Aruna Roy

India's Right to Information Act of 2005 began with day labourers in rural Rajasthan who suspected they were being cheated on public works wages. Roy, a former civil servant, and her colleagues in the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan, among them Nikhil Dey and Shankar Singh, started holding jan sunwais, public hearings where official muster rolls and bills were read aloud in the village, and workers named the dead people and ghost projects on them. Their demand for copies of those records grew into a state law and then the national act, used by millions of people a year. Dozens of people using it to expose local corruption have since been attacked or killed.