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Resource centre on India's rural distress
 
 

At 17, RTI centurion bats on by Ananya Sengupta

Thin, shy and already balding, his glasses threatening to fall off his nose at every movement, Mohammed Mobashshir Sarwar doesn’t quite look the teen rebel.

Yet, at 17, he already has 100 Right to Information (RTI) applications under his belt, all directed at his state-run school, whose management he is now battling in high court for expelling him.

Man of a few words he may be, but Sarwar has had no problem arguing his case on his own at Delhi High Court, with a group of lawyers acting as advisers to the youth being hailed as the country’s youngest RTI activist. He has won a stay on the expulsion and permission to attend classes and take exams.

Sarwar began his love affair with the RTI when he was 14. Buffeted with his queries on everything from budgets, policies and administrative details (see chart), the Jamia Senior Secondary hit back last December.

“I was in Class XI when they expelled me, saying I had been misusing the RTI Act and defaming my school,” Sarwar, who was wearing his white-and-grey school uniform when he spoke to The Telegraph, said.

“I have had to approach the courts for permission to attend classes, sit for exams, fill in my Class XII forms and even to get my mark sheet. I can’t understand why the school had to get into a confrontation with me over my simple queries that didn’t harm anyone.”

The son of a small-time trader from Madhepura in Bihar has been thrown out of the school hostel and now lives as a paying guest.

“I have been followed and threatened by goons. I have filed a complaint against the school administration saying if anything happens to me, these people should be held responsible.”

Sarwar, who has the support of some RTI activists, remembers his first RTI application, filed three years ago. It asked the school, managed by the central government-run Jamia Millia Islamia University, to reveal the sanctioned budget and actual expenditure for its annual day program, funded by the students but swarmed by guests who were strangers.

“I was not given the information,” he said.

Another of his applications asked why he had been denied social sciences as a subject.

“Who laid down that the social sciences are a subject only for girls? The Jamia prospectus doesn’t say that boys can’t opt for the subject,” Sarwar said.

The first signs of his penchant for asking uncomfortable questions had come when he was in Class VI. He wrote a scathing letter to the principal over the poor rotis served at the hostel and received a rebuke from the provost for his efforts.

Asked if he ever felt afraid to take the school authorities on, Sarwar shrugged and smiled. “The RTI means transparency. I am not fighting anyone; I just want things to be right,” he said.

The teen, who hopes to study law, believes he can make a difference. “Filing RTIs has become a habit. I cannot just stand and watch something wrong happening. I want answers. Of course, my way can bring a lot of problems, but what’s life if we can’t stand up for what we believe in?”

Last week, he received bad news: Jamia informed him it had formed a disciplinary committee to punish him.

Sarwar claims the high court has stayed any action by the school against him. “My mind is not working; this is completely unexpected,” he said.

Contacted by this newspaper, school principal Tariq Habib said: “He is my student and it’s my responsibility to see he is guided in the proper direction. The committee has been formed because he has done something wrong. Whatever we are doing is within the law.”

Habib did not explain what “wrong” Sarwar had done.

QUESTIONS

What some of Sarwar’s RTI applications asked his school to explain

Tuition fees
Annual day expenditure, and invite to 144 outsiders
Why boys were denied social sciences as optional subject
Appointment of hostel caretakers
Certain hostel guidelines
Difference (Rs 300) in what the school charged for hostel meals and what the mess contractor charged the school