http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/Print/637338.aspxGood time to act
Sanjib Kr Baruah, Hindustan Times
Email Author
December 12, 2010
First Published: 00:05 IST(12/12/2010)
Last Updated: 02:22 IST(12/12/2010)
Good time to act
Five years after it was enacted, the "miracle" Right to Information
Act is empowering people and catalysing change. But while national
impact stories emerging out of RTI applications are celebrated, it
isn't just the city-bred citizen who is discovering skeletons in the
bureaucracy's cupboard by posing awkward questions to the babus.
If right to information (RTI) pleas helped unearth national scams such
as Adarsh Housing Society, the Commonwealth scandal and illegal mining
in Karnataka, in villages and small towns, its deployment is raising
accountability and speeding up change.
A band of inspired individuals from across the country have used the
Act for causes as diverse as making the voice of displaced villagers
heard, to getting basics that urbanites take for granted - passports,
food rations, street lights and sanitation.
Says political analyst Amulya Ganguli: "There is nervousness among
babus that they are being watched. Increasing usage of the law by the
weaker sections of society in rural areas will lead to greater
empowerment. And the good news is that it is happening, albeit
slowly."
The RTI Act emanated from the struggle of peasants and workers in
rural Rajasthan in 1994, which gave birth to the legislation under
justice PB Savant in 1996. It went through several consultations with
the people, before the Act came into existence in 2005.
An estimated 4,00,000 RTI applications were filed from rural India
within two and a half years. About 30% of the rural RTI applicants
were from the economically weaker classes, having an Antodaya ration
card. Nearly 65% had above-poverty-line cards. The rise in awareness
about RTI has sure kept the Central Information Commission busy.
Between April 2006 and August 2010, the RTI Act's apex body disposed
of 54,853 cases. That's an average of 1,035 cases a month, even as the
number of pending cases keep on piling.
Apart from bearing fruit at the community level, the Act is helping
individuals such as Lucknow's Muneer-uddin (67), get their due. After
retiring from Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, he struggled for five
years to get his pension sanctioned. After filing an RTI application,
all it took was a couple of weeks.
"There is no doubt that the use of the act is spreading at the
grassroots," says Sudha Pai, professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University,
Delhi.
Chennai-based columnist Cho Ramaswamy believes that the impact of the
Act is yet to be realised. "Its spread has been hampered by cynicism,
especially among the educated public. What purpose will the Act serve,
people think." Not everyone is seeing it that way as Ramaswamy.
Akhil Gogoi, 34, a poor farmer's son from upper Assam, has made the
RTI a sharp-edged weapon in his fight against corruption and
malpractices, giving a voice to the state's till-now voiceless
peasantry.
"The struggle has given a new credo to Assam's villagers: seek
transparency and demand accountability," says Gogoi.
It hasn't been smooth sailing everywhere. In Jammu and Kashmir, for
instance, in the absence of a state information commission, which the
government is unable to constitute for political reasons, the Act has
become a toothless tiger, says Jammu-based RTI activist Raman Sharma.
That RTI has set the cat among the pigeons can be gauged from the
number of activists murdered or persecuted across the nation.
Yet the battle for information rights is far from over. The
bureaucracy is divided with one group straining to make itself as
transparent as possible while the other keen that nothing is revealed
to the public.
Poor awareness of the Act and the complicated procedure are the other
stumbling blocks. But even threats of bodily harm haven't deterred the
rural whistle-blowers. The information juggernaut is rolling.
The postman rang again to deliver their passports
Raman Sharma social worker, Jammu
Running from pillar to post to get their passports issued, Mukhtiar
Ahmed and others, from a border village in Jammu and Kashmir's Poonch
district used the Right to Information Act. Within 17 days of filing
the application, the local postman delivered their passports.
In 2008, Ahmed came in touch with Jammu-based RTI activist Raman
Sharma, who goaded him to file an application seeking to know the
reason behind the delay in delivery. Before that, the villagers of
Rajpura had never heard of the RTI Act.
Sharma helped Ahmed file the application in September 2008 and the
results were spectacular: on the 17th day, the local postman dropped
in, passport in hand.
Said Abdul Rashid, a local youth who got his passport within days of
filing the RTI plea inspired by Ahmed, "It was a dream come true for
me since I wanted to work in Saudi Arabia. The youth of this border
village never expected such a quick response from the concerned
department. The act is a big boon for common people like us."
She helped unearth embezzled funds for bird flu victims
Dipti Patra homemaker Kalyani, West Bengal
By launching the organisation Indian People's Right For Information
and Democracy, Patra has used the RTI Act to change the lives of
people in the semi-urban and rural tracts of West Bengal.
In September 2010, she came to know that the sub-divisional officer,
Kalyani, had made a mess of funds allotted for those affected due to
bird flu culling. She filed an RTI plea seeking the audit inspection
report.
"The official's first response was incomplete, misleading and
brusque," said Patra.
After she pointed to the absence of etiquette and respect for the
dignity of the applicant in another letter, the tone changed.
The second response revealed gross embezzlement of funds allotted as
culling compensation for countering avian influenza.
"The BDO, Haringhata, had made excess and unauthorised payment of Rs 6
lakh and the Kalyani municipality, too, had made excess and
unauthorised payment of Rs 84,500," she said.
A departmental inquiry has been initiated against officers responsible
for the embezzlement of funds.
From solar lights to water pipes, RTI has empowered
Muzzafar Bhat doctor-turned-activist Drag, J&K
Residents of Drag, in Kashmir's Budgam district, 44 kilometre west of
Srinagar, have unleashed an 'RTI jihad'. The empowering act for
transparency has helped people hold government officials accountable.
Over the last three years, the district's remotest corners have
witnessed a number of workshops on the RTI Act led by Dr Muzzafar
Bhat, 32, who left his medical practice to become an RTI activist. He
organises at least three seminars in remote villages a week to spread
awareness about RTI's liberating powers.
From discovering the reasons behind the drowning of two children in a
public construction company-built entrench in Batapora village,
distribution of solar lights, containing timber smuggling and laying
of water pipes, the Right to Information Act has empowered Budgam's
ordinary people.
"Earlier, government officials were accountable only to the police and
vigilance but the RTI Act has made them accountable to people too,"
said Bhat.
"It can help in good governance. Merely casting the vote is not
democracy...What 1,000 people can't do, a single application can
achieve."
Residents resort to RTI for roads, cleanliness
Vallabh Pandey, Resident Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh
When it was built in 2000, the Om Nagar colony in eastern Uttar
Pradesh's Varanasi had good roads and functional streetlights. The
civic authorities kept the environs clean. By 2007, the streetlights
had vanished, the roads were in decay and the cleaning by the
municipal officials stopped.
Using the right to information, residents of this 400 household
locality managed to return to a time when the colony is a role model
for others in the temple city.
In 2010, the streetlights have resumed functioning and the cleaning is
done on a regular basis. Interestingly, the services were discharged
even before the respective departments revealed the information sought
in the RTI pleas.
"After Om Nagar was built, there was a sharp decline in maintenance
standards. We filed two applications at the municipality and
electricity departments. Things were revamped in a few days," said
Vallabh Pandey, one of the residents.
"Ever since we sought information through RTI, this area is getting
better attention from the concerned departments."
Restoring supply of food rations that never arrived
Rambabu resident Hardoi, Uttar Pradesh
Villagers of Almapur in western Uttar Pradesh's Hardoi district
realised the efficacy and effectiveness of RTI as a tool for
empowerment when they used it to probe the non-availability of monthly
rations under the public distribution scheme.
The Below-Poverty-Line families led by Rambabu, a local villager,
sought information under the Right to Information Act from the food
supply department. The villagers found that the supply was not
provided despite being mentioned in stock and distribution registers.
The application for the RTI forced apathetic local officials to probe
the entire functioning of the supply department. Not just this, stocks
of the prior six months were also released at one go.
All it took was filing of RTI applications and two months of intense
follow-ups, aided by local RTI activists.
"We came to know that the supply was released from the ration depots
but did not reach the families, these were meant for. It was only with
the help of the RTI and the subsequent struggle of a couple of months
that we received our rations. That too, well in time," said Rambabu.
Evicted tribals discover govt land can't be sold
Sunnam Venkatramanna activist, Kalyani, West Bengal
Tired of a nomadic existence, T Krishna, 42, a Lambadi tribal and 12
of his clansmen got together to build 13 mud-and-thatch huts on land
earmarked for grazing on the outskirts of a town, which is a part of
the Integrated Tribal Development Agency in Bhadrachalam, Andhra
Pradesh.
Working as a coolie, Krishna had saved Rs 18,000 while the other
families had pooled similar amounts by selling firewood, or working in
a paper factory. On August 18, a few influential neighbours laid claim
to the land and got the homesteaders evicted with help from the
police.
That is when they decided to put the RTI Act to use. Within a week
Krishna got a reply, confirming what they always knew. Their houses
were built on agency land, which belonged to government and that it
couldn't be bought or sold. Encouraged, Krishna is seeking damages
from the people who demolished the huts.
"RTI has emboldened other tribal people to approach the information
commission for redressal of their grievances on land," said Sunnam
Venkatramanna, state secretary of the Adivasi Samkshema Parishat.
With Ashok Das in Hyderabad, Peerzada Ashiq in Srinagar, Arteev Sharma
in Jammu, Snigdhendu Bhattacharya in Kolkata, Arshi Rafique in
Lucknow, and Gulam Jeelani in Lucknow
Whistleblowers who lost their lives
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