both be free to do whatever they wanted. To this day, Aruna wears nothing to indicate that she is married, although she has changed her last name to Roy.

Education

She was only three and half years old when she entered her first school, a catholic convent in Madras while vacationing with her grandparents. She spent the next 5 years in Convent of Jesus and Mary which was run by French and English nuns. She was then sent to Kalakshetra,a famous art school in Adayar, Madras where she learnt art and classical dance (Bharata Natyam) and Indian Carnatic classical music for 2 years. After that, she went to Aurobindhu Ashram in Pondicherry, a school established by another famous Indian, K. M. Munshi, who believed in Indianizing education. Although the language of instruction was English, great emphasis was placed on Indian culture. It was there that Aruna completed her precollegiate education. She earned a postgraduate degree in English literature from Indraprastha College, Delhi University.

Career in Indian Administrative Services

After earning her master's degree, Aruna refused to settle for the kind of life that awaited most other Indian women of her circumstances: homemaking. She was determined to be different. In an article she wrote in 1996, she said, "As a woman, I wanted to work and not get married and pass into the limbo of passivity." She decided to become a civil servant and cleared the Indian Administrative Services (IAS) examination in 1967.But Six years (1968-1975) in the IAS were enough to convince her that reality lay elsewhere. In her words: "Frankly speaking, I was not happy with bureaucratic functioning.... There are times when one knows that the decisions being taken by higher-ups are blatantly wrong, but nothing can be challenged."

When she was transferred to Delhi As a subdivisional magistrate in the city, she had jurisdiction over six police stations. Besides carrying out her regular duties, she was called upon to handle student unrest and elections. Since New Delhi was the seat of the national government, Aruna saw for herself the extent of corruption and kowtowing that went on in the country's center of power. She herself became part of the Delhi (Union Territory) administration, working first in the office of the deputy commissioner as a subdivisional magistrate; next in the office of the chief secretary as deputy secretary for finance; and then, in 1973, in the office of the lieutenant governor as secretary. By this time, she was becoming deeply disillusioned. She had entered the IAS feeling that "the government will provide the framework for working effectively for social justice within a strictly legal framework." What she saw instead was senior civil servants currying favor with powerful politicians in order to advance in their careers; the feudal trappings of a civil service that posed obstacles to any meaningful change; and the aloofness of the bureaucracy to the poor, who lacked access to official.

Aruna realized that the problem resided partly with the people, because they had not learned how to speak up for themselves. But it also resided in the system, because the officials had been trained to think of themselves as above the people. She blamed the system for its wrong orientation and wrong priorities.She left the IAS when she was just 28 years old to join her husband Bunker Roy's Social Work and Research Centre in Tilonia in Rajasthan.

Stint in National Advisory Council

Roy also served as a member of National Advisory Council (NAC) during the UPA government led by Sonia Gandhi an Indian politician and President of the Indian National Congress party but both of the time she resigned from the council due to the differences in opinion with the government. For first term she left in the year 2008because of the implementation issue of the Common Minimum Programme and the attitude of government towards it. Then she joined the council again for the second term in the year 2010. This time she finally quit as the member council in 2013 when the differences was emerged between the council and the government in relation to therecommendations of council regarding payment of minimum wages to workers under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS).

Teaching career

After completing her education at Indraprastha College Roy taught ninteenth century literature for a year at the same college before going into the civil service in the year1968.. Roy In the year 2016, she was appointed as a "professor of practice" for three months Canada in August 2016 at the Institute for the Study of International Development at the McGill University based in Montreal to teach undergraduate students about Transparency, Accountability and Participatory Governance in relation to the people’s movement in India.