RTI, a weapon waiting to be wielded
Right to Information Act activists have not only brought about transparency in government system but have also incited fear among public servants, that they are being monitored; Madurai activists have succeeded against many odds to bring out the truth, an
RTI – Right to Information Act, 2005 has been one of the powerful tools for the citizens of the nation for more than 18 years now. The information obtained through the RTI Act has not only resulted in creating a sustainable amount of transparency in the government system but also had incited fear among public servants, that they are being monitored by the people.
The RTI Act, 2005, which was achieved after a long struggle by many civil society organisations who wanted to empower citizens, promote openness and accountability in government agencies through which they believed they could ensure a check and balance in the society to make the Indian democracy truly functional for the people.
The Act had not just enabled the public to obtain information from various departments of the public sector but had also nurtured people across the country to question the government through the information they had gathered. A place like Madurai located in the southernmost part of the nation, has been a forerunner in creating social changes through the Act.
For many people like C. Anand Raj and his wife A.Veronica Mary of Madurai, the RTI Act has proved to be an important tool to expose some of the crucial details in the health sector.
During 2009, Mr. Anand Raj witnessed bodies of 17 people, including children, stacked inside an an ambulance parked outside the mortuary of Government Rajaji Hospital (GRH). This, he said, was the key moment in his long journey with the RTI Act. “The visual incited me to know about the total number of child deaths that was recorded at the hospital, but the doctors refused to divulge it to me. With the scarce knowledge I had about the RTI Act in 2010, I decided to seek the data and succeeded. The reply said about 800 deaths took place in the hospital in a year,” he says.
This data helped him take the issue to the higher officials and elected representatives, which gave a defining value to the data as steps were taken by the government to reduce neonatal deaths through construction of a Comprehensive Emergency Obstetric and Newborn Care (CEmONC) building, he adds.
He insists on the importance of field work for activists like him to get to the root cause of an issue. Explaining one such incident, Ms. Mary says that when they were studying the issue of a water contamination at Narikudi in Virudhunagar distict, they saw a panchayat leader who was bedridden for over a year, without the means to get treatment.
“We decided to extend help to the panchayat leader and took him to a nearby rural government hospital, but we learned that MRI machines are not available in hospitals in rural areas. When taking him to GRH in Madurai, it was another shock that they charged ₹2,500 for getting the scan,” she says.
At a time when MRI was seen as an essential medical equipment to gather precise details of a patient, the high charge demanded at government hospitals pushed the couple to seek the details of MRI machines available to public in government health centres.
“This RTI reply which said that about ₹300 crore was earned through scans in government hospitals resulted in making the efforts by activists to bring the MRI scan under Chief Minister Health Insurance scheme,” she adds.
Though we should not take credit for many things, still we were happy to see things change that we fought for, says Mr. Anand Raj.
Another Maduraibased RTI activist, S. Karthik, says he had no idea about RTI until 2015. “The moment I learned about it, I realised that right questions raised against the government can bring about change for the better,” he adds.
“Initially I felt that RTI was just a trendy tool to question the authorities, but I realised that it requires a thorough knowledge of the system and its functioning. Only when the missing pieces are found, we’ll be able to raise the right questions. Otherwise, the authorties will manage to dodge them,” Mr. Karthik says.
“While learning about funds that are allocated to Adi Dravidar and Tribal Welfare Department in the State, I wanted to know about the total funds allocated to the department as many of the students’ scholarship money was put on hold for several years. The RTI reply came as a shock as it said ₹927 crore out of the total ₹15,000 crore was sent back unused. It raised serious questions among the public and civil society organisations making the officials concerned to given an answer to the question in the Assembly,” he adds.
In many departments, the Public Information Officer who must answer the RTIs is unaware of the process. “Many officials usually wait till the stipulated time of 30 days to reply. If the applicant goes for an appeal, the officer, just to dispose the RTI application, gives an vague answer. It only leads to a slow but certain death even if the executive had all the answers,” he adds.
According to ‘Report Card of Information Commissions in India, 201819,’ released by Satark Nagrik Sangathan (SSN) and the Centre for Equity Studies (CES), out of the total applications filed, less than 45% received the information they sought, and less than 10% among the rest of the 55% filed appeals.
But Mr. Karthik expressed his confidence in the Act saying that it is the only resort for the public to hold the system accountable in this age of secrecy behind the functioning of the government.
Adding to the challenges faced by the RTI activists, K. Hakkim, another RTI activist, says the only way to win over the system is to educate people about the RTI process and its importance. Mr. Hakkim, who has penned a book on RTI and who has taken over 500 RTI classes to the public, says that when people learn to use the tool effectively, no officer can escape from providing the details.
“After I learnt that one of my neighbors, a Tamil Nadu State Transport Corporation (TNSTC) staff, had not received his salaries for two months, I spent a mere ₹35 to send an RTI application asking the total revenue and expenditure of TNSTC. I received a reply saying TNSTC was had a debt of ₹7,000 crore and it was paying ₹520 crore as interest every year,” he says.
“When this became viral, opposition and the public went on to the streets demanding to protect the corporation, which led to the then AIADMK government to allocate a separate fund of ₹3,000 crore for TNSTC,” Mr. Hakkim adds.
Apart from the usual hindrances the RTI applicants face, the new amendments made to the RTI Act and lack of independence and autonomy of the oversight body the Data Protection Board would restrict the scope of RTI and in turn would affect the ability of people to access the information.
But, as the history shows, the regressive practices would have to come to an end and that would hopefully help regain RTI its original mission.