Transparency and Accountability:
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RTI: 2005
o Coincided with many right based legislations
 Food, forest, information
Transparency is necessary for accountability, but it is not sufficient.
MKSS: Majdoor Kisaan Shakti Sangatan (1986)
o Aruna Roy :
 (EX- IAS Officer) -> barefoot college
o Nikhil Dev:
 America -> travelled India
o Shankar Singh:
 Barefoot college member
 Expert orator (music, Dance, Puppetry)
o
o
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Decided to Study minimum wages
 Received grant yet chose to draw minimum wage daily
Findings:
 Workers often underpaid (below promised wage)
 Unaware of official wage rates.
 Unaware of inaccurate muster role records.
 Some people paid despite not working. (people closer to power structures)
 Muster Role: attendance and log of working hours of workers.
o Wasn’t maintained or maintained dishonestly
o Was kept confidentially. (pre-RTI)
 Official secrets act (1923)
o
 Rashomon effect: an event having multiple contradictory
interpretations.
Relief-oriented employment schemes:
o Food for work
o Bada Imam Bharath: (Nawab Asaf-Ud Daulla)
 Famine relief program. Workers paid minimum wage (govt money) to build
the monument.
o John Keynes:
 Advocate of govt generated employment
NREGA:
o Olga Telis & Ors. vs Bombay municipal corporation:
 “If there is an obligation on the State to secure the citizen an adequate
means of livelihood and the right to work, it would be sheer pedantry to
exclude the right to livelihood from the content of the right to life.”
o Legislation fruition of the “right to work” under article 21.
 A concrete legislation for an abstract ‘Right to work.’
o
o
Labour budget:
 Participatory planning of required labour/ person days and respective funds
required to carry out said. [budget planning on a panchayat level]
 Lack of funds makes the act supply-driven not demand driven
Payment date:
 Normally would coincide with credited date
 NREGA -> check handed to the official to begin payment processing
 Credited date hidden in the website.
o
Can a machine learn democracy: