Indian Express: Pune: Thursday,
September 29, 2016.
A
coffee-table book narrating the success stories of the Right to Information
(RTI) Act will be released by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the annual Right
to Information (RTI) conference to be held in the national capital next month.
Compiled at
the Pune-based Yashwanatrao Chavan Academy of Developmental Administration
(YASHDA), the book will narrate 62 success stories as well as the best
practices followed by government offices in regards to RTI in the country.
Rajiv Sabde,
editor-in-chief of the project, said the Central Information Commissioner (CIC)
had appointed Yashda to come up with the book.
“We contacted
all the Administrative Training Institutes (ATI), State Information
Commissioners and known RTI users and asked them to share success stories from
their states. Barring just a few states, all others responded,” he said.
Maharashtra
leads the country with six success stories while Madhya Pradesh, Delhi, Haryana
have contributed three stories each.
Rest of the
states have contributed one or two success stories. Even Andaman Nicobar Island
had contributed a success story, besides remote states like Manipur, Arunachal
Pradesh and Mizoram. Only Punjab and a few other states failed to send any response.
The book, according to Sabde, would be
divided into two parts featuring the success stories as well as best practices.
The stories
range from a treasury officer from Tamil Nadu using RTI to recover ration card
of people who had lost the same in the floods, a student using RTI to get roads
repaired in Andaman and Nicobar to the RTI Katta run by Vijay Kumbhar in Pune.
RTI on
Wheels, an initiative by an RTI body in Gujarat and the open-day practised in
various government offices in Maharashtra also find a place in the book.
Sabde said
this was the first time a coffee table book on this subject was to be published
in the country.
One of the
most important themes which came across in the stories was the power and fear
of RTI Act in the lower rungs of the bureaucracy.
Sabde said
that in many cases, the orders of the SIC was enough to solve problems of
people.
“In a village
in Gujarat, the street lamps were installed all around the sarpanch’s house.
This led to a villager to file an RTI application asking for information.
Almost immediately, the positions of the lamp posts were changed,” said Sabde.
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