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RTI a weapon in hands of poor

"It was from the villagers that I learnt that what we need actually is answers from the government," according to Aruna Roy who led the mass movement for a law making the government answerable to the people.
Roy was speaking at a function to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the introduction of the Right to Information Act by the UPA government in 2005.
The RTI Act has changed the way people pursue their problems with the government. Armed with crucial information millions of people have managed to get their due rights from the otherwise stonewalling ways of the government, according to many speakers at the function held at Delhi's Lady Irwin college on October 14 to mark the milestone in India's democratic evolution.
Eight million questions are annually posed to the government by people across the country using the provisions of Right to Information Act. Questions relate to the status of their ration card applications, tender details about certain roads in villages, amount spent on projects, unjust application of state powers and why certain social benefits are being denied. The RTI is now seen as a powerful too in the hands of the citizens. The RTI Act of 2005 replaced the rather sterile Freedom of Information Act of 2002.

What is RTI?The Right to Information Act, 2005 is a law that makes it mandatory for the public officials to reply to questions from citizens within 30 days. If they fail to give information, they should state the grounds for the same. That action can be appealed at another level.

Aruna Roy who first led a movement to establish such a law to replace the ineffective Freedom of Information Act, said that many people told here that she would not live to see such an act . Now, armed with such an act villagers now see this as a powerful tool against state machinery, Roy said.
The RTI Act, along with acts like the Right to Education, and the Rural Employment Act, is seen as major achievement of Sonia Gandhi who headed the National Advisory Council, which in turn served as a lobby group which influenced policy making during the two terms of the Manmohan Singh government. Aruna Roy, economist Jean Drieze and others were the prime movers of such revolutionary acts, which focused on giving more powers and money to the poor.
It is mandatory for any government department to provide answers to citizens queries within 30 days in most cases and 35 days if the query is passed on to higher authorities like the state's public information officer. Only Rs10 need be paid along with the questions for the government.
According to Roy, one of the major benefits of the act was to see that FIRs are filed properly which would give a chance for the prosecution to pursue the case in courts. Earlier FIRs were always filed casually and most of them stated that though an incident had happened, there were no witnesses and no one knew who the culprits were in any criminal incident. "All this has changed now. The RTI has become a democratic instrument in the hands of the poorest" Roy. who won the Magsaysay award in 2000 for community leadership and who started her career as an IAS officer in 1968, said.
The task of empowering the citizens of the country will only be complete when acts like the Whistleblowers Act are passed in Parliament, according to Roy.
Gopalkrishna Gandhi who also spoke at the function said that it was Jayaprakash Narayan who led the Sarvodaya movement, who first focused on the fact that it is answers from the government, that the country needs. Gandhi also advised that the act should not be misused or wasted by asking irrelevant questions.
He said that the RTI Act has to be further empowered by bringing corporates too under its ambit. He quoted the instance of the BCCI which has huge funds and is based on public support, uses government infrastructure but is not answerable to the public. "Corporate donation to political parties is at the root of all corruption," Gandhi said.
Gandhi reminded that 45 RTI activists have been killed over the last 10 years showing how powerful a weapon it is and how various elements have stake in institutionalized corruption.
The RTI has become both a reform and a revolution. Government officers now are more prone to deal with complaints, rather than arrogantly refuse. Governance itself has changed in many ways and most answers satisfy the needs of the questioner. Only negative fallout is that many officers try to keep written complaints and other such details off the record and prefer to deal orally with the public fearing that they will be hauled up later for inaction or corruption.
RTI has also become a boon for journalists. Various exclusives about misuse of funds, lack of action and governmental lethargy have been published forcing bureaucrats to be on their toes. Governance has improved considerably. Whether corruption itself has declined is difficult to figure out, but for the poor the RTI has become a weapon to force the government to act.
In the evolution of Indian democracy and governance in the last decade, the RTI no doubt has played a stellar role.

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