RTIA : The journey begins

By Aruna Roy

More than six months into the implementation of the National Right to Information Act, we have stories of successes and failures, debates and complaints coming in from all parts of the country. Active groups analyse the various sections, sub sections, rules and rulings of the Commissioners of Information. Trainings and social audit processes, meetings, seminars, reports, campaigns, and debates in the legislature and in the media around the RTI are now regular occurrences. There is an ongoing debate about the hopes of the RTI Act has kindled and the deliberate attempts to scuttle its scope. In the debate about whether the national law will change the way our democracy functions or whether it is just a piece of paper, it is crucial that we take into account the foundations on which this law has been built.

This decade of struggle and the use of the right to information in India, has been an interesting dialectic between legislative entitlements and their implementation. The process has demonstrated the power of democratic participation of people in policy making and the delivery of services. It has been a long journey from the early days of asking to see the muster rolls for payment of minimum wages, to the current debates on the disclosure on file notings. This journey itself is significant and should lead us to understand that the passage of the national law is only one important phase in a continually evolving democratic process.

When minimum wages continues to be denied to workers who put in more than 8 hours of work on Government works in Rajasthan, the people were forever struggling to prove that they were right. The administration condinued to speak of 2 versions to the truth. Documents became vital to prove work done. Muster rolls and bills and vouchers became important documents which were classified as secret by the local administration, endorsed by the whole bureaucratic chain. When they did eventually come out, there were dead people's names on the muster rolls and clearly verifiable fraud in the bills.

This small but significant demand for copies of bills, vouchers and muster rolls, in village panchayats in central Rajasthan, triggered off a campaign for transparency and accountability in the use of public funds....

When Sushila was asked by reporters and others in Delhi in 1997, why she needed the Right to Information, particularly as a semi-literate village woman from rural Rajasthan, she said, ''When I send my son to the market with ten rupees, I ask for accounts. The Government spends millions of rupees, I ask for accounts. The Government spends millions of rupees for the poor, ‘‘Is live- Mera paisa, mera hisab''.. My money, My accounts !

The RTI has come as a simple tool to people, fed up with the corrupt mismanagement of the ruling classes. The people need to know everything that is being done in their name. A democracy gives us that basic and inviolable right. If nothing else, we must at the least call the bluff of the hypocritical assurances made at the time of election, in assemblies and in Parliament; invoke the rights we gave ourselves when we framed the Constitution.

When the people of Janawad applied to the Collector in 2001 to verify the numbers of ghost works painted on the panchayat Board as required by the Rajasthan, RTI Act 2000, it took them one year to access the records. The Gram Sewak, ran away with the records and filed a writ in the High Court, in the dramatic finale ! It was difficult to believe that the Administration did not know about it.

What sent the administration into a panic about Janawad, as elsewhere, was not questions about budget allocations , but the details of a check dam billed thrice a 25 year old sub PHC billed afresh, the Veterinary hospital on the first floor, the non-existent roads-a long endless list of nonexistent works. This is all old hat, but the freshness of this exercise was in the verifiable details of fraud, with a list of persons who under wrote the fraud, wish signatures and seals !

When we see what is going on in the name of governance, many of us feel a great disquiet. There has been a range of reactions from common people-from a desire to plug ears, close eyes and running away - to armed revolution. This is how irate people have lodged their protest. The frustration of facing injustice and inequality has a history down the ages. These questions in a generic term are not new. It is the rephrasing of the right to know what rulers and the ruling classes do, in small details in unexpected and seemingly innocuous places that has made a huge difference.

The people of Maharashtra refused to accept a weak Act that the State Legislature first passed. Through a series of agitations they ensured that the Act was repeated and replaced with a far stronger RTI Act. The Maharashtra campaign served as an inspiration to the national effort to have effective legislation. The weak and ineffective Freedom of Information Act 2002 has been replaced with the for more powerful RTI Act 2005.

The bureaucracy that was resisting notifying the earlier Act has found its effort boomeranging as it has been compelled to implement this Act with in 120 days of it being passed by Parliament, as part of the provision of the Law.

It is not just a question of expenditure but also of policy and implementation. We need to know how the ruling elite manage or manipulate our lives through democratic institutions, national governments, international agencies and a plethora of structures. Without knowing the details, we are and will increasingly, be at the mercy of plans to restructure our lives fundamentally, by a system and many systems to which altruism is only a veneer.

Delhi 2004-2005. The Delhi Right to Information Forum and the Right to Water Campaign accessed over 4000 pages of documents under the Delhi RTI act to unearth the facts of World Bank pressure on the Delhi Jal Board to institute a particular model of water reforms. The Delhi experience not only demonstrated the importance of information in the public domain to enable citizens to effectively participate in making choices, but also illustrated the importance of the notings and their vital role in understanding the process of decision making. This has helped make the current debate on disclosure on file nothings more meaningful. It has also helped build on effective constituency for ensuring that they be not exempt.

Despite a strong national law, violators have not only been officials but Governments themselves. There are at least 10 State Governments which have not appointed Information Commissioners, a large number of offices do not have an idea about who their Public Information Officers are, Citizens trying to get information are sent from pillar to post to deposit their application fee. In this context several State Government have notified rules, with provsions in blatant violation of the Act. This has led many people to feel that the law is still born !

But there are many counters to this to demonstrate how potent the law can be and how ordinary citizens can use it to ensure accountability. We go back to Beawar- the same area in cental Rajasthan where the demand for muster rolls was denied outright only ten years ago.

In 2005, on the 13th of October, after the National RTI Act was passed and implemented, Kaniram a 70 year old man, entitled to grain under the Annapurna programme, saw a group of people getting together to file applications for information in Beawar. He joined the group and filed on application, demanding to know why he had not got grain for the last year. Not only did he get the backlog in under a week, but he got coupons for the next six months and the copies of the records he had asked for.

The Central Act provides for a penalty of Rs 205/- per day of non-compliance on the official responsible for it. To be paid from his, or her pocket ! This has led to officials providing information and drafting replies to people they would not even have acknowledged. There is a desperate attempt to meet the 30 day deadline and the people of this area, have had their first taste of accountable governance. In a country like India this is a huge step forward for democratic practice.- CNF