Whistle-blowers the fourth pillar

Kisan Baburao Hazare (Anna) is a social activist, who has led many, grassroots movements to promote rural development, and increase government transparency. He led many grassroots movements demanding investigations into the misdeeds of those in public office.

He has undertaken frequent hunger strikes reminiscent of Mahatma Gandhi and is known for the contribution he has made, to the development of Ralegaon Siddhi, a village in Parner taluka of Ahmednagar district, Maharashtra. In recognition of his services to the nation was awarded with the prestigious Padma Bhushan.

More recently, in 2011, he hit the headlines by sitting on a hunger strike to pressure on the Indian government to enact a stringent anti-corruption law, (the Lokpal Bill) which would create an authority empowered, to deal with corruption in public places. His action triggered nationwide protests and, finally, the central government accepted Hazare's demands and ordered the constitution of a joint committee of Parliament to study the proposal.

I had the extraordinary good fortune of having had a personal relationship with him during my years as Additional Sectary dealing with Land Resources in the Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India. In fact, I had to send a team of staff to assist Anna Saheb in setting his house in order as, submerged as he was in his service - oriented activities, book-keeping accounting and audit of his office was totally neglected. I recall with fondness and pride the many frank and forthright discussions we often had on several important national issues.

Subramanian Swamy, a colourful figure who apparently revels in controversy, is an Indian economist, mathematician and politician who is currently a member of the Rajya Sabha.

He was the President of the Janata Party until it merged with the Bharatiya Janta Party.

He has also served as a member of the Planning Commission of India and was a Cabinet Minister in the short lived Chandra Shekar government.

He was a member of a Group of Eminent Persons who were call to Geneva to prepare a report of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTD) on Economic Cooperation between Developing cover Countries. He also simplified trade procedures and formulated new export strategy which became the forerunners of trade reforms subsequently. During the P.V. Narasimha Rao government, he was also appointed as Chairman of the Commission on Labour Standards and International Trade.

Subramanian Swamy's career started with his involvement in the Sarvodaya movement, which was an apolitical movement but which formed the foundation of the creation of Janata Party later. Swamy during this time described Sonia Gandhi, Jayalalithaa and Mayawati as "three great ladies" and compared them with Lakshmi, Saraswati and Durga respectively. The real turn in his political career came after his sacking from IIT.

Liberal economic policies put forward by him didn't go well with the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi who discredited him as 'Santa Claus with unrealistic ideas'. He was later expelled from Indian Institute of Technology. This marked the beginning of his active political career. He was a staunch opponent of Indira Gandhi and right wing political party Bharatiya Jana Sangh sent him to Rajya Sabha – the upper house of Indian Parliament.

During the period of the Emergency, he fled to the United States, seeking haven with an Indian businessman in Michigan who had become the spokesperson of the opposition in the United States. In 1976, when the Emergency was still in force and an arrest warrant had been issued in his name, Swamy came to Parliament to attend the session and managed to escape India after the session was adjourned. This act of defiance was well received in the eyes of opposition parties. Swamy was one of the founding members of the Janata Party and served as its president till 2013.

Arvind Kejriwal is an Indian politician who is the Chief Minister of Delhi since February 2015. He previously served as Chief Minister from December 2013 to February 2014, stepping down after 49 days. He was the national convener of the Aam Aadmi Party. His party won the 2015 Delhi Assembly elections with a majority, obtaining 67 out of 70 assembly seats.

Kejriwal is a graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, and worked in the Indian Revenue Service as a Joint Commissioner of the Income Tax Department in New Delhi.

In 2006, Kejriwal was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Emergent Leadership recognising his involvement in the grassroots movement Parivartan using right-to-information legislation in a campaign against corruption. The same year, after resigning from the IRS, he donated his Magsaysay award money as a corpus fund to found the Public Cause Research Foundation, a non-governmental organisation (NGO).

In December 1999, while still in service with the Income Tax Department, Kejriwal, Manish Sisodia and others found a movement named Parivartan (which means "change"), in the Sundar Nagar area of Delhi. A month later, in January 2000, Kejriwal took a sabbatical from work to focus on Parivartan.

Parivartan addressed citizens' grievances related to Public Distribution System (PDS), public works, social welfare schemes, income tax and electricity. It was not a registered NGO - it ran on individual donations, and was characterised as a jan andolan ("people's movement") by its members.

Along with other social activists like Anna Hazare, Aruna Roy and Shekhar Singh, Kejriwal came to be recognised as an important contributor to the campaign for a national-level Right to Information Act (enacted in 2005).

Public Cause Research Foundation
In December 2006, Kejriwal established the Public Cause Research Foundation in December 2006, together with Manish Sisodia and Abhinandan Sekhri. He donated his Ramon Magsaysay Award prize money as a seed fund.

In 2011, Kejriwal joined several other activists, including Anna Hazare and Kiran Bedi, to form the India Against Corruption (IAC) group. The IAC demanded enactment of the Jan Lokpal Bill, which would result in a strong ombudsman. The campaign evolved into the 2011 Indian anti-corruption movement
Amid continuing protests, the Government constituted a committee to Draft a Jan Lokpal Bill.