DNA: Mumbai: Thursday, August 14, 2014.
Two-day
workshops across 14 cities will teach college students the usage of RTI.
Students at
the premier engineering institute, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT),
are looking to make the governments more accountable. As part of their social
initiative during the yearly Techfest, students of IIT Bombay will be
organising training camps in the run-up to the festival not just in IITs but in
over 50 colleges that take part in the festival.
The Techfest
will be held between January 2 and 4, 2015. The training workshops will be held
as pre-fest preparations from this month and will run up to September.
"Each year, the fest has a social initiative. Last year, we had one on
cancer and tobacco. This year, we thought of making the government more
accountable. We ideated for a month and we read different laws and found out
that Right to Information (RTI) is the best way to do that," said Hitesh
Sahare, an IIT-Bombay student and events manager of Techfest.
The laws that
were considered before squaring on RTI were Right to Education (RTE), Right to
Services and even social audit. "We could not integrate social audit into
the campaign in this kind of a large-scale exercise. Right to Services was not
there in all states. On RTE, the basic problem we faced was that the government
is not accountable. RTI had a better outreach as it is a central Act and
everything was going hand in hand if we question them and make them
accountable. That is why we squared on this," added Sahare.
The Techfest
has collaborated with the National Campaign for People's Right to Informaiton
(NCPRI). The workshops will be held from August 28 across 14 cities and in over
50 colleges by NCPRI activists from the areas where the colleges are situated.
The two-day workshop will tell students how to file RTI, be part of
participatory democracy, share success stories of RTI and end with each student
filing one question through RTI they have always wanted to ask the government.
"The
workshops will be held in different dates at different engineering colleges
between August and September. We are doing this because it is a better thing
for empowerment of the community. These are prospective engineers and they will
get experience from a young age. The idea is that students who are in technical
background use RTI. Once they know the Act and confront, small issues can also
become public interest issues," said Bhaskar Prabhu, co-convenor of NCPRI.
IITians
expect around 60,000 to 70,000 students to benefit from the excercise.
The
initiative will be formally launched by another IIT alumnus and former central
information commissioner, Shailesh Gandhi. "The idea is not just to expose
them to RTI but make them think in terms of governance of the country. RTI is a
great tool to hold the government accountable; it empowers people and we need a
large number of people to do this. It will also help in true participatory
democracy," said Gandhi.
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