Neelambari Bhoge ; Pune Mirror ; Saturday, September 18, 2010;
Two young activists decided to spread RTI awareness by journeying across several villages
Building awareness about Right to Information (RTI) is not an easy task. This difficult duty has been taken up by two youths of Pune — Datta Saaykar and his colleague Sanjay Jadhav.
“We attended a city based workshop on RTI and were very impressed with the whole working of the RTI phenomenon.
We realised the power of RTI and decided to go ahead with our calling. We purchased books which focus on the working of RTI and studied the entire transaction,” says Datta.
Datta and Sanjay are into the business of farming at Hinjewadi and Punavale respectively.
After attending the same RTI workshop Datta and Sanjay were both enlightened and took up the task of learning everything they could about RTI. They decided to dedicate themselves to social work and through that, dissemination of RTI.
Having decided to make RTI a major focus of their lives, they realised that several villages do not have boards of Information officers and so endeavoured to start their work with improving this situation.
They both decided to put up the boards on government offices and no distance was too small for them to accomplish this assignment. Adds Sanjay, “We visited almost 960 villages including Mulshi, Talegaon, Dabhade and more.
We explained the importance of these boards to them. We also explained to them what kind of boards need to be put up,” Datta and Sanjay met around 240 officials and now, around 210 officials have put boards on their offices. They financed this entire venture on their own but have not asked for any additional contribution towards these expenses.
Pune Mirror got in touch with an RTI activist in Talegaon, Dabhade Arun Mane regarding this operation, who said, “These boards have definitely helped. People are getting increasingly aware of the RTI Act.
They know now that even their area has Information officers.” For Datta and Sanjay the biggest achievement has been the fact that after putting up the boards they received letters from the respective heads of the villages informing them that the task has been completed. “It feels nice when people actually respect your views and follow them," said Datta.
Mirror got in touch with Pune city RTI activist, Vivek Velankar, who said, “It is sad that it has been five years and yet the boards were not put up outside the offices.
But Datta and Sanjay have undertaken a very good initiative. This has helped in spreading awareness and it is an excellent achievement." Datta Saaykar has received various awards as well for his work.
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