The Wire: Gujarat: Saturday,
December 10, 2016.
The RTI is a powerful tool for the persons with
disabilities, but there is a need to go beyond simply providing information and
offer meaningful solutions.
India has a
large population of persons with disabilities 26.8 million according to
Census 2011. Traditionally, this section of the population has struggled to
access the facilities, such as the Right to Information Act (RTI), that it is
entitled to.
According to
Pankti Jog of the Mahiti Adhikar Gujarat Pahel (MAGP) an organisation working
to promote the use of the RTI in Gujarat and in India, “Within the deprived
sections of society, the disabled are at a double disadvantage. The RTI is a
powerful tool that they can use but awareness is still low.”
With World
Disability Day (December 3) having just gone by, let us look at three instances
of persons with disabilities in Gujarat who have successfully made use of the
RTI.
A blind
man’s vision: Ratna Ala
 |
| Ratna Ala. Credit- Vikas Joshi |
It was the
poor condition of the approach road to the Rangpar village near Rajkot that
prompted the 38-year-old sarpanch, Ratna Ala, to consider filing an RTI
application. “I had heard about the RTI helpline run by the MAGP on the radio
so I phoned them up and they guided me on how to file it,” he recalls.
However, to
his dismay, the officials at the panchayat office made fun of him. “They said
as a blind man, you have no right to ask such questions and even laughed at
me,” he said.
Unperturbed
by their comments, Ala filed the first appeal under the RTI before the taluka
development officer and found that according to official records, the road had
been repaired twice. Owing to the outrage among the villagers when they learnt
about it and the publicity in the local press, an approach road was built to
his village in 2009. Later that year, the Times of India awarded Ala the Rahul
Mangaonkar Award in recognition of his judicious use of the RTI for a common
cause.
Since then,
Ala has used the RTI extensively. He even succeeded in eliminating bogus voters
from the gram panchayat electoral list in 2011.
In 2012, 281
acres of gauchar or grazing land in the village was illegally allocated to a
clock manufacturing company without the approval of the gram sabha. Through the
RTI, Ala pursued the case. It eventually reached the Gujarat high court, which
ruled in his favour.
Currently,
Ala is focused on the illegal mining taking place in the gauchar land in his
village. Even though he has received death threats for his activism, he
maintains, “I am not deterred.”
Discovering
medical negligence : Himesh Vankar
 |
| Himesh Vankar. Credit- Vikas Joshi |
In 2014,
Himesh Vankar, a tailor living in Himmatnagar in Gujarat, was overjoyed to
become the father of a girl.
His
happiness, however, was short-lived. Just 20 days after giving birth, Vankar’s
wife Ganga passed away. For the last two years, he has been using the RTI to
prove that her death was caused due to medical negligence.
“My wife was
admitted to Ahmedabad Civil Hospital on January 31, 2014, and delivered on
February 1, 2014, and discharged thereafter on February 4. She started
complaining of pain and was admitted to
General Hospital, Himmatnagar on February 9 before being referred to
Ahmedabad Civil Hospital again on February 11. She then died on February 20,”
he said.
Vankar has
filed seven RTI applications to ascertain the cause of her death.
The
32-year-old suffers from a medical syndrome called kyphoscoliosis due to which
he is only 135 cm tall. The condition afflicted his wife too.
“The report I
got under RTI from Ahmedabad Civil Hospital was that an infection had set in
due to septicemia caused by the presence of a foreign body. Dr. Bhamini Pandit,
who operated on her on February 9, wrote that she had removed an epistolary pad
kept to stop the bleeding but the doctors at the Civil Hospital never informed
me that such a pad had been kept. Such pads are supposed to be removed within
24 hours. So I requested the report from February 1 but the hospital initially
said they didn’t have the same. They later gave me the report from February 11.
When I filed another RTI application, they gave me the same report but wrote
zero in place of one and claimed that this was a printing mistake and that it
was actually [the report from] February 1,” he alleged.
“Even the
Mamata Card, which every pregnant woman in Gujarat is allotted, was tampered
with post my wife’s death. It was written in the card after her death that my
wife was in delicate health and that a pregnancy could potentially be life threatening.
If such details had been written down before, we may never have had a child,”
he added.
“I have even
written a letter to the Gujarat Medical Council and the State Human Rights
Commission. The matter is now pending with them. Though the council has
promised a hearing but nothing has happened.”
Neeta
Hardikar from Anandi, an organisation that works for women’s welfare in
Gujarat, observed that “Vankar’s case shows that facilities for women to
deliver safely are even today absent in our country, especially [for]
differently abled women.”
Woman
reclaims her livelihood : Usha Dhawan
 |
| Usha Dhawan. Credit -Vikas Joshi |
In a small
PCO booth near Ahmedabad’s bustling Vijay Cross Roads sits Usha Dhawan.
Althought Dhawan lacks 80% of the function in her right hand and 50% in her
left, she continues to successfully use the RTI in order to reclaim her
telephone booth that was her source of income.
Fifty-year-old
Dhawan is a single woman. In 1993, she was allocated a phone booth near Subhash
Chowk by the Blind People’s Association from where she had done a tailoring
course. After an earthquake destroyed the booth in 2001, another was allotted
to her near the D.K. Patel Hall. However, in 2006, it was demolished as part of
an anti-encroachment drive by the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC).
“I was
clueless as to what to do as it was my only source of income. I then read an
article about an RTI camp in Gujarat Samachar. After filing an RTI application
in 2006, I was shocked to get a reply that the booth was not in my name at all.
I sought an explanation as to why the booth was taken away but got no answer,”
she said.
“I then filed
the first appeal but still didn’t get an answer. I even borrowed Rs 5,000 from
a moneylender and paid it as a bribe to a man who claimed to be close to the
local corporator Dr. Kamlesh Patel but even then nothing happened. Finally,
after filing a second appeal, the State Information Commission allotted the
booth in my name and then transferred it to G.B. Shah College in Vasna.”
Her troubles,
however, were far from over. “As a single woman who is disabled, I had to deal
with harassment from [drug addicts]. So in 2013 I sought the AMC to change the
location of the booth and it was transferred to its present location.”
All’s not
well
Although Ala,
Vankar and Dhawan have successfully used the RTI, they have their share of
criticism. Dhawan, for instance, has criticised the delays in getting justice
and the expenses involved in using the Act. According to her, “The Act only
gives you information. What after that? There are delays in getting information
as well, and often one has to go to first and second appeals which is time
consuming and expensive for a disabled person.”
Vankar, on
the other hand, considers the RTI to be a powerful tool but believes that
bodies like the Human Rights Commission must have the power to take action
instead of just recommending steps.
Need to
prioritise persons with disabilities
According to
R.N. Das, former state information commissioner and current advisor to the
Odisha State Planning Board, there is a need to prioritise the RTI appeals and
complaints of persons with disabilities.
“Widows,
differently abled and senior citizens need to be given priority when it comes
to the appellate stage under the RTI Act. The problem for the differently abled
is that the process of hearing appeals takes years in many states; so the cases
involving these sections should be taken up out of turn. The PIOs [public
information officers] must not regard the RTI Act as merely a tool to provide
information but must instead go to the root of the problem and then solve them
instead.”
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