Nikhil Dey

Founder

Founder of Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS)

Photo: Wikimedia (CC BY-SA)

Nikhil Dey is the founder of Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS) (1990)[1], an Indian non-profit working on human rights and livelihood from Devdungri.

Nikhil Dey is an Indian social activist and a founding member of the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS), a workers' and peasants' organisation based in Rajasthan that is best known for the campaign that led to India's Right to Information Act.

He has been a full-time worker with MKSS since 1990 and has taken part in its campaigns for the right to information, the right to work and the right to food, as well as in local struggles over land and the payment of minimum wages.

Career

Dey was born in 1963. After a brief period working with the Kheduth Mazdoor Chetna Sangathana in Madhya Pradesh, he joined Aruna Roy and Shankar Singh in 1987 in moving to Devdungri in Rajsamand district, Rajasthan, where they and others helped to form the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan. He has worked full time for the organisation since 1990, which takes decisions collectively.

MKSS grew out of demands for the payment of minimum wages to rural workers and went on to lead the campaign for the Right to Information Act. Dey has also worked with the Suchna Evum Rozgar Adhikar Abhiyan and the National Campaign for People's Right to Information, and on campaigns around the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, the Lokpal Bill and the right to food.

He worked with the Rajasthan government on its Jan Soochna portal for the proactive disclosure of information, and has appeared on the television programme Satyamev Jayate to discuss the right to information alongside Aruna Roy and others. He is a co-author, with Aruna Roy and Rakshita Swamy, of the book We The People.

Recognition

In December 2023 Dey was named an International Anti-Corruption Champion by the United States Department of State, receiving the recognition from Secretary of State Antony Blinken at an event in Washington, D.C. on 7 December 2023. He was recognised for building worker and peasant empowerment campaigns that exposed corruption in the delivery of government services, and was the first Indian to be given the award.[2][3][4][5]

Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS)

Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan is a grassroots workers' and farmers' organisation headquartered in Devdungri, Rajasthan, founded in 1987. It pioneered public hearings and social audits that fed directly into the drafting of India's 2005 Right to Information Act and later helped institutionalise social audits under MGNREGA, and it continues to campaign on transparency, wage justice and democratic accountability.