Most of us have never had to fight for the rights we take for granted every day.

If a government office refuses to answer a question, we know we can file an application under the Right to Information (RTI) Act. If corruption makes headlines, we expect there to be institutions created under the Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act to investigate those in power. If you live in a state where your language is spoken in government offices, schools, and courts, it probably feels like the most natural thing in the world.

But none of these became part of everyday life overnight.

Behind these rights are ordinary Indians who refused to stay silent. They spent years sitting outside government offices, organised rallies that grew from small village gatherings into nationwide movements and, in some cases, risked their own lives through hunger strikes that changed the course of the country’s history.

Long before these rights were written into law, they were demands raised by people who believed India could be fairer than it was.

In the 1990s, labourers in Rajasthan began asking a simple question. If they had worked on government projects, why had they not been paid the wages they were promised?

The answers lay in government records that officials refused to share. That refusal led to one of independent India’s most influential grassroots movements.

The Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan, known as MKSS, led by Aruna Roy, Nikhil Dey, and Shankar Singh, believed that if public money belonged to the people, then the people had the right to know how it was being spent.

The group began organising jan sunwais, or public hearings, where official records were read aloud before entire villages. As names, bills, and payment records were announced, villagers exposed shocking irregularities. Roads that had never been built had already been paid for. Wages had been issued to workers who did not exist. Public money had disappeared, while those meant to benefit remained empty-handed.

What began as a local campaign soon spread across the country. For nearly a........

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