Nannu is a daily wage earner. He lives in Welcome Mazdoor Colony, a slum habitation in East Delhi. He lost his ration card and applied for a duplicate one in January 2004. He made several rounds of the local Food & Civil Supplies office for the next three months. But the clerks and officials would not even look at him, leave alone do his job or bother to tell him the status of his application. Ultimately, he filed an application under the Right to Information Act asking for the daily progress made on his application, names of the officials who were supposed to act on his application and what action would be taken against these officials. Within a week of filing application under Right to Information Act, he was visited by an inspector from the Food Department, who informed him that the card had been made and he could collect it from the office. When Nannu went to collect his card next day, he was given a very warm treatment by the Food & Supply Officer (FSO), who is the head of a Circle. The FSO offered him tea and requested him to withdraw his application under Right to Information, since his work had already been done.Nannu’s example shows how a poor person like Nannu gets equipped with such critical information through the use of RTI Act that the officials who would not even look at Nannu earlier suddenly turn humble and polite. When Nannu asks for the daily progress report made on his application, the Department ends up admitting inefficiency of its officials on paper. Nannu’s asking them to furnish the names of the officials responsible for not doing his job forces the Department to fix responsibility. Now, the chances of action happening against guilty officials or vested interests increase substantially, which were hitherto very low.RTI really redefined relationship between Nannu and the local Food officials. |
