They Ask the Right Questions

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/right-to-information-act-students-rti-applications/1/199829.html

June 18, 2012 / Story Damayanti Datta

June 9, 2012 | UPDATED 14:36 IST

They Ask the Right Questions

Empowered with RTI, students dig up administrative dirt

Tags: Right to Information | RTI | RTI application | RTI activists

Aishwarya Parashar (Photo: Maneesh Agnihotri)It was a pleasant
February morning in Lucknow. Class V students of the City Montessori
School at Rajajipuram were reading a chapter on Mahatma Gandhi. A hand
went up. A girl with hair tied in a ponytail asked: "Who gave him the
title Father of the Nation?" Aishwarya Parashar, 10, was known to ask
bright questions but this time she flummoxed the adults around her.
Not one to let go of an idea, she planned to tap a zillion sources,
including the Prime Minister. She approached him via the Right to
Information (RTI) Act on February 13 to make sure she received an
answer.

Parashar, who has been using the RTI Act since the age of seven, is
the youngest face in a growing brigade of information warriors. While
their classmates compete in cramming, they keep their date with
judges. They may stand out in government offices with their books and
bags, but the young crusaders take on the system for anything and
everything-inedible hostel food to corruption in ration shops- looking
for truth and ensuring justice. As Harshavardhan Reddy, a 22-year-old
engineering student who has 300 RTI applications to his credit, says,
"It's very effective. You just need to be fearless and patient." Often
expelled from schools or colleges, confronted by angry neighbours or
authorities or pressured by family, they dig up administrative dirt
with great glee. "I get all charged up when I think of myself as an
RTI activist," says Hyderabad student K.N. Sai Kumar, 21, who has
filed over 20 RTIs.

Although written on school notebook paper in a childish hand,
Parashar's letter could not be dismissed by the nation's top office as
a display of little-girl feistiness. It was a flawless RTI
application, as legally binding and enforceable as any. As the letter
changed hands between the Prime Minister's Office, the home ministry
and the National Archives, a national secret leaked out: Despite
continual mention in textbooks, Gandhi was never officially conferred
the honorific Father of the Nation. Parashar was told on March 26 that
there were no documents on the information she sought but she was
welcome to visit the archives and look for it herself. "I thought I
was asking a simple question," she says.

Since 2005, the RTI Act has built an impressive trajectory. In an era
of global youth rebellion, it seems to be opening up new space for
India's young to demand people's right to know. New student protests
are developing into challenging movements around the world: From
Athens to Rome, San Francisco to London, the Arab Spring to the
Chilean Winter. The young RTI activists too demand another way to run
the world, but theirs is no rock-and-tear gas fight with the state.
They prefer to work within the rule of law, engage with their
communities and demand change not just in their personal lives, but
for good governance and against corruption in the wider society.

"It's a very encouraging sign," says Nikhil Dey of National Campaign
for People's Right to Information (NCPRI), which began the RTI
campaign in India. "We go to schools and notice a high level of
awareness on the RTI law. There are also many progressive schools that
have started RTI clubs." NCPRI often gets to know about young people
who have filed an RTI application on behalf of family or friends. To
Kamal Mitra Chenoy, head of the Centre for Comparative Politics at
Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, the trend turns on its head the
widespread characterisation of today's young people as disinterested
and self-centred. "With civil society activists using the RTI route to
unearth scams and corruption, every young person wishes to be a
change-maker. And they are smart enough to have figured out that the
system works through legal, civic engagement."


Bhadresh Vamja (Photo: Shailesh Raval)Bhadresh Vamja, 18, of Saldi,
Gujarat, took to RTI to do something for his village. Thanks to him,
the Gujarat government passed an order in April making it compulsory
for all fair price shops in the state to disclose details of all
rations received and stocked in stores. It all started last year, when
the BCom student of Shri Vivek Vidhya Vikas Commerce College started
asking why the two fair price shops in his village always refused
ration to villagers. He filed an application on February 11, 2011,
with the tehsildar to get details of supplies sent to the shops every
month. With villagers rallying round him and advice from an NGO in
Ahmedabad, Vamja started a crusade, filing a series of RTIs and police
complaints, until the shopkeepers were brought in line and full
supplies restored.


Harshavardhan Reddy (Photo: Milind Wadekar)Often, personal battles
turn into public crusades. For Harshavardhan Reddy, student of the MIT
School of Government in Pune, RTI was initially a tool to undo a
private injustice: He was denied a passport for over two years for no
reason. "I first got to know about the RTI Act through a newspaper
report in 2009 and decided to try it out for myself," he says. "I
lodged an RTI, dragged the police to the consumer forum undeterred by
their threats, argued my own case in court for six months until I was
granted a passport." Reddy has now filed for a range of causes: For
poor farmers whose loans have been withheld by government-run banks,
or who have not received birth certificates, title deeds of land or
land record statements, to secure salary and compensation for
labourers, against corrupt teachers or the polluting rice mill in his
village, Karni in Andhra Pradesh. "People come to me with their
problems knowing I will do my best to help them," he says.


K.N. Sai Kumar (Photo: Krishnendu Halder)For Sai Kumar, it all started
in 2011 after he filed two RTI applications to seek information on the
functioning and funding of the government-aided school where he
studied and his mother, K. Rukmini Bai, worked as a teacher. As a
result, his mother was sacked without notice. He took up the battle
and the school was forced to take her back in February. "I used to be
hot-headed and would get angry with every wrongdoing I came across,"
says the final year BSc student of AV College, affiliated to Osmania
University in Hyderabad. "My RTI experience in the last few months
has made me more balanced. Fighting corruption is now a passion for me
and I am working on rti queries relating to the Right to Education."

But the road for RTI activists is not easy. As Nikhil Dey points out,
"Framing an RTI application can be quite complicated for a newcomer."
If the information is incomplete, then one has to apply again, pursue
it and also get the backing of lawyers and judges. According to the
RTI Ground Realities Survey conducted by the Consumer Unity & Trust
Society in 2010, only 32 per cent people know that an application can
be filed on plain paper, 27 per cent about the fees, 14 per cent about
the mandatory response time of 30 days. Moreover, RTI activists often
wage a lonesome and dangerous battle, over 50 having paid with life
for their courage since 2005. "It is always difficult for anyone who
raises important questions. But young people are mostly on safer
ground as they raise questions on broader civic issues," adds Dey

For many, like Parashar, there is usually an activist parent in the
background, inspiring or urging the child to seek information through
the RTI Act. In September 2009, it was the peak of the swine flu
pandemic and Parashar, in Class III then, got agitated over a garbage
dump right in front of her school. Her mother Urvashi Sharma, a social
worker and RTI activist, helped process her application to the Chief
Minister's Office (CMO) to remove it. A month later, when another RTI
application was made to get the status of her request, the CMO told
that her application was lost. A third RTI was filed to the CMO,
seeking information on the officer who misplaced the application. "I
haven't heard from them but the garbage was removed and that land was
handed over to my school, which set up a public library," says
Parashar.


Mobashshir Sarwar (Photo: Yasbant Negi)For others, like 18-year-old
Mobashshir Sarwar of Delhi, RTI can become a nightmare. On a collision
course with his school affiliated to Jamia Millia Islamia, in the last
two years, he has been expelled and even barred from taking his Class
XII exams. Sarwar has retaliated by dragging the school to court. The
bone of contention has been the 100-odd rtis he filed seeking
information on sensitive issues: Expense ledgers, teacher
appointments, by-laws to hostel food. "The director called me the
'habitual information seeker'," says the bespectacled boy. "I was
asking too many uncomfortable questions." When pleas to the
authorities went unheard, he was forced to file a writ petition in the
Delhi High Court on March 18, 2011. "Later, the court asked the school
what the trigger was and they alleged misconduct, misuse of RTI to
defame. Would there be anything to defame if they were honest and
going by the book?" he adds.

The collateral damage was extensive, too, for Sarwar. Earlier this
year, while his peers were busy preparing for their final
examinations, the boy from Madhepura, Bihar, was running from pillar
to post to get permission to take his exams. "They said I had low
attendance, when I actually attended classes regularly," he says. That
led to another writ petition against the school and he was granted
permission only on the eve of the exam. "It was sheer harassment," he
says. In the last two years, he endured relentless humiliation,
physical assaults and even death threats. It amused him when a dozen
guards followed him around whenever he went to school. "I get security
like Rahul Gandhi and the Prime Minister." His parents, Sarwar Asmi
and Nusrat Bano, provided support and encouragement. When the school
expelled him, his father advised him to go to court. His only regret
was that he lost out on friends due to the run-ins with his school;
"Everybody is scared to even hang out with me."

To the young crusaders, the charm of RTI far outstrips the dangers. It
allows them to break the monotony of everyday life and dream of
leaving behind a legacy. For some, RTI activism is a great learning
experience. "I've been to court so many times that I know all about
procedures and laws," says Sarwar, who is preparing for law school
entrance exams. Vamja has filed over 25 RTI applications through a
youth group he runs to help villagers understand their rights. "RTI
makes them learn new subjects every day," he says. For some, the RTI
Act is all about giving back to society. "What's the point if we can't
do good for people," asks Sarwar. Parashar wants to be like Mahatma
Gandhi, her role model. "I want to study medicine and serve the
poor,"she says. Sai Kumar feels RTI has earned him the respect of his
friends and teachers. The fact that people come to him with their
problems gives Reddy a sense of purpose: "They know I will do my best
to help them".

Not so long ago, the nation bemoaned apathetic and disengaged
students. It's time to rethink those assumptions. As Chenoy says, "You
have got an entire generation that realises something is wrong and
something has to change." They have the time, the energy, the will,
the wherewithal and the right to improve quality of life for
themselves and for others. The RTI Act is giving them the space,
support and recognition that they need.

- With Ashish Misra, Shravya Jain, Aditi Pai, Mona Ramavat, Devika Chaturvedi


http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/right-to-information-act-students-rti-applications/1/199829.html