The people's movement — Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan and Jan Sunvai — Right to Information (RTI) Notes

The people’s movement — Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan and Jan Sunvai

In the early 1990s, in the dry villages of Rajasthan’s Rajsamand and Pali districts, labourers who had built roads and dug wells under government works were being paid less than the minimum wage — or not at all. When they demanded the muster rolls and bills, they were told those were secret. So they organised, obtained the records anyway, and read them aloud in the village square. Names of the dead appeared on wage lists; works never built appeared as “completed”. That public reading was called a Jan Sunvai — a public hearing — and it is the direct ancestor of the RTI Act.

What the MKSS did, and why it matters

The Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS) — literally the “Workers and Peasants Power Organisation” — was founded in 1990 by activists including Aruna Roy, Nikhil Dey and Shankar Singh. Its demand was concrete and local: give us the muster rolls and the bills for public works so we can check whether wages were actually paid and works actually done.

Its method was the Jan Sunvai (public hearing), from about 1994. The MKSS would obtain official records — muster rolls, measurement books, bills, vouchers — and read them aloud at a public gathering, in front of the very villagers named in them. Villagers could then say, on the spot, “that man died two years ago”, or “no school was ever built here”. This turned dry documents into a social audit and exposed corruption in a way no court case could.

The demand grew from local to national. It crystallised in a slogan that captured the whole philosophy of RTI:

“Hamara paisa, hamara hisaab” — “Our money, our accounts.”

In Simple Terms: If public works are paid for with public money, the public is entitled to see the accounts. The MKSS made that abstract idea physical — by reading the government’s own records aloud to the people they were supposed to serve.

The movement’s importance for the exam is its role as the direct political trigger for the RTI Act. The MKSS’s campaign led to Rajasthan’s Right to Information Act, 2000, fed the National Campaign for People’s Right to Information (NCPRI), and built the pressure that produced the Freedom of Information Act, 2002 and finally the strong RTI Act, 2005. So while the courts gave the right its constitutional pedigree (Topics 3, 5, 6), the MKSS gave it its political muscle.

🧩 WORKED EXAMPLE — the 8-mark short note

Facts. “Write a short note on MKSS and Jan Sunvai.”

Rule. MKSS (Rajasthan, 1990) demanded muster rolls/bills; Jan Sunvai (public hearing) read them aloud as a social audit; slogan “our money, our accounts”.

Apply. Four crisp points: (1) who — MKSS, Rajasthan, 1990, Aruna Roy and others; (2) what — demanded access to public-works records; (3) how — Jan Sunvai, records read aloud, exposing fake works and wages in dead men’s names; (4) why it matters — the direct trigger for Rajasthan’s 2000 Act and the national RTI Act, 2005.

Conclusion. Eight marks reward the four points plus the slogan and the causal link to the 2005 Act.

flowchart TD
    A["MKSS, Rajasthan, 1990<br/>demand: muster rolls + bills"]
    A --> B["Jan Sunvai (public hearing)<br/>records read aloud = social audit"]
    B --> C["Exposes fake works, wages of the dead"]
    C --> D["Rajasthan RTI Act 2000 + NCPRI"]
    D --> E["Central RTI Act 2005"]
    classDef box fill:#e8f0fe,stroke:#333,color:#111;
    class A,B,C,D,E box;

Case Laws

• PUCL v. Union of India (2003) — decided in the same reformist climate; recognised the right to information as fundamental as the statutory movement peaked. (The MKSS story is a movement, not litigation; cite this case only for context.)

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