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April 2009 Edition

 

Rita Anand

PERHAPS no other law has grabbed the urban middle class as much as the Right to Information Act. For the first time in 60 years, well off people sought to use a law to improve governance and make themselves accountable as citizens.

By and large, the middle class views most legislation with some distant amusement. Most laws are seen as populist measures thought up by governments for the rural areas which means for the poor somewhere out there. These are schemes the government rashly committed itself to, you will hear people say. Money will be gobbled by corruption. That's how it works, they shrug.

With RTI things have been different. The law more or less met with approval. It didn't pinch middle class pockets and then there was the delicious possibility of getting the recalcitrant bureaucracy to mend its ways.

In reality, RTI bridged the rural-urban divide. The right to information movement originated in villages. In Maharashtra, it was Anna Hazare who demanded transparency and accountability from the government. The bureaucracy are the servants of the people, he asserted, their salaries came from our money. In Rajasthan, Aruna Roy and her group the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS) led an energetic movement asking that government files be opened for public scrutiny.

The RTI Bill too was drawn up by grassroots activists under the banner of the National Campaign for People's Right to Information (NCPRI). It was the Maharashtra RTI law which was minutely scrutinized and improved upon.

When activists were satisfied that they had put all they wanted into the draft Bill, it was placed before the National Advisory Council (NAC) headed by Sonia Gandhi. It helped that Aruna Roy and Jean Dreze were members. Activist groups stepped up meetings and rallies punctuated by song, music and the RTI slogan: Hamara paisa, hamara hisaab. The RTI Bill became law and is applicable in all states except Jammu and Kashmir.

There was also a transfer of skills from rural to urban. Methods used by MKSS in villages like the jan sunwai (public hearing) and social audit were passed on to Parivartan for use in Delhi's slums and colonies.

Apply, get reply

Since the RTI Act became law it has been used by the middle class to get information on personal issues like finding out about passports, exam mark sheets and voter identity cards stuck in various government departments. Residents of colonies in Delhi used RTI to find out about broken roads, overflowing sewage pipes, absent sweepers, streetlights on the blink, from the municipality. Just filing an RTI was often enough. Sweepers suddenly arrived to work, roads got repaired or a nervous engineer turned up much to the RTI applicant's delight.

Middle class activists also used the RTI law to uncover corruption in public works and siphoning of funds, thereby rendering service to society. Heroes, young and idealistic, emerged. The RTI movement will always remember Satyendra Dubey, the young engineer who worked for the National Highways Authority of India and was killed for exposing corruption in road building.

In Delhi, it was Parivartan with its leader, Arvind Kejriwal, who bridged the rich-poor divide and led by example. Parivartan began using the Delhi RTI Act before the Union law came into effect. The group chose Sundernagari, a slum in east Delhi, to change the sorry surroundings of residents. Parivartan exposed widespread corruption in public works and in the functioning of the public distribution system. The fight here was bloody but successful. Sundernagari became a model to be emulated.

Arvind and Parivartan reached out to Delhi's Residents' Welfare Associations (RWAs) offering help in using RTI. If you didn't draft your questions right, you would not get the information you were seeking, he says. A helpline was set up. People, on their own, approached Parivartan for guidance.

Arvind and Parivartan reached out to Delhi's Residents' Welfare Associations (RWAs) offering help in using RTI. If you didn't draft your questions right, you would not get the information you were seeking, he says. A helpline was set up. People, on their own, approached Parivartan for guidance. Arvind thinks it was really the spread of success stories which inspired people to go out and do something. "For 65 years nothing worked in governance.The middle class was cynical. That is over," he says.

Information about RTI spread quickly. If you Google the Internet today you will come across a flood of websites on RTI in India. There is no dearth of information. You can get help from community portals to fill up forms or to file a complaint if you did not get the information that you wanted.

The bureaucracy

If you are denied the information that you seek or you do not get what you were asking for, you can appeal to your State Information Commission or the Central Information Commission.

Appeal applications have been piling up, a sign of success, for it shows people are willing to doggedly pursue the information they seek.

But the information commissioners are not disposing of these cases. As a result, the RTI applicant is not getting justice and is feeling let down.

This grievance redressal system was set up by those who drafted the law. "But we are not responsible for the kind of people being appointed to head the information commissions. Unless the right people are chosen this will be a loss of opportunity for the government," says Arvind.

One state government appointed a retired IAS officer accused of corruption to head the commission, he points out. In November, another information commissioner disposed of 30 cases in the whole month. According to Arvind’s calculations, “it takes 10 minutes to dispose of a case, so he did 30 minutes of work.” Another information commissioner openly said he was a retired man so he had not come to the commission to work!

Under the RTI law a committee has to be set up to oversee appointments. But Rules have not been drafted. Arvind says these Rules must be drawn up to provide clarity. Eminence should be defined. He suggests a 'search committee' of 15 to 20 people which would invite names to head the commissions in an open, transparent manner.

Bureaucrats can also be considered. RTI is not about a people versus bureaucracy fight, according to him. There are good officials and bad ones just like in any office. After all, what is the bureaucracy? It is the middle class. It is you and me. Nearly every middle class home has a relative or a friend who works for the government.

Government officials have been enthusiastic users of RTI, especially when their own interests are involved like finding out about their transfers, appointments, medical benefits or housing. Yet, if an ordinary middle class guy asks for information, the same bureaucrat thinks RTI is a headache.

Till date RTI has not been used to embarrass any political party or politician. For that matter, nobody has been punished for not giving information either. But a law takes a while to change deep-seated attitudes. The fact that RTI has people in the middle class who use it to good effect has a significance that goes beyond what we may be able to assess right now.

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