Indian Express ; Sun Sep 12 2010 : Ahmedabad :
The new RTI logo has triggered rather curious incidents — of an RTI activist objecting to the design process and filing RTI queries to know more about it; of other RTI activists wondering why their colleague chose to send his application to a state authority when the process was initiated by a Union ministry; and the probability of a reply to it around the same time, or after, the logo is to be officially released.
Upon learning about the new logo, 2010 RTI award winner Vinod Pandya filed an RTI with the State Information Commissioner at Gandhinagar, seeking details of the process and also why a country-wide competition, as in the case of the rupee symbol, was not announced.
But another RTI activist, Harinesh Pandya of the NGO Janpath, wondered why Vinod’s RTI query was sent to the state authority when it is the Union Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions that had initiated the process.
Harinesh though said some “public involvement could have been sought”. “NID (which designed the RTI logo) is a reputed institute that has designed logos for the government, such as of Doordarshan.”
National Institute of Design (NID) too defended the project, saying it was routed to the institute by the Ministry, which in turn invited expressions of interest. The logo’s designer, Tarun Deep Girdher, had sought opinions on the several designs he drew up in seven months, from putting it up on his blog and asking colleagues to comment, to taking print-outs and taking them to a few slums in Ahmedabad and villages nearby to see if lay persons liked and understood the design.
In another coincidence, the reply to Vinod Pandya’s application would materialise within 30 days, as per the provisions of the RTI Act. This would coincide with the RTI week in October 5-12 when the Ministry has said it will officially release the logo.
Making of the logo: NID professor spent 7 months on it
Girdher, head of NID’s graphic design department, worked on the logo along with his colleague Deepak Mahavar and their work has been accepted by the Union Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, under whose jurisdiction the law falls.
The Ministry had contacted the premier design school at the beginning of this year and met Professor Girdher in February. In that meeting, Girdher said, Minister Prithviraj Chauhan said the logo should show transparency, information sharing and transaction, and should be easy to reproduce.
Over the next several months, Girdher came up with various designs, putting up samples on his blog for friends and colleagues. “The brief was that it should be easy to reproduce, even for village painters who would eventually be the people making the logo ubiquitous,” Girdher said. “As a designer, I decided to take it further and make it easy enough even for children to be able to draw it.”
Six designs were either rejected or scrapped by the ministry. One of them showed a sheet of paper casting a shadow of an open lock because it would give the impression that the government previously wants to lock up information.Villagers also told Girdher that another design showing a bird’s eyeview of an official at a table with citizens sitting in front of him looked like a panchayat meet.
Others, like two hands touching a transparent sheet of paper, were shelved because it seemed to represent the postal system more than an RTI. The logo finally accepted by the Ministry symbolizes at least six different aspects of the RTI.
The blue background figure, a vertical rectangle topped by a circle, can stand for either a person or “i” for information. The white sheet of paper in front of the figure has five blue lines that symbolize the five senses through which humans gather information.
The sheet itself is a “powerful message, because it shows that any information can be accessed by anyone using a plain sheet of paper and nothing else. There is no need for a sophisticated tool,” Girdher said.
The logo is slated for release sometime during the RTI week this October. Girdher is currently working on a set of guidelines by which the logo should be reproduced, including directions for making it into rubber stamps for use on RTI reply envelopes, on the Ministry’s website, on doors of all Public Information Officers in any government funded institution, and even for promotional paintings and posters.
“These guidelines will act like a primer for grassroots level workers and officials. And we are also proposing that the text accompanying the logo are prepared in regional languages as well,” Girdher added.
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