We were taught in childhood that Democracy is of the people, by the people and for the people. Ironically in India, we see that democracy is off the people, to buy the people and far the people. We always end up blaming the Neta’s (Politicians) for all the blunders that has happened since Independence. Most people forget is their role in democracy after they cast their vote once in five years. Since people don’t demand accountability, naturally any party that comes to power easily forgets its promises and responsibilities. And we end up blaming the government and politicians all the time for the poor condition of the nation and people. Bollywood has nicely capitalized this issue by glamorous portrayal of bad politicians and honest policeman’s!
I am not interested in writing about the unhappy state of the nation, but rather on what can we do to change it? I am stressing ‘we’ as only a collective action of people can bring changes. These changes can be very broadly classified as local or a global depending on the scale of operation and impact (although this is highly subjective- depending on scale cut off). Of course each one influence the other and it is hard to draw a clear line between them and to decide whether we need one over the other.
We do see lot of efforts by NGO’s working on various issues like education, health care, women empowerment etc. Most of them concentrate their activities on a local scale- like village, slum in a city. Their work enables us to understand the ground realities and social dynamics. Some NGO’s work in a charity mode, they are bound be local unless there is a chain reaction to propagate their work. They help few people and can change their life significantly. Their effects often dominate within a given locality. On the other hand some NGO’s with good leadership, innovative ideas, active and informed members do a good job in developing a scalable, replicable and sustainable models in social development. Their work could be crucially considered for policy making.
Coming to the category of people who influence the govt policies the most (other than
Neta’s (Politicians)and Babu’s(Beauracrats) ) are social activists. They can act as the watch dog of democracy. To name few influential activists and their work we have Jayprakash Narayan who was instrumental in opposing state of emergency (1975-77) and thus bringing back democracy and protecting fundamental rights in the Nation. Environmentalist S R Hiremath in formulating National Forest policy(1988). Recently Aruna Roy , Arvind Keijriwal, Sandeep Pandey were instrumental in Save ‘Right to Information’ (RTI) act which resulted in GoI withdrawing its proposed amendment and thus saving the very spirit of the act. Their success was mainly dependent on awareness campaigns, media support, peaceful demonstrations and hunger strikes.
Neta’s (Politicians)and Babu’s(Beauracrats) ) are social activists. They can act as the watch dog of democracy. To name few influential activists and their work we have Jayprakash Narayan who was instrumental in opposing state of emergency (1975-77) and thus bringing back democracy and protecting fundamental rights in the Nation. Environmentalist S R Hiremath in formulating National Forest policy(1988). Recently Aruna Roy , Arvind Keijriwal, Sandeep Pandey were instrumental in Save ‘Right to Information’ (RTI) act which resulted in GoI withdrawing its proposed amendment and thus saving the very spirit of the act. Their success was mainly dependent on awareness campaigns, media support, peaceful demonstrations and hunger strikes.
But all this work of few people is not enough. Unless there is mass movement, participation of all citizens we cannot create a society where everyone has equal opportunity, access to good education, healthcare and socio cultural amenities. To quote Janaagraha (a movement for participatory democracy in Bangalore) “citizen participation is central not just for greater accountability of government, but for better-quality governance, for equitable outcomes and for collective ownership”. How do we demand accountability? Now with the help of Right to Information(RTI) Act –one of the most powerful acts Indian Government has ever passed, we can question every governments move at every stage. RTI can used at every stage- to know why the passport application wasn’t processed, question delay in building and maintaining roads, why relief materials haven’t reached the beneficiaries, why a school hasn’t been built inspite of government sanctioning it? The government is obliged to provide all necessary information regarding all these queries. In this way one can track down the misappropriation of funds, corruption of officials, inefficient handling of resources etc. It is the mantra to root out corruption in public sectors.
RTI started showing its power immediately after it was passed in Oct 2005. There are thousands of success stories of the usage of RTI in getting the public work done in time. A person near Delhi gets a telephone connection in a day, passport application was processed within 10 days, 250 Villages got relief with the use of RTI act, a case building a road never existed was exposed… and so on so forth! All this appears like a miracle in India where the control of ‘Raj’ has been dominated for decades even after the British left. NDTV site on RTI http://www.ndtv.com/rti/default.asp gives various illustrative examples. Parivartan http://www.parivartan.com/Home.asp
RTI empowers every citizen to seek any information (other than defense, security issues and like ones) from the Government and no reason be given for such requests. You can also inspect and sample materials of any government work. The application process is quite simple and can be found GoI site http://righttoinformation.gov.in/. Officials are supposed to provide the information within 30 days of request else they will loose salary @ Rs50-500 per day!! It is precisely for this reason that bureaucrats are scared and are ready to give information right away and get the corresponding work done before further questions be asked! Success of RTI depends solely on the participation of people. Many activists and NGO’s are conducting various awareness camps to spread the importance of RTI. Media participation has been really significant with NDTV, Indian Express and Hindustan times being the major players.
Notwithstanding that the people are being aware of RTI and using it effectively (which sent the heat waves to the corrupt bureaucrats), government decided to amend it by excluding file notings. File notings are records of movement of files b/w officials and their statements on them. Excluding file notings would have taken the very life of RTI as people would have no access to understand how a decision was made and cannot bring any person to accountable. Thanks to the efforts of thousands of activists in India and abroad(AID was closely involved in this campaign http://rti.aidindia.org), NGO’s, media and millions of people who supported ‘Save RTI’ campaign, Government finally decided not to take up amending RTI this year. This is a great victory to the people who actively participated in government affairs and prevented it from taking such a retrograde step.
Web Links
RTI
http://www.ndtv.com/rti/default.asp
http://rti.aidindia.org
http://www.righttoinformation.info/
GOI site: has lot of info regarding act and has forms
http://righttoinformation.gov.in/
NGO’s for participatory democracy
http://www.janaagraha.org/
http://www.egovernments.org/
http://www.loksatta.org/
http://prsindia.org/
