What is common between, Amit Jethwa, Dattatraya Patil, Vithal Geete, Sola Ranga Rao, Arun Sawant, Shashidhar Mishra, Vishram Laxman Dodiya and Satish Shetty? They all were RTI activist and all of them were murdered. They were the people who fought against the corruption in the system of this country and for which they paid the price of their life. It’s easy to talk against corruption while sitting in ac rooms, on networking sites or with friends but it is really difficult to fight against them in this country. Because in our great nation the word security is the privilege of only rich and powerful and result of which the honest whistle blowers have to sacrifice their lives. But then also activists are not afraid and are exposing the scams in the system.
The insincerity is that the government still is not able to present a full proof bill or law which can ensure the security of whistle blowers. The first whistle blower who lost his life was Satyendra Dubey who was a civil engineer from IIT Kanpur. He was shot dead in 2003 as he exposed the corruption in golden four-sided figure project in bihar.
The murderers of Dubey were convicted of robbery and murder instead of getting convicted for eliminating him as he exposed the corruption in project of national highway authority of India. Nothing tangible was done by the government to find the people on whose orders he was killed. In year 2004 under the pressure of Supreme Court on the basis of PIL on the satyendra dubey murder case the then NDA government announced to protect whistle blower and a resolution named public interest disclosure and protection of informers (PIDPI) was notified empowering cental vigilance commissioner to act on the complaint of whistle blowers and to protect them.
However nothing has been done in last six years for the legislation to replace PIDPI.On the opposing a graduate of IIM Lucknow named Manjunath Shanmugham was killed in 2005 as he tried to expose an corruption racket at an Indian Oil Corporation petrol pum in Lakhimpur Kheri (U.P).Though the trial court awarded death sentence to prime accused and life sentence to the seven others but last year Allahabad High Court bench in Lucknow changed the death penalty to life sentence and released two of the seven convicts.
Still government is unable to pass an act which guarantees safety and security of whistle blowers because of which eight RTI activist are killed in year 2010.Is this the way to ensure security of people who are fighting against corruption? Government should seriously take effective measures for the security of whistle blowers otherwise their killings will create a bad impact on the minds of potential activists. The system has to encourage citizen activism by using all available means instead of discouraging it by not meting out justice and not punishing people involved in corruption.
We all talk about corruption every now and then but have never done anything to stop it or helped people who are victims of it .But its better late than never if we want to improve the system and conditions in our country we have to fight corruption in favour of public interest and best available means in our country to curb it, is RTI.
Though there are loopholes in it and there is no protection for the activists who uses it to expose corruption but it is necessary to take the stand somewhere and this is the time otherwise the day will come when it will not be difficult but it will be impossible to stop the evil of corruption
