Right to Information-path to Swaraj

The Right to Information (RTI) is a fundamental right of Citizens and a formal National law codifying this right has been effective throughout India from Vijayadashmi , 12 October 2005. It is extremely simple to use and empowers all Indian Citizens to monitor their Government and improve its governance. We have a democracy with a reasonably fair system of elections, a good constitution and yet realize that it has not delivered satisfactorily to its masters-the Citizens. We have blamed our politicians, bureaucrats, economics, policies and so on. This has happened because we have missed the essence of democracy. The real essence of democracy is the fundamental belief that the individual Citizen is a sovereign in her own right, and she gives up part of the sovereignty to the State, in return for which she gets the rule of law. The individual sovereign Citizen has become the ‘bechara’ who feels completely helpless. Our democracy has been an elective democracy, where the Citizen excercises his choice once in five years, and is then left powerless. Right to Information (RTI) gives him an easy and simple method to monitor his Government. It equips him with information with which he can expose and shame a corrupt system to correct itself. This can lead to a true participatory Government- the Swaraj that we desire and deserve.
A simple query without any forms and an application fee of 10 rupees gives the individual Citizen the Right to Information from all ‘Public authorities’. Every office of our Government is mandated by law to have a Public Information Officer (PIO), who must provide the information requisitioned by a Citizen within 30 days. Failure to provide information without reasonable cause, can lead to an imposition of a penalty of 250 rupees per day on the PIO personally. There are only ten categories of information which can be denied. The information is provided at a fee of 2 rupees per page. The biggest gain is that it needs no followup or personal interaction with the PIO. I have never gone to meet a PIO or even telephoned anybody to get information when using RTI. The Citizen uses the process of RTI and can often get the information at a total cost of about 50 to 70 rupees.
In this blog, a lot of my posts are likely to be about Right to Information. All that I write in this blog or elsewhere is in Public domain, and everyone is encouraged to reproduce whatever they wish, without any permissions from me. A reader might benefit by getting some basic information about RTI from www.satyamevajayate.info
shailesh gandhi
Mera Bharat Mahaan…
Nahi Hai,
Per Yeh Dosh Mera Hai.