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I
want to begin by thanking jananeethi for having me here today
and welcoming me inspite of the odds of having very little
time and constraints of another major workshop at Kila. What
brings me here to you today is the fact that the last 40 years
of my life I have been working with and living with people who
have always interested me in a very positive sense. I’ve
always felt since a child the difference between people who
are privileged like me and people who have no privileges is
very large. My interest in my work did not begin with a
theoretical understanding but with an emotional need from when
I was very young. I remember in my youth, my grandparents used
to live in Chennai and was brought in the summer holidays to
see my grandfather, and I remember that there used to be this
custom of people who vow to go to Tiruppathi and roll all the
way. I used to see a man with wounds all over his body and be
very upset, I used to insist that my grandfather give him his
shirt. My grandfather used to say he will not wear it as he
has to roll anyway. My father and mother gave me a certain
sense of values that is if you feel strongly about something
then you must do something about it. Because if you
really feel bad and don’t do anything about it then we have
this great anomaly that is the Indian middle class where year
after year, day after day ,we are so concerned about this
country but we don’t act. I think if we turned around and
looked just before the period of independence the Indian
middle class was actively involved, whether you agree with the
methods they used or did not use, in a series of actions which
led to our independence. But immediately after independence
people of my bourgeois family, in which most of us are born,
the intention and ambition of most families became “how do we
get on with it?” or “do our children go to foreign
universities?” or “do they become IAS officers?” or “how do
they become experts or specialists?”, “how do they become
doctors or engineers?” and the business of how the country
ran, or what the governments did ,became a secondary issue. We
had this belief that somehow it would run and that somebody
would run it, that our role was over and now we needed to get
what we could out of this nation state. I think what the Right
To Information actually has done for the middle class is that
it has shaken them out of their complacence. But it has also
given them a tool which is not revolutionary in one sense,
which does not require them to go sit on the street and
agitate but use a tool nevertheless to ask very critical
questions of governance, of status quo and disturb the status
quo. So in a sense if I go to a town, as I have come to
Thrissur, I feel that there is an obligation on the part of
urban India to use this Act much more than it does. And for
the number of issues that you raise and are irritated by in
governance in issues which are there on the road this Act can
really lead you into contributing for the country.
How did it all begin? It began when poor peasants and workers
in central Rajasthan in the 90’s started asking for minimal
wages. The govt of Rajasthan runs public works even today
though most of it has come under NREGA and in these public
works there is always a short fall between the statutory works
and the minimum wage and what is paid to them, so they wanted
the minimum wage and they were told that they are liars, that
their records say they didn’t work. So it was an agitation
that began to see the records to prove that they had worked so
that they could get their minimum wage that led to the Right
To Information Act and the campaign as we know it today was
born. So when we asked to see the records of that Panchayat we
were told that we can’t see them as they are secret documents.
Any muster roll where the names are entered once is a bill and
the bill once it has gone to the treasury is a secret document
and we could not see it. We all knew that there were bogus
names on the muster role but unless u could see them how could
you prove that they were bogus names? So if only 10 people
worked, there were 20 peoples names and so they were siphoning
off of money. In this process, to cut a long story short, we
unearthed factual data when taken to people shocked them. We
took muster roles out of govt offices by copying them with a
pencil and took them to the people, and in 1994 when we read
it out there were dead peoples names on the muster rolls,
people who had migrated from Rajasthan many years ago were on
the muster rolls, there were names of people like me who don’t
even know how to do hard labour who are having other jobs. So
the population got terribly irate and the anger and angst made
them go out and demand that that wanted to see the documents
and they framed the concept of Right to Information that’s why
the Indian law is different from the law in Mexico, the law in
Australia, the law in the U.S, the law in U.K, the law
anywhere else because the need for the law and the framing of
the law was done by the real people of India, the people of
Bharath. You know that India is described as having two bits –
India and Bharath. India is for people like you and me, India
is for citizens, India is for people who speak English, India
is for people who access the law and Bharath is that part of
India which even today has only subjects, there is no access
to law, there is no access to English, there are no rights.
You are just there at the mercy of all the legal systems. It
is the subjects of India who irate and angry with their
condition who have given us our right. They’ve also made us
realise that if the constitution give us sovereignty, calls us
the sovereign, it vests not with the elected representatives,
not with the chief minister, not with our IAS officers, not
with our chief secretaries to the government, but with you and
me and we transfer this power to them so that they rule India
as good servants and we have forgotten it so the sovereignty
that is vested in us through right to information, because it
has conferred on us some phenomenal rights and if we
understand those right we act from there, so when these
people agitated for getting an entitlement to see the records
we had a series of conflicts with the govt of Rajasthan and
then we sat on a very long dharna in a place called
Bihavar in 1996; for 40 days we sat in the middle of the
market place and the campaign grew. I remember the first day
we went and sat there the people asked why have you come? What
does it have to do with poor people but as they sat there and
as we sat there, as they kept hearing us they understood that
it is a vital right. Even for you right to food it is a vital
right you want right to health it is a vital right you want
right to anything it is a vital right. It is a transformatory
right it is the right that transforms that right into action
and therefore the importance of this right was seen by the
whole town. We collected Rs 86000 in cash we are not an NGO,
we don’t get funds; we exist on donations given be
individuals, we don’t exist on foreign money, so we are not
that kind of NGO. We define ourselves as a non party political
group. There was a young boy who used to work in the morning
and study in the afternoon, he used to give us Rs 2 everyday,
the chaiwala used to give us chai, the videographer did
free videography we got free water and vegetables and the
people who came to sit on the dharna brought 4 kilos of
grain. We ate up 20 quintals of grain in those 40 days so you
can imagine how many people who came, a merchant opened up one
of his shops, which was unbuilt and asked us to cook there. So
he gave us a place that was free, it somehow brought the
spirit of democracy alive. People started feeling that if we
do not have the right to see how we are governed, India will
be a terrible place so it grew and became a national campaign
to peoples Right to Information of which Mr M. P Parameswaran
was also a member in the initial stages and many others were
members it was decided that the law shall be drafted by the
Press Council of India under Justice P.V Sawant who then
invited people from all over the country including
intellectuals, peasants, workers, women activists, health
activists got together and debated what kind of a law we
wanted. He also invited politicians and ex-bureaucrats, they
all came. At the end of the debate, Susheela who had come with
me from the village was asked, “what do you know about Right
to Information and why have you come?” She said, and these are
the kind of people we dismiss as people who can’t run the
country or can’t contribute to governance, “I send my son to
the market place with 10 Rs, when he comes back I ask for
accounts. This country spends crores of rupees in my name
won’t I ask for my accounts? It is our money, therefore, it is
our accounts.” Powerful statements have come from so many
people and these are the people who have really made it
possible for India to get the Act because though Justice
Sawant drafted the Act and listened to people’s voices,
consulted them and made the law, without continuous struggle
on the streets, Right to Information would not have come. As
the campaign grew, scientists joined, lawyers joined,
journalists joined, members of the bar and bench joined, when
they saw without this, you cannot get corruption out of the
system nor can you get arbitrary governance out of the system.
Corruption you all know about, every day there is a scam.
Recently there was a scam in Delhi of which reports have come
of an IAS officer who had tons of gold secreted because of
mismanagement and siphoning of government money. But you know
that even arbitrary governance is because of lack of
transparency. If you are not transparent you can misgovern and
most glaring example has been Gujarat. If you look at the
misgovernance in Gujarat and what happened in 2002 and of the
genocide and the mismanagement that has led to misinformation
to really condition a population to behave differently then we
know how important facts are. If wrong facts are fed to people
over and over again then you come to wrong decisions and you
have a mindset which works differently.
What does right to information give us? First of all under
the Right to Information Act anyone can go and ask for
information, you do not have to prove your identity, you can
go and in an ordinary piece of paper you can apply for
information with Rs 10 either through money order or various
ways. Once you pay Rs 10 you can inspect the files, and they
must provide you space and date for the inspection. There is a
reporter from The Hindu has gone to the Ministry of Rural
Development and has looked at papers which have brought out
revolutionary data. Now the point is, you can go and see the
files after which you can ask for authenticated photocopies of
the data and they must give it to you within 30 days. If they
don’t give it to you within 30 days the person must give a
fine of Rs 250 from his own pocket. Up to Rs 25000 fine can be
levied on that individual and now we wanted that to be entered
into their confidential report and be marked negatively. But
many people have been fined including a senior director in the
ministry of development and seniors officers as well. Paying
Rs 25000 from your own pocket is ignominy and shame for anyone
who has some self respect. So that is the point, that there is
a penalty provision, without this penalty provision no
information would ever be released as they would be
implicated. During the dharna, a lawyer came to us and
said that it is a very good issue but we would never get the
information. So we asked him why not and he said that your
asking a rotten system to pull its heart out and place it in
front of you. So the Right to Information requires the person
to give you authentic information even if it goes against him
or her, making the penalty clause very important. Information
is defined not only as paper, it covers electronic
information, it covers videography and films, it covers
materials. Like if you suspect a road is not being built
properly you can ask for a section of the road to be cut and
given to you. You can inspect grains of a ration shop. It
covers a whole range of information which you can access. It
also has the provisions of what can’t be seen. We can’t see
those things under the Act which our MLAs and MPs can not see.
We can see everything and it empowers us to see what our MLA’s
and MP’s can see. I remember there was a huge debate about the
positive and negative list and Dr N.C Saxena who is an IAS
officer came up with this fantastic formulation. He came up
and said, don’t waste your time, what an MP can see we can
also as they are only our representatives, we are the power.
What a servant can see, his master can see. So there is an
override which says not withstanding anything what the MLA can
see you and I can see. With this kind of power we should use
it but nobody really files an application under the RTI and
then we complain. It is only us people from the middle class
who do not use it. It is being used by 100s and 1000s of
applications which have been filed in India. So there is a
punishment and another override which says that even if it is
a security related matter if it affects corruption or human
rights then you can access it. The commission can rule that it
be released to you in public interest. We have all these
clauses and must be used even in restricted areas like for
instance Manipur, Chattisgarh and many other places.
What has it done for us in the last five years? Apart from
the fact that it has enabled us to get information out into
the public Act there is a Section 4 which says that all
government organisations or govt. funded organisations should
have a board which says who is the public information officer
of that building in what room they sit and the basic function.
It may not be important to this organisation but if you go to
a Panchayats or municipal organisation it becomes vital to
know the budget, how much money is spent and how much work is
due, how many people are doing what work. How many jeeps or
vehicles run in this office. One collector rang up from MP to
Delhi and said a chaiwala has filed an application
saying ‘he wanted to see my log book. Do I have to show it to
him?’ The answer was ‘yes’ as it is run by money given to you
by the government. Many people have got their rations by just
applying their right to information to PDS dealers saying I
want to see your record. On the registers of the PDS many
names were entered but on the ration card it was blank. I only
need these 2 documents to have a criminal case against the PDS
owner or operator for non supply. We’ve gone to hospitals to
know the list of medicines they have for poor people and also
see the stock register and bring a complainant who says “I
came 4 days ago, my son being bitten by a snake and you said
go and buy the serum from a shop outside and there was none
there. I had to take him to a hospital 20 kms away to get it.”
And the register shows serum but doctor says that there is no
serum. So where did the serum go? For people it is a matter of
life and death. Recently in this whole business of Bt brinjal
and the genetic modification of the brinjal they are saying
there will be no side effects. It is being done by a company
and the same company is doing research on it to find out if it
will affect us and the same company will sell it. Look at the
vested interest pattern. When they asked for information they
were first refused it but they won their appeal. So they got a
segment of the information out to know what kind of side
effects would have. Some of my friends say, if it is
genetically modified then it can damage our genes to such an
extent that our children will be born deformed. There is a 50
% chance of ugly deformations. So when this came into the
public domain, there was pressure on the Minister for
environment Jairam Ramesh to have public hearings. He has had
6 to 8 public hearing, many people including scientists and
technologists. Once the information was out these people came
into the battle and said that these activists were correct.
This will really impact generations to come so that now there
is a moratorium on Bt brinjal. This is not a small battle, it
is a huge battle won if you realise what it implies. These
battles are only possible if there is legitimate factual
information out in the public domain. The latest is the chief
justice of India feels the courts should be out of the domain
of Right to Information. It is interesting to note that every
power group says that every one else should be under the RTI
but not me. So the Chief Justice was very upset when there was
a ruling by the Central Information Commission that the
Justices will have to declare their assets. So the Supreme
Court then went in appeal to the high court, which is
subordinate, and they lost in the high court. That was a
single bench decision. Then they said there must be a Full
Bench decision. The Full Bench also upheld the fact that they
must display their asserts. Then they came in appeal to
themselves, violating all principles of natural justice. If
this is how Supreme Court functions, how will we evaluate the
judicial system? All of us are intelligent people, but we must
now learn that if it is so, then what is the role judiciary
for justice for rich people, for poor people, for fairness,
for interpretation of Constitution, if the Supreme Court
argues that it is above law. So the Chief Justice wrote a
letter to the Prime Minister to amend the Right to Information
Act. So again for the 5th time the DOPD said we
must amend it. So a couple who are lawyers in Delhi, they
filed an RTI application to see the letters by the Chief
Justice and the Prime Minister and Mrs Sonia Gandhi. This
happened as there was an NDTV program that says there was a
difference of opinion between the Prime Minister and Sonia
Gandhi. When they applied , Mrs Gandhi said, ‘do not amend the
Act, implement it’, the Prime Minister said ‘we must amend the
Act to reject frivolous and vexatious applications’. What a
subjective definition? Who is going to define what is
frivolous? A vexatious application? A Muslim who has been
badly treated in Gujarat wants to know some information, it
will be a ‘vexatious’ information. The other thing they don’t
want to give is file notings. The file has two parts, the
right side has all papers which come as letters to ministries
and the left side is reasons for taking decisions. But in the
definition, it includes ‘all counsel/advice leading to
decision is public information’. The Central Commission ruled
that all file notings must be shown. No babu (Hindi
term for bureaucrats ) wants to show the left side of the
file. The chief Justice has written to the Prime Minister, and
that is also out. This is not sensation. We must know how
these people govern us. Why is it that certain things are done
and certain things are not? Even people who fly into Kerala, I
want to know why coming into Kerala is so expensive. Why a
flight to Kerala is so expensive while if you fly from Delhi
to Bangkok it is cheaper? Why is it so? People of Kerala
should know. There are millions of examples. Today it is about
gas supply, about roads, health, violations, killings - it is
about everything. Vrinda Grover, very eminent lawyer in Delhi
used the RTI to unearth the reasons for killings by the border
security force of 15 people 20 years ago. She has gotten
justice for these families. For so many years without justice
she has been able to establish that there were killings which
are unfair, illegal and establish the fact that so far those
families who have been living under the shadow of having been
party to some kind of nefarious activity proved innocent. So
there are a number of things enabled by the RTI.
The RTI, as Nikhil Chakravarthy said, when he came to us, who
is a eminent journalist who refused the Padma Vibhushan
as he did not want to accept it from a Government, he thought
it was unethical. His name is synonymous with ethical
journalism. He died about 5 or 6 years ago at the ripe old age
of 85 or 86. He was the Director General of Prasar Bharthi and
has written and edited a magazine called “Mainstream”
.He came to Rajasthan, while we were agitating and he said
don’t think that this is a small battle. This is the second
war of independence. The first was a war against foreigners
who ruled us. This is a war against our own people who are
rulers to know how this country is run and what we should do
about it. I think for each one of us the Right to Information
Act is an important Act to use. It is a small thing that
enables us to ask questions legitimately and legally and has
changed power relationships between being the ordinary citizen
and the power elite where to ask a question they are beaten
up. Now apart from evasion they have no other answer but
somehow now RTI officers are also being killed. In Pune ,
Bihar, Jharkhand , Thane … RTI officers were being killed. So
the system is reacting with violence. If, as citizens, we do
not want violence we must use legitimate processes that there
are non violent ways of asking questions, getting answers and
establishing accountability to make this country a better
place. It is being used in electoral process and there are
numbers of people using the RTI and winning elections without
deceit, without spending money and paying for vote.
While we were fighting for right to information we also
revived the right to employment, which is also known as the
Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. We
argued with politicians and lobbied with them saying that if
you do not give the right to work, you are going into
tremendous violence as we have gone beyond the edge of
poverty. If you do not want to create Maoism as a poor person
will fight and the problem is that if you use violence then
there is nothing one will have as a counter argument. But
again and again we have seen that violence has not led to a
better form of governance. Now there is nothing left but the
Gandhian form of peaceful non violence resistance for people
who want to live in the paradigm of a constitutional India
today. So we lobbied with the political parties. The first UPA
promised us in the manifesto that if they won they would give
us the NREGA. And when they won they gave us the National
Common Minimum Programme where they promised 100 days
employment for every rural household. Honestly I thought we
could get the RTI but the employment scheme is absolutely
impossible because this country is not totally capitalistic
and did not believe in protection of workers. But they say
Quixoting, from the famous Don Quixote the Spanish mad man, a
series of strange relations they promised us and this
programme was a tremendous revolution. The discourse on the
mainstream media was on poverty after 20 years. The media was
against the NREGA and well known economist called Prof. Bhalla
who said on a TV program “give me a sack full of money and I
will distribute it to the poor. It is better than the NREGA”.
Fortunately there were some rural people who said we do not
want your dole and said we want to live in dignity. There were
heated arguments but finally we got the Act. This gives some
extra ordinary entitlements. For the first time in the history
of India, we have an Act that gives to any person in rural
India who wants to work as hard labour. Which means it is a
justiceable Act which means a job card must be made and you
are entitled to apply for work. That work must be given in 15
days time. If not the workers are allowed an unemployment
allowance which begins with 25 % of minimum wages. The worker
will not get work beyond 5 kms. If so they must be allowed
travel allowance. The names and numbers of job cards will be
up for everyone to see. I will be entitled, if I am a woman
labourer, to a crèche and medical facilities. Once I finish
work I may get my wages in 15 days if not I am entitled to
compensation. This has revolutionised rural India even rural
Kerala. In the use of this Act, has been generated immense
amount of real interest in Grama Panchayats in States where it
had become defunct. In Rajasthan under NREGA a Panchayat is
getting 1 crore as it is demand driven. The law entitles us to
ask for as much money as people demand work. The States which
have realised this have taken immense amounts of money. In
Rajasthan, every Panchayat has spent 1 crore. It has stopped
distress migration and children are going to school. They are
demanding better development structures. It is the only thing
that has stopped food and bread riots. I don’t know if urban
India recognises how important it is for India to have this
Act. Therefore, the NREGA and its transparency has created
huge power struggles. Painting the information outside the
Panchayats on the Panchayats board is a huge issue. The moment
you start painting people start asking uncomfortable
questions. It gives hope that at least in the next generation
money that comes in will be used. The reason why there is
unrest in Chatthisgarh and Jharkhand is because there is no
real development that has reached those places. So in a sense
if we have transparency, we have everything. The govt of
Rajasthan has recovered crores where they were asked to
produce the money defrauded. So more than 7 crores have been
returned to the ex chequer. So in a sense poor governance
which affects poor people has done a great service. But they
have also established for those who are activists that it is
possible for us that people can actually, in this dialectic
between struggle and advocacy can frame, formulate and fight
for a law and they can get it. Only the formulation itself by
technical people, but what it should contain is decided by the
people and therefore it last. Two quotations before I end, a
brilliant political thinker in the Spain , the first he said
was why do we have this 2 dimensional rulers in democracy? Our
idea in our faith is shot down, our hope is shot down and we
end in cynicism and despair further weakening the democracy.
But he said what you need for democracy is common sense.
People have common sense. In India Mahatma Gandhi travelled to
the whole country before he took over the national movement as
he listened to people. If you don’t listen to people you will
never know what can be done. Both the RTI and the NREGA
listened to people. The real definers of these Acts are the
people of India. The real concept and idea have come from the
people who have their feet firmly rooted and are full of
common sense and it is this that will take India forward.
Another quotation, one of my favourites, asks what is
democracy? Democracy is speaking truth to power, making truth
powerful and power truthful. If you manage that then we have a
democracy that will deliver. We have ideologies but beyond
ideology is ethics. No ethics, then even the ideology betrays
itself. Otherwise like the emperor and his new clothes we will
live in illusions and delusions and no country’s future can be
built on illusions and delusions. So I’ve come to you to share
a small ray of hope that perhaps, if we work ethically and
fairly, perhaps if we work diligently and with equality and
justice, may be India can change.
Transcribed by Bhadra R.
Menon
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