Nikhil Dey, convener of the National Campaign for People's Right to Information, has been in the forefront of the RTI movement. He speaks to Bharat Dogra about the achievements of the RTI and the challenges ahead: How do you assess the overall impact of the RTI? Sceptics say corruption is increasing more than even before. What I can assure them is corruption would have been much higher without the RTI. In schemes...
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All You Need To Know...by Arpita Basu and Neha Bhatt
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...
More »A good start, but concerns remain by Jagdeep S Chhokar
The first five years in the life of most laws is usually a tumultuous period when it moves towards maturity through its application and implementation, and its limits are tested and defined through judicial interpretation. How has the RTI Act fared, where is it now, and what about the future? Danubhai G. Vasava, a poor tribal from Sangroad in Umarpada block of Gujarat’s Surat district, attended a Right to Information (RTI)...
More »Ringing the winds of change in the new Bihar by Suneha Dutta
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,...
More »RTI officials say no misuse of act, only frivolous requests by Himanshi Dhawan
Burning a hole in the government's oft used argument that Right to Information Act needed to be amended to prevent its misuse and discourage frivolous and vexatious applications, government-appointed information commissioners have said the legislation was not being misused. A survey by NGO Parivartan found that only 22% of information commissioners (ICs) felt that there was misuse of the law while only 11% felt that applications filed by people were...
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