How they slayed the food mafia

Times of India: New Delhi: Sunday, May 26, 2013.

It's easy to locate Triveni's home in the narrow lanes of the slum colony of Sundar Nagri. "Kaun? Woh RTI-wali ?" says a youngster who offers to lead us through a maze of gullies flanked by open drains till we reach a house that sits cheek-by-jowl with other similar haphazardly built structures. Its occupant, though, is a picture of quiet resilience.

In 2002, Triveni became the first woman in the locality to file an RTI application and take on the powerful PDS (public distribution system ) mafia in the area. "The ration shops in our locality opened whenever they felt like and never gave us what was our due. Instead of 22 litres of kerosene which we were entitled to, we would sometimes get 5 litres, sometimes none," says the mother of two.

Through the RTI application, Triveni and other women in the area found out how much ration they were entitled to. They also found that the shops had definite timings which they had to adhere to. They also had to prominently display details of the stock. None of this was happening. Armed with this information, the women confronted the shop owners. Santosh, a spunky 27-year-old who filed another RTI application soon after Triveni, says the backlash from the rationwallahs was intense. "At first, they threatened to cancel our ration cards. After we filed complaints with the food supplies office, their henchmen started heckling us."

As the RTI campaign picked up in the area, the attacks increased. In December 2004, says Santosh, there was an attempt on her life as a few men tried to slit her throat. The women, though, persisted with their fight. "After more people became aware how they were being swindled by the ration shops, there was widespread anger. Quite a few times, the people themselves took over the ration shops and distributed the ration," says Triveni. The message finally percolated to the ration shop owners that they could not take people for granted.

Today, says Santosh, who now works with Arvind Kejriwal's NGO Parivartan, households in the area are getting their full quota of ration. "It's funny how the people who used to heckle us earlier now treat us as VIPs. They even call us to inform when our ration is due to arrive."