Common man laps up the law

RIGHT TO INFORMATION-III

No matter what prophets of doom have to say about the Right to Information Act, it has caught the imagination of the people across the country in barely nine weeks after coming into force.

Seething with frustration over the state of affairs until recently, civil society is suddenly up on its feet to use the Act as an instrument to re-define governance as it is.

Chimanpada at Marol in Mumbai was not getting a water connection for over a year. Using the RTI Act, two residents ""James John and Ravi Nair ""sought an explanation from the Municipal Corporation, which replied that the permission for digging a road above a pipeline was not being given by the traffic department.

Using the Act again, the two sought an explanation from the traffic department, which said no such permission had ever been sought. This exchange of communication, facilitated by the Act, was enough to shake up the corporation bosses. Chimanpada got its water connection immediately.

In two separate instances, residents of Defence Colony and DDA Flats, Munirka, in New Delhi sought information from the Municipal Corporation about the roads and sewer line projects sanctioned for their areas in the last two years and what their status were. Soon, MCD officials were working overnight in these localities to lay sewer lines and roads, most of which had been completed on paper.

There are hundreds of such instances that speak of a silent revolution in urban India where people have started asserting their rights in terms of civic amenities owing to the RTI Act.

Shekhar Singh of the National Campaign for People's Right to Information (NCPRI) said everyday he was being approached by resident welfare associations from different parts of New Delhi, complaining about problems like electricity, water and roads, and demanding to know how they should use the RTI Act to stir officials into action.

There are instances where women have got registers at ration shops photocopied to check what entries were made and whether they were correct.

The phenomenon is not limited to urban India. Take the example of Kaniram Devasi, an octogenarian from the Oonton Kabadiya village in the Ajmer district of Rajasthan. For him, the RTI Act meant one quintal of wheat delivered at his doorstep within three days of filing an application.

For 10 months, he had been running after officials to find out what had happened to his grain allotment under the Annapurna scheme. Not only did he get his grain delivered at home, but he and his wife also started getting old age pensions. Once again, the RTI Act was the saviour.

But such stories are limited to a few states. In most of the states where NGOs are not active, people, especially in rural areas, remain completely ignorant of the RTI Act.

Central Information Commission authorities concede this but blame it on the central government. The government was bound by the Act to publicise it throughout the country, but it had not happened, said CIC officials.

Nevertheless, if what has happened in the first nine weeks of the Act is any indication, accountability will have a new meaning in modern India, notwithstanding the reluctance of officials to implement it.