The Hindu: New Delhi: Sunday, March 17, 2013.
For
Anjali Bhardwaj and her colleagues at the National Campaign for People’s Right
to Information (NCPRI), the Cabinet nod to The Right of Citizens for Time-Bound
Delivery of Goods and Services and Redressal of their Grievances Bill marks a
significant milestone in their fight for more transparent and accountable
governance. The NCPRI co-convenor speaks to Priscilla Jebaraj .
What do
you think is most significant about this Bill? Are there any key elements missing?
This
legislation has the potential to transform the relationship between the people
and the government. It recognises what the most striking lacunae in governance
are today. There is simply no effective mechanism for grievance redress at all.
When someone is not getting the rights or benefits she is entitled to, and
tries to complain about it, it's like a black hole.
This law can
change that. What is important is that there will be a clearly defined charter
of what a citizen has a right to expect from the government and there is a
decentralised structure to file complaints at every level.
We haven't
actually seen the version of the bill that was cleared by Cabinet this week, so
I cannot comment on that, but the original 2011 bill had some missing elements.
One serious flaw was that it did not provide for a district-level grievance
redress authority. Yes, there are lower sub-units, and a panchayat-level
authority has been provided, but our experience with RTI [Right to Information]
has shown that if they do not get what they need at the village level, often
people are not willing to go all the way to the state-level headquarters in
order to file an appeal. We also felt that people often need help writing up
their complaints, and these facilitation centres need to be outside, to be
independent of the specific department [from which they need redress]. An
information and facilitation centre at the block level would be a single window
to help people register, follow-up and track their grievances against any specific
departments.
You have
been describing this bill as RTI Part II. How do you think grievance redress
complements the RTI agenda?
RTI gives
people the opportunity to seek information, to seek answers from their
government; but people also want to hold their government responsible and this
law will enable that. Plenty of RTI questions already deal with issues of
grievance what are their rights and entitlements, what is the obligation of
public authorities and have they fulfilled them...this Act will allow them to
have their grievances addressed more directly. If it is implemented properly,
it will reduce the burden on RTI.
How will
the bill prevent corruption? Is it only petty graft that can be curbed, or will
it have any impact on major scams as well?
Many of the
government's flagship social programmes NREGA, right to education, rural
health, PDS where there are huge scams, it is because entitlements are not
actually reaching the intended beneficiaries. If this Act can ensure that
people are not denied benefits, by reducing the arbitrariness, each individual
holding the government accountable will help prevent the larger scam. Also,
this law provides for the supervising structure to be held accountable…top
level scamsters cannot get away so easily.
There have
been complaints that some provisions of the bill go against the federal nature
of our democracy. Do you think that is true?
We object to
the provisions that state that the State commissions would be subordinate to
the Central commissions. That not only violates the federal spirit, it will
also result in all the appeals against the state commissions pending in the
Central commission. The central commission should instead be free to deal with
central government services... We think there should be territorial
jurisdiction, as in RTI where appeals against State commission verdicts are
taken to the High Courts.
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