The youth will not take no for an answer. Five years on, the RTI comes of age. At four feet something, Santosh’s energy belies her petite frame. The school dropout was introduced to RTI through activist Arvind Kejriwal, and now, at Parivartan’s Sundar Nagri office, she holds fort, helping others acquire everything from BPL and ration cards to school admissions through RTI. Threats and attacks by local authorities who dubbed her...

Bihar's programme of filing RTI applications through a call center is a novel one. The question is whether the model is effiicient enough to be replicated in other states like Karnataka. If you are in Bihar, you can get electronic goods repaired, phone numbers, buy things through call centres — and also file an RTI application. Zafar Hassan has filed two applications in the past two years through call centres,...

Opposing the current practice of appointing retired bureaucrats as information commissioners, RTI activists on Thursday demanded that future appointments take place through open advertisement with applicants giving a detailed application form and a presentation to be screened by a high level committee. Advocating an open and transparent process for appointment of information commissioners, RTI activists said persons of eminence in public life should be selected. MKSS leader and social activist...

Pune has become the first municipal corporation in India to have a Right to Information (RTI) library. Magsaysay award winner Arvind Kejriwal inaugurated the library that is named after Prakash Kardaley, a journalist from the city, who had a major role in the drafting of the Right to Information Act. Calling Kardaley a guiding force in the RTI movement, Mr. Kejriwal said that it was only apt that the Pune Municipal...

A clutch of activists questioned the manner in which government went about choosing information commissioners,or the authorities tasked with facilitating public inquiry under the Right To Information (RTI) Act. In a press conference, prominent RTI activists, including Magsaysay awardee Arvind Kejriwal, alleged that Department of Personnel and Training hadn’t prescribed rules to select information commissioners. This, they added, encouraged an arbitary selection of individuals to these posts. India’s RTI Act of...