Your Right To Information Lies In An Act - I Contd

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For many who indulge in corruption, giving up corrupt practices may be as difficult as giving up smoking for some. While a chronic smoker rejects counseling to give up smoking, a very corrupt person does not make efforts to give up his corrupt practices. Luckily, RTI is a tool which can expose and embarrass a corrupt person. The embarrassment should be so acute that he should feel shy to be seen in public. Unfortunately, today it is not happening. To start with we should recognize the honest and embarrass the corrupt. It is in this way that RTI has become a stick to beat the corrupt with.

You will be surprised to know that any one who can write can fight corruption. All you will be spending is Rs 10. What is that you can do? You can apply the rule of three to take up an issue.

Ask yourself what irritated you which happened more than two times and whether you felt anyone could have prevented it from happening again and again. The RTI makes you realize that you could be that man who could make the difference..

All right, now you know what should be prevented from happening again and again. You have to seek necessary information to know what is causing that bad thing to happen repeatedly. If it is corruption and it is rampant then you know that the source of corruption is at the highest level. On the other hand, if it is a stray incident involving a few people only, then somebody in the hierarchy would have acted on a complaint given by some person. But since the fact that it is rampant implies either all the persons to whom complaints were made were themselves corrupt or it is being perpetuated at the behest of the top..

Whatever India may lack , it does not lack lot of acts, rules and guidelines and monitoring and review systems, at least on paper. Don't just seek information. Send a written complaint about the problem you face to the officer immediately above the person who has created the problem. Wait for a week and follow with a reminder. Simultaneously bring it to the notice of the highest authority and ask him to give details of procedures and machinery available to prevent such a thing from happening. In case that highest officer himself is involved, you will not get reply from anyone. This is the time to make an application under the RTI Act..

Make the application to the person concerned in the highest office. Let your information seeking be in three parts. First part should focus on the machinery available and efforts made by the highest office to tackle such problem The second part should ask how many complaints have been received (say) over a period of one year. Ask for action taken in respect of each such complaint. The part should ask information about the complaint made by you yourself. If the highest authority himself is corrupt then you don't get any information at this stage also. At this stage you can file the first appeal or file a complaint with the Information Commission..

Depending on the type of information you get, you have the opportunity to plug a loophole, point out the lapses in the system or request for introducing a new system.. This much you have to do if you don't want the bad thing to happen again. In the coming episodes more will be discussed about how different types of people can get involved in the fight against corruption.

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