Study belies propaganda it is used by
select social activists
Applicants closed down polluting
factories, fought corruption
Villagers see information as key to
solving problems
New Delhi: An interim assessment of the Right to Information Act, 2005,
undertaken independently, has concluded that more and more people are
now using it in previously unknown ways, disproving the propaganda that
RTI is an instrument concentrated in the hands of select social
activists.
The first of its kind, the comprehensive study, conducted jointly by
the National Campaign for People’s Right to Information (NCPRI) and the
Right to Information Assessment and Analysis Group (RaaG), has been
billed as a people’s initiative to assess who is using the Act and to
what purpose. The study covered 10 States, besides Delhi.
In their report, “The People’s RTI Assessment 2008,” the NCPRI and RaaG
pointed out that so far all information on RTI was either anecdotal or
derived primarily from government data. Nor was there any evaluation of
how the Act impacted societal actors such as the media, courts, the
corporate sector and non-governmental organisations.
The NCPRI and RaaG conducted separate rural and urban surveys and also
collected about 5,000 case studies from across the country, culled from
the Hindi and English print media and downloaded from websites and
blogs. A perusal of the cases showed that more and more people were
invoking the Act, and for a variety of reasons.
In many cases, the applicants went beyond securing answers to their
questions. They closed down polluting factories, fought corruption, and
formed themselves into a larger group to support one another. Internet
users formed their own online support groups, and helped applicants
fill applications.
Specific examples of enlarging RTI: People in rural Karnataka combined
campaigns for the Right to Information and the Right to Food to fight
hunger. An 86-year-old Dalit farmer in Maharashtra used the RTI data to
prevent his strawberry fields from drying up. In Uttar Pradesh, over
14,000 residents in a cluster of eight villages, 60 km from Banda, used
RTI to fight for their right to have roads, bridges and electricity.
Solution to problems
The surveys showed that an overwhelming majority of rural residents saw
information as the key to solving village problems. More than
two-thirds of rural respondents said they had received a response to
their applications and nearly one-third said their problems had been
solved though they had received no information or received only partial
information.
Among urban respondents, nearly three-fourths said they had received
responses though they were slow in coming. Only a third of respondents
said they had received responses within the stipulated one month.
http://www.hindu.com/2008/10/14/stories/2008101459461100.htm
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© 2008, The Hindu.
