-Hindustan Times Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday is addressing a convention on the 10th-anniversary celebrations of the Right to Information (RTI) Act which was brought in ‘to promote transparency and accountability in the working of every public authority’. As the act completes a decade of existence, here is how (and why) it changed the way the government and public servants function: 1. What is RTI? A law that empowers every citizen to seek...
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10 Years Of RTI: Maharashtra Emerges As The Most Dangerous State In India -Betwa Sharma
-Huffington Post NEW DELHI: Almost 300 cases of murder, assault and harassment relating to information activism have been recorded in the ten years since the Right To Information Act came into force on October 12, 2005, and Maharashtra has emerged as the most dangerous state for RTI activists in the country. While there is no official data on RTI-related crime, figures complied by the Delhi-based Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative found 230 cases...
More »Our RTI Experiences: 10 Years On, A Flawed Process Mars Powerful Act -Ujjainee Sharma and Trishna Senapaty
-The Huffington Post The Right to Information Act 2005 has opened up a space where people are able to ask questions of their government and bring the focus on cases of serious lapses in governance. Back in 2010 when we filed our RTI one had to go to the concerned department, find the Public Information officer (PIO) and then complete the necessary paperwork with them. At that time, we remember waiting around...
More »Decade on, why RTI needs a second revolution -Satyananda Mishra
-The Indian Express A number of significant disclosures were forced by the RTI, including the information regarding 2G and Commonwealth Games and so on. The Right to Information Act is now 10 years old — long enough to give us a fair idea of how it has performed on the ground. Riding on a huge wave of civil society activism, it started on a positive note and made unexpected impact early...
More »10 years of RTI Act: 39 activists dead, 275 harassed, says report -Chetan Chauhan
-Hindustan Times When right to information activist Guru Prasad Shukla was beaten to death by fellow villagers last month, he became the 39th person to lay down his life for exercising the transparency law in its first decade. Another 275 people have reportedly been assaulted or harassed for invoking the law to raise uncomfortable questions before those in power. The 50-year-old Shukla had sought information about development work in his village and...
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