Not even a teenager, this girl is a rights activist

http://www.deccanherald.com/content/275818/not-even-teenager-girl-rights.html

Not even a teenager, this girl is a rights activist
Sanjay Pandey in Lucknow, Sep 1, 2012, DHNS

The similarities between Delhi-based RTI activist Subhash Chandra
Agarwal and Aishwarya Parashar from Lucknow are many. Both are RTI
activists and have used the Right to Information Act to expose
deficiencies in the system. But there is a huge difference also.
Agarwal is 62 years old while Aishwarya is barely 11 and a sixth
standard
student.

In an age, when most of the children spend their time playing games
and watching cartoons, Aishwarya concentrates on major issues
affecting people and remains busy in drafting queries to be asked from
the government on various topical issues. Her classmates, friends and
the people in her area call her "the RTI girl". People from different
walks of life meet her with their problems and find out if their
problems could be resolved through the RTI.

And if the answer is in the positive, they ask Aishwarya to prepare
their queries as she is an expert.

The little girl had first used the RTI three years back when she was
only eight, to get a garbage dump in front of her school shifted.
"There was a garbage dump just in front of my school. We could not
even sit in the class owing to its strong bad smell. I requested my
school teachers to get it removed but they could not," she said.

"I then asked the chief minister's office through n RTI query as to who will be
responsible if someone falls sick because of the filth. Though I did
not get any reply, the dump was removed and a library was constructed
on that spot,'' she told Deccan Herald.

For Aishwarya, it was a big moment. She had now understood how potent
a weapon the RTI Act was and since then she has been using to extract
many a hidden information, some of them really astonishing.

It was sheer curiosity, however, which made the girl famous all over
the country. She once asked her parents how Mahatma Gandhi had become
"Father of the Nation". She did not get any reply from them. Her
efforts to elicit an answer from teachers also did not yield any
result. So she again turned to her favourite weapon-RTI. Aishwarya
filed a RTI query to know the fact.

She sought a photocopy of the "order" of the Government of India by
which the title of "Father of the Nation" had been conferred on
Mahatma Gandhi. Aishwarya had filed an application under the RTI act
with the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) in February last. Her query was
forwarded to the Ministry of Home Affairs and from there to the
national archives.

The query revealed that there were no "specific documents" to prove if
Mahatma Gandhi had been conferred the title of the "Father of the
Nation". In his reply, Assistant Director of the National Archives
Jayaprabha Ravindran said that it did not have any specific documents
on the information sought.

Another query by her revealed that the country had no national game. It was
another shock to the nation especially for the hockey lovers, who
thought that it was the national game of India. Recently, Aishwarya's
query revealed that there was no official order declaring the
Independence Day, Republic Day and Mahatma Gandhi's birth anniversary
as national festivals. "My parents are my biggest inspiration. They
always encourage me to focus on issues concerning the country and the
common people,'' she says.

On whether the exercise affects her studies, she replies in the
negative. "Instead of playing or watching television, I do my
homework and study," Aishwarya, who is very fond of singing and
dancing, said. During the examinations, of course, she gets less time
for these activities.

The little girl keeps a tab on what is happening around her though she
is least interested in politics. "Corruption is the biggest challenge
before the country today. Public awareness only can effectively combat
it,'' she points out. Recently, when she came to know that the UP
government was finalising the names of the people to be appointed
information commissioners in the state, she launched a campaign to
make sure that there were no "corrupt" people in the list. Aishwarya
asked the people to send e-mails to her or send letters to the
Governor urging him not to give his nod to the appointment of the
people on the post who were of doubtful integrity. The girl plans to
launch a campaign against polythene bags in the days to come.

"I want to see my country free from polythene bags," she
says.Aishwarya feels that in the form of RTI the people of the country
have got a very strong weapon. "We can use the RTI for the benefit of
the people,'' she says. There is a need to sensitise the official
machinery to be forthcoming in giving timely replies to the queries
filed under the RTI, she feels

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