Dear . > Would be interests, etcg to know which cases these are. > Yes indeed. Atleast Kejriwal was honest enough to admit that he had > not expected the misuse of the Act nor the delays within the system. >
Can you point out where Arvind has made this statement? I am keen to know. Arvind himself has in fact made tactical use of RTI. In 2004, when Madhu Bahduri, Arvind and couple of other individuals were trying to get documents pertaining to the 24x7 water privatization project which was to be implemented by PriceWaterhouse Coopers (PWC), World Bank and government of Delhi, they were refused these documents under RTI because of the third party clause. It meant that because "third parties" which were not government, were involved in the implementation of this project, they could not be given the contracts, meeting minutes and other documents requested. At that time, the engineers from the Delhi Jal Board (DJB) asked Arvind and company to file one more RTI application and this time, the engineers, simply handed over everything to the investigating team. The engineers did so becuase they themselves were concerned about the possible rise in the price of water if water were to be privatized and the impact on access to water under a private regime. The expose which arvind and co brought on thereafter, highlighting the corruption in the process of awarding contracts to PWC and the Bank's meddling in appointing PWC, were the result of this tactical use of RTI. Arvind himself mentioned to me in a meeting that RTI provided the sheen of legitimacy to a tactical act. This was the same experience which we had in Bangalore and Mumbai, trying to get documents of water privatization projects in these cities - we not getting the documents under legitimate strategies and then using the law through tactical means. I am citing this story to indicate that everything don't exist in black and white and that instead of viewing politics, law, policy and democracy in normative and black and white terms, it is important to consider these in terms of balances of power and comparative justices. If we take democracy, law, policy and politics from normative pedestals and bring them down to everyday issues of contestations, then we may be able to move beyond lament and rant. > Frivolous cases do reduce the positive impact an Act could bring about > and the officer (you cited) has a point about the right information > falling into wrong hands (think terrorists with local networks). > In this case, it was a housewife who filed the request for information on helipads. On another note, when we were evaluating public services in Mumbai, the water department refused to give us the map of the water pipeline, citing the issue of terrorism (back in 2004-2005). > Perhaps corruption and dirty politics is so > brazenly woven into the fabric of daily life that we have no choice > but accept and live with it. Is there no scope for change? :( > Like said, this is what the usual story is. How do we move beyond this? Most discussions on politics end in such laments or otherwise rants!?!?!?! .... > was associated with in Mumbai tried to help a person to file an RTI with the > metropolitan development authority to know how and where builders had used > development rights in the city, we got a blatant response saying, "Here are > the contact details of the Appellate Authority. Go an lodge an appeal saying > we are not giving you this information." !!! hah, the case would take years to be heard, another few years to get a > judgement, and so on... take the Mumbai 26/11 terrorism case where > despite the evidence, Kasab's lawyer is trying to pass him off as a > juvenile, .... Who is to blame for the frivolousness being indulged > in, while a terrorist enjoys state hospitality at the tax-payers > expense. > Case would take a few years to be heard? It was just a shut case the moment the MMRDA told us to buzz off. Information on issues which can expose governments is hard to come by. In this case, the person filing the RTI was not only asking for information, but by virtue of asking for it, he was clearly indicating that something was going wrong in the way TDRs were being issued y MMRDA and used by builders. One also has to understand the political economy of land and of institutions such as MMRDA which was literally ruled over by Chief Ministers. On that note, why is this issue being compared with Kasab's case? The issue of land use and control over land and the case of Kasab are two very different issues though both involve the state at different and comparative levels. On another list called the Sarai Reader List, I find that discussions around every post eventually veer on the plight of Kashmiri Pandits even when the original intent of the making the post was to discuss other issues. -- Zainab Bawa Ph.D. Student and Independent Researcher Gaining Ground ... http://zainab.freecrow.org http://cis-india.org/research/cis-raw/histories-of-the-internet/transparency-and-politics
