We are imperfect. We cannot expect perfect government. ~ William Howard.
but, Loksatta Sanjeevani team has not left that thought at that. It began it's journey to change the so called 'imperfect' to 'perfect' and the 'idle' to 'working' - the attempts never turned into failures. Like a lot activities that were performed earlier, Loksatta Sanjeevani has successfully completed one more activity recently. This is one is slightly different.....and significantly better. Targeting a single section of RTI law, it has gone ahead to file 500 RTIs.
Unbelievable ? Wait a min ..We have taken enough time to come up with stats and photos of the event to make you believe the power of RTI or perhaps a healthy team..
Wanna know more ?...You surely can..!Read on..!!
Why did we start this :
On the eve of the 5th anniversary of the enactment of the RTI Act (October 12, 2010), the Loksatta Sanjeevani team has taken up a massive campaign of filing 500 RTI applications. These applications have been filed with ALL state and secretariat heads of departments and some Nalgonda, Rangareddy and
The Loksatta Sanjeevani team observed that even after 5 years, very few Government offices have actually implemented this important RTI law. Starting with a training session on September 25th, 12 team members have been filing the 500 applications.
Background:
In discussing the Indian government, it is a common refrain that in many cases, the right policies are in place, but the execution is what is lacking. And the execution is mostly in the hands of government departments and officials. RTI is an instrument that allows citizens to hold the officials to account for the execution aspect and prevent both laxity and corruption. RTI was achieved through a tremendous campaign. However, as can be expected, most government departments have been very lax about conforming to the requirements of RTI, for the combined reasons of inertia and vested interest in maintaining status quo. Clearly, achieving RTI was not enough. It will take a sustained campaign of (a) vigilance and petitioning to coax and/or force all departments to conform to their duties with respect to RTI and (b) spread awareness among citizens about the tremendous gains to be had from actually exercising their RTI.
Loksatta Sanjeevani's vision and effort:
Everything takes money, and the team has spent about Rs. 16,000 of their personal funds in this effort. They have gone ahead with the understanding that implementing Section 4(1)(b) will make all the critical information necessary for making government efficient, benefiting both the citizens and officials. Also, it can be expected to reduce the number of RTI applications by half, since the basic information is available beforehand. It has been a great learning experience for Sanjeevani team members, who now have an in-depth awareness about several departments, and are working hard to disseminate the same to the wider public.
Event coverage in Eenadu news paper:
http://www.loksattasanjeevani.in/2010/11/filing-500-rtis-loksatta-sanjeevani-in.html
Team members : - Election - Santosh – Bharat – Avanish - Uday Bhaskar - Narasimha - Madhu - Pradeep - Srinivas - Savan - Subbu - Azeez
Response:
Every Department office has a designated Public Information Officer (PIO) who is responsible for providing the requested handbook. As per the RTI Act, the response should be immediate, as these documents should have been prepared by Oct 12th 2005. However, we have received only 83 replies in one month, out of which only 23 replies have provided us sec4(1)(b) manuals .We are expecting that most responses will arrive only after a second appeal. A positive response was received from the AP Labour Welfare Dept, Andhra Pradesh, who first provided complete handbook/manual and then made it available online. A small number of offices have responded with the correct and complete information. Some PIOs have confessed a complete lack of awareness of the requirement of Section 4(1)(b) and made phone calls requesting Sanjeevani members to visit their office and provide directions for preparing the handbook. Surprisingly, several officials have demanded money (upto Rs 5000) for CDs, postage, translation etc. A few offices flatly denied to provide the necessary information. Majority do not have information in Telugu language. We have also received many weird replies. Few local offices informed that this information is not available at local level and asked us to contact Head offices and Head offices, on the other hand, asked us to contact local offices, as they can't maintain information related to all offices.
Loksatta Sanjeevani follow-up to response:
The team’s experience has been that on being confronted with the exact provisions of the RTI Act and making it clear that denial and intimidation will not work, many PIOs quickly change their attitude. The team will be filing first and second appeals for the requested information. And parallely, we are planning to complaint directly to the Information Commission under section 18.
Sanjeevani promises to send a detailed mail on the responses received and the actions being taken based on them.
To know updates on our activities , please follow us on Twitter @ LSPSanjeevani .
This has also been updated at our blog :
http://www.loksattasanjeevani.in/2010/11/mega-event-of-year-filing-500-rtis.html
Warm Regards,
Loksatta Sanjeevani Team
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