RTI assessment

Their study will cover 10 states and finish by October. A national survey of 20,000 people will be conducted where villagers will be asked to frame rti applications on a subject and

responses of public authorities concerned will be noted. Similar methodology will be followed in urban areas as well. Specific sectors such as media and institutions including high courts

and the supreme court will be studied on how they have internalized rti. Public Information officers (pios) and chief information commissioners of states will also be interviewed.

"Systemic changes in governance are happening gradually. For instance, officials are scared if they do something under political pressure, they know they are answerable to the public.

The enthusiasm for the act is there and it will go up. But there are certain issues of implementation that need to be addressed," said Singh. Appeals top the list and are among the

major deterrents for people to use rti Act. Besides, these take time. Only one case (of appeal) is cleared in a day in Andhra Pradesh and in Kerala, just 50 cases were disposed of in 2007,

says Arvind Kejriwal of Parivartan, the ngo that used rti to expose public distribution system scam in Delhi. "Waiting time for appeals in Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh is more than

three years and in Delhi, it is up to a year. Information commissioners are killing the act. They refuse to impose penalty on pios for delaying or giving out incomplete information,"

Kejriwal said. Information officers justify the backlog saying they don't have enough manpower or cite plain lack of incentive as one of the reasons (see box _Our complaints_).

Proactive disclosure Harinesh Pandya, who runs Janpath, an ngo in Ahmedabad that spreads awareness on rti, says there is a fundamental problem. "Half the load of rti applications will

go down if proactive disclosure is made properly," he says. Proactive disclosure under section 4 of the act lays down that public authorities have to _suo motu_ declare information

pertaining to their functioning under various factors, which include budget allocations, welfare and subsidy schemes, inter-departmental transfers, details of committees, grants, permits and

concessions. Ideally, a person need not file an rti application for such information. "While announcing the act in the Lok Sabha, the prime minister had said that proactive information

should be provided readily so that a person needs to use rti as less as possible. But this has not been taken in spirit by pios and hence offices are flooded with applications and

appeals," says Pandya. The following example is a case in point. In Jamnagar district in Gujarat, a person filed an rti application with the labour department in 2007 asking how many

inspections on local manual labour employed by Reliance Petroleum factory was carried out in the past five years. The company is supposed to employ 80 per cent local manual labour as a part

of conditions for getting tax benefits. But information was denied under section 8 of the act, which says it is not mandatory to provide information relating to commercial confidence or

trade secrets, the disclosure of which would harm the competitive position of a third party, unless larger public interest is involved. The seeker, Rafeek Lal Maradia, received information

after he filed the second appeal. When the information was granted, the company filed a case in the Gujarat High Court saying it was third party information and that the labour commissioner

had given it without the company's permission. The court put a stay on providing third party information and told the seeker not to use the information provided. The case is pending

still. "This was proactive information which the labour department should have given even without an rti application but now every department is using this instance for not revealing

details," says Pandya. Surendra Srivastava of Lok Satta, an ngo in Mumbai, agrees "Any information that does not impact the legal personal interest of someone should not be denied

to public. Disclosures on who was awarded the tender for road laying etc are denied often. It depends on the pio who feels that by the time the appeal is heard, he will either retire or get

transferred," he said. Proactive disclosure becomes all the more necessary because most citizens are still wary of government officers. They do not perceive getting information as their

fundamental right. Janpath, along with state information commission and the Gujarat government, is doing a proactive disclosure audit of four public departments in each district of the

state to find out what is lacking in their system and suggest additions in them. Grievance redressal tool Though there are problems, activists agree rti is a powerful regulation and has

brought in significant changes in governance. Singh says government officers are careful because they know they can be booked under the rti act if they indulge in corrupt practices. He cites

an instance where an officer refused to do the bidding of a retired secretary of his department. The secretary wanted him to allot a servant quarter but the officer did not oblige.

Ministers may have become careful about their travel bills after Maharashtra governor S M Krishna's travel details got exposed through an rti application. The disclosure revealed that

the governor and his wife spent Rs 35 lakh on 31 trips between Mumbai and Bangalore from December 2004 to November 2006. All the trips were paid from the government exchequer. Visits

included those undertaken for weddings, funerals, dance performances, a tennis association meeting and a volleyball championship. In an effort to give the regulation a boost, the Bihar

government has introduced rti applications over phone for those who cannot write. "But," says Singh, "the rti Act has not been used to its potential and there is still a long

way to go." For now, he hopes the country can wish the regulation a happy third birthday in October this year.