Video: Building a better India, one citizen at a time

Fellow citizens,

A clean, non-corrupt India is what we all want. But for this, many things need to change... including our mindset. See this video-presentation and reflect: http://tinyurl.com/wakeupindia

Liked the presentation? Become part of the great Indian awakening. Forward this to your friends and colleagues.

Regards,

Krish

98215 88114

AMU alumnus Adil Hossain is one of the top 5 young faces of RTI movement in India

OUTLOOK has selected AMU alumnus Adil Hossain (MA Mass Communication 2009-10) as one of the top 5 young faces of RTI movement in India (http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?267396). Adil was unceremoniously thrown out of AMU by the regime of Prof P K Abdul Azis, Vice Chancellor, Aligarh Muslim University, on charges of “damaging the reputation and tarnishing the image of AMU”. He is credited with encouraging the spread of RTI in AMU. According to OUTLOOK, Adil also used RTI to probe AMU’s infamous on-campus Local Intelligence Unit (which spied on the now-dead gay professor Shrinivas Siras), sought data on disciplinary action against students and questioned the cancellation of student polls. He is said to have irked the AMU administration by posting information obtained through RTI online.

For more details please visit http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?267396

Five Years of RTI: Battle for Information - Part 1

Though the RTI Act came into force five years back, the government officials supposed to follow the RTI Act in letter and spirit try their bets to avoid providing information. Dainik Jagran, Aligarh, is coming out with a series on the state of implementation of RTI Act.

The following news clipping published in Dainik Jagran (5th October 2010) is first Part of the series and highlights the ongoing battle of information seekers. It shows how Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) avoided providing information to former Member of Parliament (Rajya Sabha) Mr Wasim Ahmed, when he asked for a copy of the Audit Report on financial mismanagement at AMU, prepared by the Principal Accountant General, Uttar Pradesh.

It also shows how AMU has provided misleading information to RTI Group member, Dr Mohammed Naved Khan, when he sought information on withholding of Grant by UGC on account of financial irregularities committed by AMU.

Format for Anti-Corruption FIR against SIC/CIC staff & Info Commissioners

When monetary penalties and disciplinary actions appear likely, people offer bribes to escape. During casual chats, Maharashtra SIC staff talk about how PIOs and FAAs of slippery public authorities – especially those dealing with builders and land mafias -- offer hefty amounts. In return, Information Commissioners and their staff render “services” such as:

a) Giving orders favourable to PIO, ignoring facts

b) Condoning unjustified delays and denials

c) Not passing orders after the hearing

d) Passing vague, unreasoned and meaningless orders

e) SIC’s staff not issuing show-cause notice even after adverse order

f) Not posting adverse order and/or not putting it up on website

g) Posting hearing notice to appellant on or after hearing date, or close to hearing date, so that appellant cannot attend

h) Not calling appellant for hearing and passing ex-parte order

i) Ignoring incriminating evidence produced by appellant

j) Allowing PIO’s or FAA’s contentions unsupported by documents or evidence.

Sections 7 - 14 of Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 (PCA 88), describes various corrupt acts performed by public servants and their henchmen. Section 7 (“Public Servant taking gratification other than legal remuneration in respect of an official act”) defines gratification thus: “The word ‘gratification’ is not restricted to pecuniary gratifications or to gratifications estimable in money.” For instance, if an Information Commissioner, or his wife or son, is rewarded with a plum post-retirement posting by Mantralaya, that is “gratification”. Or, if the State Information Commissioner’s wife or son gets a plum contract with a builder’s firm, that is “gratification”.

Thus, PCA 88 does not require evidence of money changing hands. If we can establish that “gratification” was given in respect of an official act, we should complain to Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) and try to get an FIR registered under PCA 88 and Indian Penal Code (IPC).

In fact, even gratification need not be established by evidence under PCA 88. Abuse of public office is enough to get the ACB to register a complaint and investigate. Section 13(1) of PCA 88 says, “(1) A public servant is said to commit the offence of criminal misconduct (c) if he habitually accepts or obtains or agrees to accept or attempts to obtain from any person for himself or for any other person, any valuable thing without consideration or for a consideration which he knows to be inadequate from any person whom he knows to have been, or to be , or to be likely to be concerned in any proceeding or business transacted or about to be transacted by him, or having any connection with the official functions of himself or of any public servant to whom he is subordinate, or from any person whom he knows to be interested in or related to the person so concerned; or (d) If he - (i) by corrupt or illegal means, obtains for himself or for any other person any valuable thing or pecuniary advantage ; or (ii) by abusing his position as a public servant, obtains for himself or for any other person any valuable thing or pecuniary advantage; or (iii) while holding office as a public servant obtains for any person any valuable thing or pecuniary advantage without any public interest”.

In Maharashtra, a very useful High Court order can directly lead to investigation and action by ACB.
Download this order: http://www.box.net/shared/ob4rq29v6f

There are at least a hundred activists and RTI appellants out there, who have direct first-hand knowledge of such activities happening in various State Information Commissions and their secretariats. I would urge them to use this format to file a complaint against their corrupt Information Commissioner and/or member of his staff.

Download format for Complaint to ACB: http://www.box.net/shared/l4jhdxs2t1

Other useful links: http://www.box.net/shared/9qz41qtdsx

Warm Regards,
Krish
98215 88114

Is RTI activism succeeding? Nazar ko badal ke dekho, nazaare badal jaayenge!

Dear fellow activists,

Sometimes, realities change and we fail to notice. The ground-shift since the enactment of the Right to Information Act on 15 June 2005 has gone unnoticed. Absorbed as we are in the details, I think we missed seeing the big picture.

The RTI Act gave us a lot more than just access to information. It shifted the balance of power. By making the walls of government porous, it allowed citizens to enquire into governance. It made every common man a superintendent over the activities of the State.

We the people of India awakened to a sense of our real ownership of this nation. But we the activists of India continued to beat our breasts and lament, and exchange old tales of our powerlessness.

Look around you. Every week, in each state and at the centre, new tales of heroism are emerging. Half a dozen Information Commissioners are each presiding over scores of hearings where the administration is on trial, where ordinary citizens are knowingly or unknowingly playing the role of prosecutors. These are not high-profile heroes like Anna Hazare and Medha Patkar, these are not seasoned system fighters… yet they are engaging the administration in a blow-by-blow battle. Painfully aware that the battlefield is slanted in favour of the administration, they bash on nevertheless!

Every week, heads roll, sometimes on both sides. Ordinary men and women living in ordinary neighborhoods fight with extraordinary courage for justice and truth. Can there be a greater Satyagraha?

Observe another massive change. Remember when conferences and seminars used to be for the select few, and one could count them on the fingers of one hand? Today, the equivalent of a dozen state-level and national-level seminars happen on the internet every day, routinely. Several thousand citizens come together on email and on discussion forums, and have an informed discussion in many languages. New insights emerge, new courses of action are decided and executed. This is the new face of activism.

This ongoing revolution is our new reality. The heroes of this revolution are in offices, at street corners, on buses and trains, in suburbs and slums. They eat, breathe and dream their fundamental rights and duties. They daily sacrifice their meager salaries and pensions, and the peace of their families, for one obsessive vision: a cleaner, more transparent India.

STAND BEFORE THE MIRROR AND LOOK INTO YOUR OWN EYES, MY FRIEND, BECAUSE YOU ARE ONE OF THESE PEOPLE. RECOGNIZE YOURSELF. YOU ARE THIS REVOLUTION.

If this is true, then why are we stuck with our feelings of powerlessness and frustration? Because, locked into our own personal battles with the administration, we failed to see the larger picture of the revolution. We are victims of an outdated vision of victory that looks like the final scenes of a movie where villains fall into an abyss and their evil empires literally collapse. This, my friend, is an unrealistic fantasy. Such fantasies condemn people like you and me to remain frustrated and defeated, even though we are continually winning. Such unfulfilled fantasies are draining away our energy and self confidence.

Let us upgrade our vision. In the context of modern India, let us re-envision what victory means.

India is an aggregate of 1.2 billion lives and their dreams -- a massive nation with a huge momentum, moving like a mighty ship through the oceans. So victory cannot be your dream or mine alone. Victory cannot be a 180-degree U-turn by the administration; it can only be a gentle course correction of one or two degrees over some years. But take comfort: when a massive nation steers a couple of degrees, the effect is huge beyond our imagining. Everything changes.

Have faith, massive change will happen… but it will be so gradual and imperceptible that none of us will get any credit for it. There may be no thrilling historic moments. No evil empires will collapse dramatically, because they will dissolve and fade away over some years. There will be no dramatic surrender or laying down of arms, no Freedom at Midnight speeches. Victory will come as a gradual re-discovery of each citizen’s power to say NO to mundane evils in daily life. No glorious heroes will lead the “masses” into battle and emerge victorious; the masses – our countrymen -- will themselves regain a sense of individual and collective public morality, and fight a gradual war against injustice and untruth.

In this war, there may be no Bheeshma-pratigyas -- no grand acts of self-sacrifice or superhuman self-control, no fasts-unto-death, no spectacular Dandi March. There will only be the daily grind of several hundred RTI applications, appeals, hearings, complaints, representations, meetings and a general unwillingness to take the easy way out – an unstoppable nationwide grinding-down of indifference and corruption by small lawful and truthful acts.

So now the shift only needs to happen in our own hearts and minds -- a conscious shift in perspective that we activists need to make. We need to decide: are we investing our life’s energies on winning our own battles, and growing into tall and mighty trees on India’s skyline? Or are we investing in furthering the green growth of the shoots and saplings of “We the people of India”? The latter is a game at which we can never be beaten, regardless of the outcome of our individual battles.

Nazar ko badlo, nazaare badal jaayenge!

As an activist, I used to seek a kind of absolute and indisputable victory in our campaigns. But now I feel that winning is unimportant; what is crucial is that we do battle on a continuing basis, exerting broad moral and legal pressures on the system in the direction of the truth.

Warm Regards,
Krish
98215 88114