Jayashree J.N is a representative of today's woman, who is ready to raise a voice against the corruptions in society and at the same being a good partner to her husband and family. Married to an IAS officer M.N.Vijayakumar of Karnataka Cadre she had been silently supporting in his fight against corruption. However, recently, as his fight against corruption has resulted in harassment and threats, she actively take up the issues he has raised by mobilizing like-minded persons throughout the country.

Jayashree J.N talks to Oneindia.in in an exclusive interview about her website to fight corruption and other adventurous but, noble activities.

The wives of many Civil Officers are reluctant to indulge in activities against authorities. As one of the rare personalities among them, what is your experience?
I think the best explanation is given by a lady IAS officer . (See this link: http://fightcorruption.wikidot.com/)

Because of this I want to add the following: only when all members of a family are above board, the wife gets courage to take up such activities. As can be seen when the authorities fail to find fault with a honest officer they start targeting other family members. My case is no exception. But I am trying to make use of such obstacles to move forward in my fight against corruption.

What was the major incident that prompted you to take action against corruption?

	The fact that a gunman accompanies my husband 24 hours a day clearly indicate that things have not improved.

When I learnt that the people against whom my husband is fighting were not only very corrupt but are of such a type that they would not hesitate to fatally harm my husband! This got confirmed when I was directly threatened on 28/3//07 and by a warning given by a retired Chief Secretary informing me in person that the persons against whom we are fighting would decimate us. Looking back it now appears that it was more a threat than a warning. Immediately I decided to make my husband's fight against corruption public by creating the website. This I thought is much better than crying for justice after losing my husband. I independently took up the issues he raised using the RTI Act.

What were the initial hurdles to your activities?
When we fight corrupt people who have money power, political power and muscle power, we naturally face more and more hurdles as each day passes. The type of problems we faced and are still facing itself is too long to be given here. Some of it are given in my website. We have faced all the hurdles a genuine whistle blower faces anywhere in the world and many more because India does not have a Whistle blower's protection Act.

The fact that a gunman accompanies my husband 24 hours a day clearly indicate that things have not improved. However, such a protection is given to him only in his place of work . Other members of the family are given protection in the form of a beat-book kept outside my house. Even when the house was locked for many days the beat-book showed everything was Ok. I have given scanned pages taken from the beat-book in my website (http://fightcorruption.wikidot.com/beatbook )

Can you tell something about your interest in RTI?
Not many people know that my husband implemented giving information to public through computarised booth at Dharwad way back in 1992. At that point of time nobody in most parts of the world including India was talking about giving information to public.

So when one of the Chief Secretaries, who protected corrupt officers continued to trouble my husband and did not care when my husband informed that his life is under threat, I decided it is high time to expose her functioning. Finally it turned out that one of the corrupt officers was very closely related!!

“Honest officers with the backing of his family members need not remain voiceless.” Read Jayashree's views on whistle blowers in the next page.

Tags: exclusive interview, jayashree j n, m n vijayakumar, ias officer, fight corruption, rti act, whistle blower, dhanyasree m.