Exercise your right to know. More you know better is the state of democracy...
   Akhil Gogoi was inspired by the publicity blitzkrieg the government and the NGOs embarked on after the Right to Information (RTI) Act came into force in 2005. But he didn’t know that knowing too much could be hazardous too.
   A year after he exercised his right to know under the RTI Act, the 35-year-old peasant activist of eastern Assam’s Golaghat district is on the run these days. For, he knew too much about the implementation of the government’s rural development schemes.
   “When the District Rural Development Authority (DRDA) opened the muster roll register and cheque release register for me, I found that over Rs 1 crore has been embezzled from allocations for schemes like the Swarnajayanti Grameen Rojgar Yojana (SGRY) and Indira Awas Yojana (IAY),” said Mr Gogoi, who heads the Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti (KMSS) – an organization of farmers.
   He found that Rs 35 lakh had been paid to 12 panchayats for 140 non-existent IAY houses. While going through SGRY documents, he stumbled on a payment of Rs 25 lakh to a fictitious agency for stationery. Besides, an amount of Rs 52 lakh was shown spent for transporting rice meant for Public Distribution System (PDS). The rice never reached the beneficiaries though.
   “The PDS rice disappeared between the Food Corporation of India (FCI) and DRDA warehouses. A local trader bought the rice at Rs 9 per kg for commercial sale, while the government rate is Rs 8 per kg,” said Mr Gogoi. He has been hiding somewhere in a neighbouring district ever since the local panchayat members and some leaders of the ruling Congress allegedly targeted him for “using the RTI Act and exposing embezzlement of government funds”.
Assaulted
   On December 9 last year, the KMSS — led by Mr Gogoi — took out a bicycle rally in Golaghat to protest against corruption by government officials. “The police personnel and Youth Congress (YC) activists assaulted us as the rally was perceived as an attempt to expose the corrupt politicians and government officials,” alleged Mr Gogoi.
   The police are looking for Mr Gogoi too. YC leader Tapan Datta lodged a complaint, alleging that Mr Gogoi and a few other KMSS activists had assaulted him on December 19 last year.