Ashish Chaturvedi: Crusading against Vyapam, an education and recruitment scam in Madhya Pradesh in which thousands of students have allegedly been admitted to government colleges in exchange for cash, in collusion with government officials

It's a sunny afternoon at New Delhi's All-India Institute of Medical Sciences. In the belly of this bustling micropolis, inside its relatively muted administrative wing, resident fire-starter Sanjiv Chaturvedi is gazing vacantly at the most "important" document that will reach his desk this week-a request for stay in the hospital guesthouse. India's most celebrated Forest Service officer, with a Ramon Magsaysay Award to go with a Manjunath Shanmugam Integrity Award, Chaturvedi was relentlessly exposing one corruption scandal after another in the AIIMS campus while on deputation as the institute's chief vigilance officer between 2012 and 2014. It made him an object of unease for some, and won him immense goodwill from some others, which is evident by how numerous junior staff members offer to take you right to his door when you ask for directions to his office. But since last year, even though he brought an unprecedented 78 wrongdoers to book during his two-year stint, Chaturvedi has been reduced to dealing with meaningless files as a deputy secretary in the institute. He neither has any real work nor any powers. A request for his move to Arvind Kejriwal's Delhi government as an officer on special duty is yet to be granted by the Narendra Modi regime, which has been steadfastly promising the shift since February, and just as steadfastly not signing off on it.

Sanjiv Chaturvedi: Crusading against corruption in government- from forest conservation in Haryana to AIIMS, New Delhi Sanjiv Chaturvedi: Crusading against corruption in government- from forest conservation in Haryana to AIIMS, New Delhi

This is not the first time that Chaturvedi has been punished for his "disruptive" nature. Given the bogus charges he's had to face over the last decade-bribery, theft, even abetment to suicide-being relegated to doing pointless paperwork is a minor chastisement. But more on that later.

Chaturvedi is one of a rare breed of campaigners, both inside and outside government, which is striving tirelessly to expose systemic corruption in public life and challenging a culture of complicity. They come from across the length and breadth of our land, linked by a seamless network of WhatsApp groups and late-night phone calls that allows them to draw strength from one another. They have taken on wrongdoing at various levels of public administration, often putting themselves at grave personal risk. They have helped unearth a series of big-ticket scams in recent years-from Vyapam in Madhya Pradesh to the alleged disproportionate assets of top politicians in Uttar Pradesh, from Adarsh in Maharashtra to a transport lobby in Haryana, and from illicit mining in Gujarat to a spurious drugs racket in New Delhi. They're well aware that several of their ilk-Indian Engineering Service officer Satyendra Dubey, who was fighting corruption in the Golden Quadrilateral highway project in Bihar, and Indian Oil Corporation manager S. Manjunath, who had sealed a petrol pump in Uttar Pradesh for selling adulterated fuel-have been brutally silenced for their agitation. Yet these crusaders fight on, taking inspiration rather than anxiety from those who lost their lives.

They are often described as whistle-blowers, but they're more than that. "Whistle-blowers blow the whistle and run away. We're here, out in the open, on the front lines," Chaturvedi says. So how to aptly describe them? In a country still suffering under the yoke of corruption 68 years after Independence, they are the new freedom fighters.

Power of information

The need for this small but growing cult of whistle-blowers stems from an opaque and secretive socio-political culture that stemmed partly due to scarcity of resources, and partly due to vested interests in commercial contracts during the Licence Raj. It led to corruption in the smallest civic functions-such as telephone allotments, cooking-gas connections, school admissions, hospital beds-to larger scams in construction, transport, procurement of natural resources, and so on. While corruption in civic amenities affected the aam aadmi, and could be theoretically exposed by anyone, bigger scandals could only be revealed by government officials privy to such sensitive information.

Prashant Pandey and Anand Raj: Crusading against corruption in admissions and job recruitment Prashant Pandey and Anand Raj: Crusading against corruption in admissions and job recruitment

Over the last decade, this gap has been bridged, largely through the Right to Information Act, 2005. With this legislation, a common citizen is able to inquire about government spending, examine transactions for proof of wrongdoing, and then take the culprits to court. This environment of transparency has been supported by all the four Estates. Parliament has pushed the Whistle-Blowers Protection Act, 2011, which, although controversial, attempts to offer protection to insiders who expose wrongdoing in government departments. The Supreme Court too has observed that it is okay for whistle-blowers to reveal sensitive government documents if the idea is to protect public interest. To complement their efforts, an energetic, and sometimes over-invasive, media has developed a proclivity for hard-hitting debates and sting operations. But despite all this, our system by and large still ends up favouring protectionism over accountability. This is where our 'new freedom fighters' step in.

Even in the far more transparent United States, for example, Julian Assange and Edward Snowden have been path-breakers-not because of the information they leaked, but because they could locate their facts in the bigger story. It's when a small complaint is reflective of a larger phenomenon that whistle-blowing is music.

Ratna Ala: Crusading against poor condition of roads in his village and misuse of village pasture land by illegal miners Ratna Ala: Crusading against poor condition of roads in his village and misuse of village pasture land by illegal miners

Ratna Ala, for example, is the 36-year-old son of a shepherd from Rangpar village in the Wankaner taluka of Morvi district in western Gujarat. He has been blind since birth but can read and write in Braille. In 2006, while listening to a radio programme about the RTI Act, Ala immediately thought about a two-kilometre stretch on the road that connected his village to the highway. The road was potholed, and encroached upon by thorny Babool bushes, making it hard for him to navigate it without help. When he finally got an RTI reply from his tehsil, he learnt that, on paper, the road had been repaired twice in the last two years. He took his findings to a local newspaper, which splashed the story, and soon the road was being repaired and relaid by a government that was forced to spring to action. Today, Rangpar is serviced by a smooth winding road that is repaired routinely.

Vindicated and emboldened, Ala decided to use RTI as a weapon to right several wrongs-in 2007, he prevented 281 acres of the village grazing land from being handed over to a clock factory by local officials without permissions from the state government; in 2011, he found 154 bogus names in the voters' list for the sarpanch elections in his village; and, in 2014, busted a fledgling illegal mining racket, withstanding threats to life and refusing bribes. Ala, who is now Rangpar's deputy sarpanch, asks, "Who needs eyes to have a vision?"

Run ragged

The idea of the whistle-blower is, at its heart, a romantic one. A solitary warrior, braving the odds, falling and getting up, slaying the demon. It's stuff of legend that mythology, literature, and cinema thrive on. In reality, however, the stories of whistle-blowers are often painfully ordinary. "Whistle-blowers are treated as troublemakers rather than heroes in our country," says social commentator Santosh Desai. "They are threatened, discredited, ostracised.

Kamlesh Verma: Took on former UP CM Mayawati by filing a case alleging improper sale of land by the state government to Jaypee Group in the Taj Corridor Kamlesh Verma: Took on former UP CM Mayawati by filing a case alleging improper sale of land by the state government to Jaypee Group in the Taj Corridor

They end up going to court every day, day after day. Their stories are not always spectacular enough to spark a revolution." Whistle-blowing in India is less about the Power of One and more about the anxiety of what will happen to the One Who Dares.

In spite of this, there is a bunch of activists which puts itself in the line of fire by directly taking on top politicians. One of them is Vishwanath Chaturvedi. Now 49 years old, the former Congress sympathiser lives on the first floor of a humble two-storey house in West Delhi's Rajinder Nagar. In a room adorned by plastic lilies, an imitation-antique sofa, metal swans and wooden camels-all remnants from middle-class India of the '80s-Chaturvedi sits armed with a stack of legal documents that prcis his story. In 2005, he had filed a case against Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav, current Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, his wife Dimple Yadav, and his stepbrother Prateek Yadav, for allegedly amassing illegal wealth. He got this information through RTI queries and through simple back-of-the-book calculations based on the Yadav family's declared assets with the Election Commission. The Supreme Court called in the CBI in 2007. Hearing has been completed but the judgment has been lying reserved since 2009.

Vishwanath Chaturvedi: Crusading against Political corruption, including a food scam in UP and alleged wealth amassed by SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav Vishwanath Chaturvedi: Crusading against Political corruption, including a food scam in UP and alleged wealth amassed by SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav

Chaturvedi, who hails from Shivgarh, in Congress President Sonia Gandhi's constituency Rae Bareli, has been hounded over the years on various trumped-up charges, some as petty as electricity theft. When threats and crank calls in the middle of the night became a regular feature, he left Uttar Pradesh and fled to New Delhi nine years ago. His fortunes and his mental peace change routinely these days, he says, depending on how cozy or cold the Samajwadi Party is with the central government of the day. When their relations are tense, he gets a 24x7 security guard for protection, as per the Supreme Court's orders. But when they move closer to each other-as has been the case over the last few weeks following Mulayam's tacit support for the Modi government in Parliament and his pulling out of the Janata Parivar alliance in Bihar-the security cover is withdrawn by the home ministry. This August 19, for example, the constable who stands below his house was removed in the middle of the night. Despite repeated requests to North Block, his security hasn't been restored.

"The disproportionate assets case is being used by successive central governments, through their hold over the CBI, as a chip to keep Mulayam in check," Vishwanath Chaturvedi says. "That was not my intention when I filed the case. I was campaigning against what were clear discrepancies in their wealth. But now it's become a political game. I am kicked like a football from one side to the other."

The petition still achieved one important aim-it was instrumental in bringing the wealth accumulated by politicians in Uttar Pradesh into focus, and increasing the pitch on the alleged nexus between leaders and corporate houses in the name of development.

The inside men

The psychology of the whistle-blower-his drive, his resilience-makes for an interesting study. When an inconsequential individual becomes larger than life by taking on the establishment, the transformative experience cannot be underestimated.

Ashok Khemka: Crusading against corruption in public office Ashok Khemka: Crusading against corruption in public office

This is particularly evident in the most audacious variety of whistle-blowers-the ones who take on the government while actively serving in the bureaucracy. IAS officer Ashok Khemka, Sanjiv Chaturvedi, and IPS officer Amitabh Thakur are examples of this breed.

Khemka, now 50, had his first real brush with the symbiotic back-scratching relationship that exists between politicians and bureaucrats barely two years after joining the Haryana government. As the sub-divisional magistrate in Sohana in August 1994, he received an urgent phone call from his deputy commissioner allegedly asking him to "arrange for buses and trucks" for a big political rally in New Delhi.

"Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao was completing three years in office and Bhajan Lal (then the Haryana chief minister) wanted to make a good impression," Khemka recalls. Yet to fully decipher the enigma that government had always been to him, Khemka refused to play ball. And when he was asked to communicate his refusal in writing, he requested the deputy commissioner to first send him written orders. The young officer was immediately summoned to the Haryana Bhawan in Delhi, allegedly subjected to a virulent drubbing by the CM himself, and handed a demotion as an undersecretary with an innocuous desk job in Chandigarh.

Ashish Sagar: Crusading against illegal mining Ashish Sagar: Crusading against illegal mining

It marked the beginning of Khemka's long career as a "difficult officer" who did not "acclimatise with our political and bureaucratic culture". In 2004, after he refused to order the mid-session transfers of schoolteachers and blocked the transfer of 20 acres in Badshahpur to a private realty firm for a paltry Rs 4 crore, Khemka was again transferred to a hitherto non-existent post as OSD (Rules). This would be just another on his long list of transfers and "punishment postings", which at last count stood at 45 over 23 years.

In 2012, Khemka was replaced as Haryana's director general (land consolidation & land records) and inspector general (land registration), after he ordered the cancellation of a real estate deal where DLF was allegedly overgenerous in the price it paid to Sonia Gandhi's son-in-law Robert Vadra. Hugely embarrassing for the UPA government in Delhi, Khemka's expos was deftly used by the BJP to spearhead its poll campaign in Haryana. But the incumbent Manohar Lal Khattar government treated him much in the same manner as its predecessors by transferring him to the state's archaeology and museums department this April, after he exposed gross illegalities in the transport department.

The problem, says Sanjiv Chaturvedi, who calls Khemka his "inspiration", is that the establishment is unable to tolerate any officer who disrupts the status quo. Using an analogy from the Mahabharata, he says, "There are three types of officers. The first kind are like Duryodhan-they willingly partake in all kinds of misdeeds. The second kind are like Bhishm-they're not corrupt themselves, but don't stop others from indulging in corruption. And the third kind are like Arjun-they fight against their own people for what is correct. We have too many Duryodhans and Bhishms, but not enough Arjuns."

A Lucknow boy with a penchant for such lofty prose, Chaturvedi's strength comes as much from his own conviction as it does from his understanding of the service rules that protect the Indian bureaucracy. Despite 12 transfers in five years, one suspension, two chargesheets for removal from service, and false police and vigilance cases, Chaturvedi has not only managed to win all the cases against him in court or at the Central Administrative Tribunal, he has also managed to secure a change of cadre from Haryana to Uttarakhand this August, citing "extreme hardship" in his home state.

SK Lamba: Crusading against corruption in Adarsh Housing Society SK Lamba: Crusading against corruption in Adarsh Housing Society

At AIIMS, he busted an illegal drugs racket by catching a local medical shop selling spurious drugs at inflated prices to poor patients under the aegis of hospital officials and local politicians. As part of his operation, a van laden with drugs worth Rs 6 crore was seized, leading to a larger expose. The Magsaysay Award in Manila on August 31 was the cherry on top.

Death threats and punishment postings are now a matter of course for Chaturvedi, who says the keys to his mental peace are a simple life (he doesn't own a car, his home in AIIMS has sparse furniture) and regular entertainment (he is a "filmy" who can spout dialogues from Hindi blockbusters at the drop of a hat and watches at least one new release every Friday). On September 21, Chaturvedi donated the Rs 20 lakh he got with his Magsaysay Award to an AIIMS fund for the treatment of poor patients. "When you harass someone, he reaches a point when he's not scared anymore."

Amitabh Thakur: Crusading against corruption in government offices and the land mafia in Noida Amitabh Thakur: Crusading against corruption in government offices and the land mafia in Noida

It's a sentiment shared by Amitabh Thakur, a UP-cadre IPS officer who served as just another "accommodating bureaucrat" for over a decade until a fight over his own study leave at IIM, Lucknow engineered a change of heart in 2007. From an officer who did not shake the status quo, Thakur became a serial litigant, and filed a slew of public interest cases against anyone and anything with the help of his wife Nutan Thakur. This year, he made a huge impact-filing a PIL against Yadav Singh, an engineer from Noida who had allegedly amassed property and wealth worth thousands of crores, purportedly through his links with top Samajwadi Party politicians. Such is Yadav Singh's clout that a CBI probe ordered by the Allahabad High Court was challenged directly by the Akhilesh Yadav government at the state's expense. Thakur, 47, alleges he has been victimised relentlessly since then. He and his wife Nutan, 42, were even booked in a rape case this July, which, he says, is fabricated.

Not enough protection

To protect those exposing wrongdoing, the Whistle-Blowers Protection Act, 2011, was passed by the Lok Sabha on December 27, 2011, by the Rajya Sabha on February 21, 2014 and given the President's assent on May 9, 2014. But it came with riders that threaten to reduce it to a "paper tiger".

Bhadresh Vamja: Crusading against corruption in public distribution system Bhadresh Vamja: Crusading against corruption in public distribution system

Principal among them is the provision to ensure punishment for false or frivolous complaints, which, activists say, make it more of a weapon for the government and less of a shield for whistle-blowers. One more rider is that every complaint has to be filed with the identity of the complainant, which the Vigilance Commission must not share, except, if it deems fit, to the head of the department against which the complaint has been filed. Activists allege that since complaints cannot be anonymous, whistle-blowers are open to the potential risk of being discovered by people with influence. Another drawback is that the act only covers employees working with the Government of India, and does not hold jurisdiction over state employees.

Instead of strengthening its powers, an amendment bill, tabled by the NDA government this May, could weaken the act even further. If it is passed, whistle-blowers will no longer be able to provide documents and information protected under the Official Secrets Act, 1923, putting classified documents out of their reach. Further, there will be no time limit to determine whether certain documents fall in the exempted category, making it easy for officials to put complaints in the cold storage.

Attempts to weaken the act and to dilute the efficacy of the RTI, which allegedly began towards the end of the UPA regime and continued under the NDA, are being seen by activists as a bad omen. They say that RTI inquiries are not properly monitored, penalties are not imposed for violations, and several queries are either denied outright or simply not answered. "Over a 10-year perspective, we have gained in terms of transparency. But over three years, this is being scaled back, says Santosh Desai. "It seems the political establishment felt too much freedom had been given away too easily."

It's evident that our 'new freedom fighters' are forced to battle in an arena where the odds are stacked against them. Like gladiators thrown into a pit of lions, their chances of victory are slim. Little incentive to tell the truth, almost no protection, pressure to co-opt, and the innate fear of retribution are all realities they have to constantly live with. Those who choose to step into the cauldron in spite of these hazards are indeed offering a vital public service. It's not always easy to emulate them. The least one can do is stand by their side.

with Uday Mahurkar, Asit Jolly, Piyush Babele, M.G. Arun and Asmita Bakshi

Follow the writer on Twitter@_kunal_pradhan