Hindustan
Times: New Delhi: Friday, October 12, 2012.
These
activists fell shy of making headlines, but their work ensured better
governance and improved the lot of thousands across the country.
Vijay
Khumbhar, 51, Maharashtra:
The RTI law,
under Section 4, provides for suo motu declaration of information, but it is
seldom followed in government offices. Vijay Khumbar’s campaign for
transparency pushed the Pune Municipal Corporation to declare two hours every
Monday as an open house, during which citizens could visit the municipal office
and take photocopies of any document they wanted. Similar models have now been
adopted by the Solapur and Thane municipal corporations.
The Pune
corporation also has an RTI library that allows people access to information on
the master plan, salaries of public servants and expenditure on various public
works. “The municipal corporation allotted R25 lakh to the library after I told
politicians it would give them positive publicity,” he said.
PK
Ibrahim, 52, Kerala:
Ibrahim’s RTI
application and the subsequent petition in the Kerala High Court ensured that
every school in the state has one toilet each for 20 girls and 40 boys, which
is a state government norm. Ibrahim and his colleagues, DB Binu and Abey
George, pushed the state government in 2010 to issue an order that every school
should meet the prescribed norms, and failure to do so would ensure action
against principals of government schools and managers of government-aided ones.
Recently, RTI
applications issued by the forum had helped thousands of tribals get back their
land from rich plantation owners. “We have shown that RTI can be used for
public good and to improve transparency in the government. But the state
information commission is not helping,” Ibrahim said.
Geeta
Potsamgbam, 35, Manipur:
A panchayat
head in a village near Imphal had to construct houses for eight families with
his own money after an RTI application filed by Geeta revealed that he had
swindled the money. Records had, however, showed that the houses had been
constructed. Geeta started women RTI groups, called the Macha Leima, in more
than 48 gram panchayats — each having 15-20 women members.
“They have
filed over 2,000 RTI applications, which have helped them get full MGNREGA
wages and ration under the government’s public distribution system,” she said.
Before that, they were getting just 10 kg of the 35 kg subsidised ration, and
half of the MGNREGA wages. “Now, we don’t even have to file an RTI application
to get information. Corruption has declined too,” Geeta added.
Manjunath,
42, Karnataka:
Sometime ago,
Manjunath published name of all beneficiaries of a government scheme in Arivu,
India’s only RTI newspaper. One of the beneficiary claimed that he had not
received even a single penny from the government. Another RTI was filed by him
and the person received all his dues from the official within 15 days. Through
his monthly newspaper, which is sold at Rs 10 a copy and has circulation of
4,000 copies, he also unearthed a scam of Rs. 1.5 crore in MGNREGA, after which
he was brutally assaulted.
“Every word
published in my monthly newspaper is based on RTI applications that I and my
friends file,” said Manjunath, who uses his agriculture income to fund his
unique initiative. “Through RTI, the common man can question the top-most
person in power,” Manjunath said.
Dr Shaikh
Gulam Rasool, 38, Jammu & Kashmir:
A few years
ago, Dr Gulam Rasool was visited by a daily wage worker suffering from
depression. The cause of the ailment, he found, was the fact that he did not
get a ration card because of his inability to pay a bribe of Rs. 500 to the
panchayat head. A comprehensive RTI revealed that as many as 24 ration cards
were registered in the names of the panchayat head’s four-member family.
Following a complaint, the fake ration cards were cancelled and the worker
received his document.
Similar RTI
applications filed in the Valley further improved transparency with regard to
ration card issuance. Now, the RTI Act has helped unravel the mystery
surrounding the unmarked graves and disappearance of local residents in
Kashmir. “It has also reduced fake encounters,” he said.
Ambesh
Meghwal, 30, Rajasthan:
Fed up with
the corruption prevailing at the Sajiyali gram panchayat, Meghwal filed an RTI
application in 2008 to seek a list of all development activities in the area.
He was beaten up and denied access to the information. When he continued to
insist, they asked him to cough up a sum of R35,000 for photocopies of the
documents. “They deliberately gave me useless and misleading documents just to
harass me,” Meghwal who was education till Class 10 said.
Unwilling to
give up, Meghwal challenged the officials in court and soon, his RTI
application had started a trend. “After that, other villagers also started
filing RTI applications. That put pressure on the authorities and, in the years
that followed, there was a clear decline in corruption in matters concerning
the Indira Aawas Yojana, etc.”
Pradip
Pradhan, 43, Orissa:
When he came
to know about the corruption that exists in the paddy procurement programme
under the public distribution system (PDS) in Bolangir district, Pradhan filed
a number of applications under the RTI Act to expose the alleged nexus between
millers and government officials. “They had come up with fake kisan cards. We identified
at least 200 such cases in just one area,” Pradhan, who takes the lead in
organising state-level public hearings on RTI applications, said.
Also, in the
aftermath of the Orissa farmer suicides in 2009, he was able to set a time
frame for the much-delayed report/recommendation of a state-level farmers’
commission.
Activist
gets 1,700 blank pages for an answer:
K
Srinivasan, Tamil Nadu
When the
babudom wishes to evade RTI, they blank out the information, literally.
RTI activist
K Srinivasan of Tiruchirapalli’s Perakambi village received 1,700 blank pages
in response to his application seeking information on the irregularities in the
auction of babul trees. Worse, he had been made to pay R16,080 for it. And the
worst? Exactly a month after the reply came, Srinivasan was mercilessly
thrashed to dissuade him from pursuing his inquiries.
The
irregularities had occurred in the felling and auction of trees across 120
acres in Perakambi village between 2007 and 2009. The contracts, Srinivasan
maintained, were given for a pittance, causing a huge loss to the exchequer.
"On October 4, I was attacked for trying to expose panchayat president Logeswari
and her husband Anjanenjan," Srinivasan said. Anjanenjan is a local BJP
strongman.
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