DNA:
Mumbai: Tuesday, October 16, 2012.
Navinchandra
Dedhia filed with guarded optimism in April this year a right to information
(RTI) application seeking the status of the registration papers he was yet to
receive for a property he bought in 1988. “In 1997, we showed the department of
registration and stamps for the second time our receipts of stamp duty paid
with penalty. At the time, we were sure that the original registration papers
would reach us soon,” says the Mulund resident. But, the department sat on his
papers for 10 years.
“By 2007, my
visits to the office [of the department of registration and stamps] became more
frequent. Each time, they told me to get back to them three to four months
later,” says Dedhia.
Almost five
years after his pleas that he be handed his documents repeatedly fell on deaf
years, Dedhia decided to take recourse to the RTI. “I read about its success in
April and thought of trying it out.”
The result
took him by surprise. “Not only was the public information officer scolded by
her boss, but she also traced the ‘missing’ documents within months,” smiles
Dedhia, who received his original registration papers this October.
To Gaurang
Vora, the RTI has been more than a redressal system; it has been a lifesaver.
In 1999, Vora was slapped with a notice of demolition of one of his two clinics
opposite the LTMG Hospital in Sion.
The
Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation had alleged that he had converted a garage
into a clinic for commercial exploitation. “They warned that the clinic would
be demolished in three weeks if I could not prove that it had existed since
1962,” says Vora. As the notice was slapped under the Maharashtra Regional and
Town Planning Act, under which Vora could be arrested, he set off on a wild
goose chase to retrieve the documents. “I was issued the notice because I had
complained of corruption in the municipal ward. The problem was that I did not
even know what documents were required to prove that I had done no wrong,” he
explains.
With a few
documents in hand, Vora managed to get a court order to stop the demolition.
But, his joy was short-lived. “After winning this case, I was slapped with
another notice of demolition of the second clinic in 2004,” he recalls.
As he went
about collecting documents for his second clinic, he gave RTI a try in 2005. “I
got all the information I needed in a month or so by filing an RTI application.
The RTI forces the authorities to reveal what documents you need to prove your
case even if they refused to tell you the same earlier,” says Vora. He got the
demolition notice quashed without even moving court.
Bridging
the divide;
“Never before
has a person felt so comfortable asking for information. Instead of greasing
the palms of officials or losing out on their self-respect while pleading with
impolite, and often abrasive, officials, the RTI gave people the scope to get
things done their way. It opened the doors to having a dialogue on the same
plane between an official and a layman.
Earlier, a
person who could not do much beyond filing a court case was left with a lot of
angst. Now, the RTI is another option that has struck down an unjust and
unequal fight against the system,” explains Krishnaraj Rao, an RTI activist.
Mrityunjay
Kumar Singh, an MA student who hails from Jharkhand, agrees. After his father’s
death, he ran from pillar to post after filing a life insurance claim. “Our
financial conditions were poor. We needed money. At the time my father got his
insurance policy, we were told that a claim would be processed in three months.
But the officials were rude and insensitive. They were so smug about the power
they wielded over us that at times, they dared us to go ahead and complain to
any authority we chose to. We suffered this way for almost two years,” recalls
Singh bitterly.
To help tide
his family over, Singh took a break from academics and started looking for
work. “I had come Mumbai to work. That’s when I was told about the RTI Act.”
Although he
received a call from an officer who took umbrage at his decision to file an RTI
application, the pace at which things moved thereafter took him by surprise.
The family was handed Rs5 lakh in just a day. “The officer who was transferred
out of Jharkhand went to the old office and got things done in a day,” gushes
the Churchgate resident.
Another asset
of the RTI Act is the ease with which one can seek information from any part of
the country, sometimes without ruffling others’ feathers. Manoranjan Roy, a
Mumbaikar, filed an RTI application to know his stake in the family’s plot of
land at Midnapore in West Bengal. “I doubted my brothers’ claim that my share
was still intact. I did not want to pick up a fight with them.
Without their
knowledge, I wanted to see if I could live there in future. The response to my
RTI application showed that this was not possible as one of my brothers had
already transferred the entire property in his name,” he says.
Roy credits
the RTI Act with getting a quick response. “When I tried to talk to officials,
they simply lied. Sending a notice to the family would have created a wider
rift, besides increasing costs for me. The RTI’s power lies in the fear that an
unobliging officer can be fined.”
Though some
activists complain that information commissioners do not fine their former
bureaucrat colleagues, many officials who take the Act lightly have been made
to cough up fines of up to Rs25,000.
Shaming
the mighty;
The Act also
serves as a monitoring mechanism. In Mumbai, various skeletons have come
tumbling out of closets, thanks to the RTI think the Adarsh scam, the more
recent irrigation scam in Maharashtra as well as of the preferential allocation
of 2G spectrum and coal blocks at the Centre.“Had the Act not been implemented,
we would have never known what is wrong with the system.
That is why,
for me, the RTI means getting information that can help being better
governance. Only when one uses such information to empower oneself that real
empowerment comes through,” argues Shailesh Gandhi, who was the first to start
the RTI crusade in the city.
“Earlier, if
a person had some allegations and approached the media, they would not hear him
out due to lack of proof,” says Roy.
Attempts
at dilution;
Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh’s concern that vexatious appeals should not invade
privacy and hamper the working of a government is not the only comment that has
been viewed as a precursor to diluting the Act’s efficacy. In Maharashtra and
in a few other states, amendments to the RTI Act, like restricting the word
count and the subject matter on the application, have already been made. These,
allege activists, are now used a ruse to dodge applicants.
Others
threats have always loomed on the horizon, such as the mounting pile of second
appeals, a number of crucial orders passed by the information commission being
stayed by high courts, and the most recent Supreme Court verdict directing that
retired chief justices and a two-member commission hear RTI appeals. “There
have been attempts by the judiciary and the government to dilute the Act,”
claims Bhaskar Prabhu, another RTI activist.
He explains
that at present, there is a regular interaction between information
commissioners and applicants. “If judges end up being a part of the process,
chances are that they would not like to meet applicants. And unlike other Acts,
the RTI has become popular mainly due to the people-to-people connect.”
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