Prakash Kardaley

A year back Prakash Kardaley called me up at around 11.00am. I was busy with something and promised to call him after a while. When I called at 12.15pm, he mentioned his face was lathered for a shave. Jokingly he said, “Let us talk, since you cannot see me anyway.” We talked for about 30 to 40 minutes about various issues. Both of us felt we needed to meet and I promised to go down to Pune to meet him from Mumbai within a week for a long discussion about various matters. At about 12.45pm when I put down the phone, I did not know that that was the last time I would talk with him. In less than two hours Vijay Kumbhar called me and said, “Masterji is no more.” It was a shattering blow for many of us in the RTI movement.
I first interacted with Prakash Kardaley on the Humjanenge board. Then we met at the Lonavala RTI activists meeting he had organized in early 2004. He was a passionate, and pragmatic visionary. Prakash bonded RTI activists across the Country, and was very adaptable to change. He could chisel and craft his words with great precision. This led to his analyzing the words in the RTI act with clinical precision, without clouding his judgement . In our initial encounters he would often chide me for not reading the exact words in the Act and letting my emotions dictate my actions and arguments. I am glad I paid attention to those verbal whiplashings. Prakash was a hard taskmaster for those whom he mentored. With Vijay Kumbhar, Shivaji Raut and others I had the privilege of being angrily called ‘Gadhav’ – donkey in Marathi,- by him.
He was one of the pioneers of the RTI movement, who trained many like me. The best tribute we can pay to Prakash Kardaley would be to see the Right to Information movement transforming India’s governance and empowering the poorest Citizen. Let us all commit to make that happen very soon. That would be a worthy tribute for my Guru, mentor and friend Prakash Kardaley.