Turning India’s bureaucratic lions into cooperative pussycats will take a while. India’s paper pushers are doing what they do best–trying to ignore the new law in the hope that it will go away. Indeed, some forces within the government have already made an attempt to ax a key provision in the law. But civil-rights activists rebuffed that effort and, backed by noted Indians from all walks of life, recently launched a nationwide effort to promote the right to information. This summer nearly 700 civic groups held seminars in 47 cities to build awareness of the law–exhorting people to use it to put pressure on the government. “Our main task is now to flood the government with hundreds of thousands of RTI applications so that the recalcitrant bureaucracy is thoroughly shaken,” says Arvind Kejriwal, founder of Parivartan (Change), a civil-rights group that spearheaded the campaign for the law.
The law’s backers are making some headway. About 50,000 information-seeking applications have been filed already. Triveni Devi, a ragpicker who lives with her husband and two children in an East Delhi slum, has a food card that entitles her to buy grain at subsidized prices from the neighborhood ration shop. But until recently, she had great trouble getting the cheap grain from her local shopkeeper. He always had a reason for why the grain wasn’t available: the stocks had not yet arrived, or Devi had used up her quota. But with the help of Abidullah Khan, a young activist, Devi sought information under the RTI on stocks and books maintained in the ration shop. They discovered that the shopkeeper had been fudging his books and illegally withholding the grain. Once exposed, the shopkeeper apologized and started giving Triveni Devi her monthly quota of 35 kilograms of wheat and rice.
Word of Devi’s breakthrough got around, and soon other slum dwellers were seeking information from their respective neighborhood ration shops. It turns out that ration shops routinely sold off the bulk of the subsidized grain in the open market for profit. “Today almost all the ration shops in the poor localities in Delhi [a city of more than 15 million] maintain proper records and provide grains to the cardholders,” says activist Abidullah Khan of Parivartan. “They now know that anybody can inspect their records.”
Puran Singh, a poor daily wage earner in the northern Indian state of Haryana, took advantage of the new law, too. A few weeks ago, some local bullies who hired Singh refused to pay him for his work, then beat him up when he complained. Singh went to the local police station to lodge a report. The policemen shooed him away. He then went to the district police chief and even there he was ignored. That’s when Pradeep Kumar, a young lawyer working for the Rohtak city courts, found a disheartened Singh in his office. Kumar filed an RTI application to find out why Singh’s report of assault was not registered in the local police station. Out of embarrassment and fear of penalty, police swung into action and within days the bullies were arrested. “I have now decided to spread the word and help people to demand their rights, even though I have received some threats to my life,” says Kumar.
Using the new right to information, some citizens in Mumbai have unearthed a scam in which successive governments have been doling out public land to various private bodies for shops and businesses. The land grab has cost the city government more than $1 billion in lost revenue. “The information shows a completely bizarre picture of nepotism and corruption involving public servants,” says Shailesh Gandhi, a civil-rights activist in Mumbai.
Not surprisingly, public servants are working to undermine the new law. Despite progress in some cases, many citizen applications for information are turned down, in defiance of the law. Officials who do respond to requests often demand money. Some retired bureaucrats are even wangling their way into jobs with information commissions. Most government departments continue to flout a major clause of the act–the mandatory publication of budgets, subsidies, projects and licenses. “As citizens’ awareness grows, the bureaucracy gets nervous and combative,” says Gautam Bastian of the Center for Civil Society, a New Delhi-based think tank.
The new law mandates that each of India’s 29 states set up an Information Commission to oversee the implementation of the act. Most have done so–but the offices are poorly staffed and underfunded because, government critics say, state bureaucrats aren’t eager to see their corruption exposed. Few of the new bodies have more than two commissioners when the law allows up to 10. The Central Information Commission, the appellate authority, works from a dingy rented office in New Delhi. What’s more, according to civil activists, some new Information Commission officials have been reluctant to impose financial penalties on bureaucrats who refuse to respond to public inquiries, as the new law dictates. (The fines can be as high as $1,000 or a month’s salary.) While Singh and Gandhi are keen to reform the bureaucracy, the Congress Party rank and file, along with other government officials, are far less enthusiastic. Indeed, they have sought to amend the RTI to exclude files that note positions taken by bureaucrats on all government decisions. These “file notings” are critical to making bureaucrats accountable, says B. N. Yugandhar, a member of India’s Planning Commission. “If my name is known, then I will take responsibility for my actions.”
After activists launched their education campaign this summer, the government dropped its effort to keep file notings under seal. But it may try again, and activists are ready for a fight. “We’re now at a crucial stage of a brewing confrontation, and only mounting public pressure can make the law a success,” says Bastian of the Center for Civil Society. If that happens, India might become a very different country. “This is nothing short of a quiet revolution,” says political scientist Ajay Mehra of the Center for Public Affairs in New Delhi. “The law has the potential to change the face of governance in India.” And that could be one of the most important legacies of the Sonia Gandhi-Manmohan Singh era.
