Patna Daily: Patna: Tuesday, May 23, 2017.
RTI was
not gifted by any political party or any government in India. In fact, majority
of the politicians and political parties silently opposed, disrupted and
delayed RTI implementation.
The
government has always tried to misinform or hide facts and figures from the
citizens. Citizens fought a long battle with the government and finally the
government agreed to introduce and bring RTI.
Without
informed citizens there is no democracy, hence RTI came as a great tool in the
hands of the Indian citizens. The government has been consistently frugal when
it comes to revealing/sharing actual information with the citizens. Thanks to
the government for providing broken RTI portal www.rtionline.gov.in that is yet
another example of corruption in the system.
India has
built numerous IT systems for small and big enterprises worldwide and has
proved to be an IT leader. Is it not shameful that India is building and
supporting IT work worldwide but our government IT system is broken? I agree
that RTI Act is reasonable in its current form and capable of attacking the
roots of corruption but how can a citizen use this tool when it is broken for
many years and the government remains completely ignorant to this fact?
In today’s
world, most information is available at one's fingertip because of the
Internet. At present, large number of citizens from all sections of the society
can handle technology effectively and are motivated to fight corruption. But
when the citizens are trying to use RTI portal to seek information, they become
very frustrated with likely many of them giving up because of a poorly
implemented system.
My background
is in IT and I spent almost two days to file RTI using the online portal. I had
to eventually give up because the portal is broken. I tried using browsers such
as Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari and also my iPhone but my
attempts failed each time.
I feel the
government is keeping this tool in a broken state so that technology-savvy
citizens cannot file RTI application in a reasonable amount of time.
I searched
Google and found that a few news agencies had covered this story in the past
but they were not given much attention and were silently brushed under the
carpet. Many people have written about this subject on various online forums
but the government remains ignorant. I am wondering as to why honest
journalists and media houses remain silent on this subject and not cover this
story and do follow ups until the government wakes up.
There are
hundreds of serious problems with this RTI online portal. Some of them I am
listing here:
This portal
says that only alphabets A-Z, a-z, numbers 0-9 and special characters, . - _ (
) / @ : & \ % are allowed in text for RTI Request Application. The fact is
that users are not able to use any of the above mentioned special characters.
It gives you
option to use Master and Visa credit cards for payment. I tried using Master
Card credit card but it failed with no message to the user as to why it failed.
Then I tried using Visa card from Bank of America. Once again it failed without
providing any feedback. I tried using my other credit cards from US but they
all failed. Finally, I tried using my ICICI ATM card which also failed.
Users are not
allowed to attach multiple documents. Only one document is allowed for upload
that also just 1MB size. I had multiple documents but no option to attach.
Being an IT expert, I was able to merge all documents in one file and then
reduce the file size to 1 MB using some technology. But still I was not
successful in filing online RTI. Also, many people cannot understand technology
glitches and will give up after few attempts.
This is very
shameful on the part of the government that online RTI tool is broken and the
government continues to ignore it. The front page of RTI portal says that this
portal is Designed, Developed and Hosted by National Informatics Centre, New
Delhi. If this is the standard of NIC to build such a bad portal then the head
of the NIC and other related authorities must be sacked. I strongly believe
that the government is deliberately keeping this tool broken so the citizens
could not use it as intended.
Indian IT
companies are building and supporting IT works worldwide and India's RTI portal
is broken and useless, is this not shame for our country? It is quite evident
that NIC has done a very bad job perhaps because they are not skilled enough or
perhaps the government is intentionally stopping them to do the job right.
Let’s assume that the NIC has failed but there are enough people who can fix
this portal problem if the government had the willingness to fix it.
Personally, I can introduce many individuals or companies who can fix this
portal free of cost in national interest.
Right to
Information Act is as a vital tool for fight against corruption in India. But
citizens have to fight one more time and force the government to fix the online
RTI portal.
.JPG)
.JPG)
