Aruna Roy – An Indian political and social activist

“You can never evaluate anything that is standing from the outside; you must first evaluate yourself.”

Aruna Roy (born May 26, 1946) is an Indian political and social activist who co-founded Mazdoor ‘Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS), a grassroots social organization for the empowerment of workers and peasants together with Shankar Singh, Nikhil Dev , and others. MKSS was a major civil rights movement in India and helped pass India’s ‘Right to Information Act’, an important step in reducing the country’s corruption and promoting government transparency.

For 6 years, she served as a civil servant in the Indian Administrative Service. In 1974, she left political service to join the Social Work and Research Center (SWRC), a rural development organization in Tilonia, Rajasthan, founded by her husband Bunker Roy, who is also an Indian social activist and educator. Over time, he founded MKSS, an organization dedicated to empowering workers and farmers and also increasing the accountability of local governments. She has been associated with various campaigns, including the Right to Information Act, the Right to Work (then REGA), and the Right to Food. She has been honored with the Raman Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership and the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Award for Excellence in Public Administration, Academia and Management. He served as a member of the National Advisory Council of India until 2006 and is part of the NAC (National Advisory Council) II. It was incorporated into the National Advisory Committee in 2004, which was created by the then government of Congress.

As a member of Pension Parishad, he participated in the campaign for a universal, non-contributory pension for workers in the unorganized sector and the NCPRI for the approval and enactment of the Whistleblower Protection Act and the Claims Remedy Act. In 2011, the Times magazine named her one of the ‘100 Most Influential People in the World’.

Vital injury– Leaders like her are always part of the problem-solving process.

• They sharply identify the problem,

• analyze it,

• try to find the root cause of the problem,

• create all possible alternative solutions to solve the problem,

• analyze the strengths and weaknesses of each solution,

• select the best possible,

• implement the idea

• And at regular intervals, they receive appropriate feedback by monitoring the implementation process.

• If the solution is implemented properly, they plan the next course of action; otherwise, they try to find better alternatives to solve the problem until they achieve their goals, but do not give up until the problem is solved. Like her, we should all try to be part of the solution and not apart from the solution.