Emowering People, Ensuring Good Governance, Eliminating Corruption

A mini world Symposium featuring 2006 Magsaysay award winner Arvind Kejriwal

Durham, NC, October 22nd 2006: Association for India's Development (AID) Duke chapter and the Duke Center for International Development, Duke University hosted a public workshop on "Effective Community Activism" and a mini world symposium about India's "Right to Information act", that country's equivalent of the Freedom to Information Act here in the United States. Arvind Kejriwal is an Indian social activist and a crusader for greater transparency in governance.

Several AID volunteers from Atlanta-GA, College Park-MD and Duke University along with some students of DCID and Community members participated in the workshop on Effective Community Activism. They got to learn and discuss about Volunteerism, Local Self Governance, Basic Principles of a Good Non Government Organization and the role and scope of Media in Community development. Arvind Kejriwal shared his thoughts and experiences from his crusade against corruption, especially highlighted how poor residents in a Delhi slum took on the overtly corrupt Public Distribution system and using RTI got the system to work in proper order. Based on his experiences and interactions with the common people as well as the bureaucracy, he stressed on the importance of local self governance. He reiterated the fact that the local people and the common man including the poorest of the poor have to be involved in the process of deciding and implementing developmental projects, that's when true development and progress is going to happen justifying the efforts and funds involved. Atul Dev Sarmah, a visiting Development Consultant shared his experiences and thoughts about the role and scope of media in taking up social and developmental issues. He highlighted the need for collaboration between the social developmental organizations and Media.

The Mini world symposium on Right to Information featured speakers from India, Iraq, Kenya, Kazakhstan and Cameroon. Arvind Kejriwal spoke about the RTI act in India and briefly presented the history and salient features of the RTI act and its role and scope in empowering the common people to ensure good governance and eliminate corruption in the public and private sectors. He presented several examples of how RTI ensured efficient and effective resolution of long pending works without resorting or yielding to bribes. Poor citizens were able to get PDS cards (Ration cards), electricity, telephone connections, Passports and Pensions etc within days of using the RTI act, all they had to do was to file a RTI application and follow up. He presented evidence uncovered by the use of RTI in several shocking examples. The most outstanding example was about the ill fated water privatization project in Delhi, which was finally shelved after the strong protests by the common people based on the evidence uncovered with the help of RTI. In his message for the Indian community residing abroad, he requested the community to actively use RTI and asked them to advise their families in India to use RTI for resolving their pending problems. He requested for support to all the groups and individuals participating in the RTI movement and related anti-corruption drives. He offered his group's help in training and educating people about RTI in any part of the country. He said it was crucial to educate the masses about this new law and people have to use it widely to clean up the system. Once people realize the importance and utility of this law, it will be politically suicidal for anyone who tries to dilute or abolish this law. There have been constant attempts by the politicians, bureaucrats and vested interests to dilute this law. The information commissioners in charge of enforcing this law are diluting or making it ineffective by not imposing the penalties, nor taking any action on the guilty, thereby sending a wrong message to the perpetuators. Hence he appealed to all present to take up RTI awareness generation as an immediate priority if we want to ensure proper sustainable, equitable and just development in India. If we really want to weed out corruption, RTI is the best tool and we should strive hard to save it.

The international development public policy fellows of DCID presented how the lack of information impacted the development of their countries. Sarhang Hama Saeed educated the audience about the situation in Iraq and Kurdistan. He highlighted how the government manipulated and shielded the common man from the world. He also presented how there are immense opportunities both in Iraq and Kurdistan to move forward using Right to information. Jeffery Ben Matu of Kenya highlighted how the new freedom of information was being used by the media in constructive ways in sensitizing the people in Kenya and how it's trying to bring in transparency in the functioning of the different ministries. He did present a case for Kenya to adopt the Right to Information Act in the future. Sholpan Spanova of Kazakhstan highlighted the progress of her country and how the RTI was being used in their system. However, she thought RTI was at times delaying and adding on to the workload of the civil servants thereby proving detrimental. She stressed upon the need for higher compensation in tune with the responsibilities and thereby makes the civil servants less gullible to corruption. Mayer Kechom Ngomesia from Cameroon stressed that the slogan "Knowledge is Power can be aptly transformed to Information is Power" in the current decade wherein information has become a huge factor in every aspect of life. He informed that in his country RTI is at a nascent stage but certainly hopes in the coming years the country will adopt the lessons, and with media gaining grounds he certainly sees a ray of hope for RTI in Cameroon.      

The Right to Information Act 2005 is a law enacted by the Parliament of India giving Indians access to Government records. Under the terms of the Act, any citizen of India may request a department of the Central Government, State Government, or a Public Sector company or bank for information on almost any question related to the department or company's functioning. The Act also requires government bodies to publish certain specified information on their web sites. 

While the RTI Act is widely heralded as a tool to contain corruption in public life, it is also significant for its affirmation of the basic principle of the government's accountability to its people. RTI also underscores the idea that democratic governance requires an informed citizenry, and that a lack of transparency in government works to conceal the operation of vested interests against the public interest. By facilitating the public's participation in governance, RTI could potentially lead the way to a truly participatory democracy. 

In his career as a civil servant, Arvind Kejriwal was instrumental to bringing in a number of changes to increase transparency in the Income Tax office. Later, as the founder of the civil society group Parivartan and while working with activists such as Aruna Roy, Sandeep Pandey etc., he campaigned for the Right to Information Act, which was finally passed in 2005. Later in July 2006, he spearheaded an awareness campaign for RTI across India which included conducting workshops to educate the public on how to avail the law.

Many individuals and groups in the Indian and Indian-American community have closely followed the campaign around the RTI Act. The Duke chapter of the Association for India's Development (AID) collected signatures on "ZERO Rupees" and Save RTI petitions at several events in the RTP area, and joined AID's protests against the recent attempts by the Indian government to amend the RTI in ways that would have significantly undermined the law's ability to act as a tool of accountability. The proposed amendments led in India to a popular campaign at the national level that included Gandhian hunger strikes by anti-corruption crusaders, Padma Bhushan, Shri Anna Hazare, as well as another Magsaysay awardee, Sandeep Pandey. Finally, in August 2006, in response to mass protests, and in a major victory for the ideals of a free and open society, the Indian government withdrew the proposed Amendments to the Right to Information Act and promised to follow the democratic process in any future action on this issue. 

The organizations hosting the talk were the Association for India's Development (AID)'s Duke Chapter and Duke Center for International Development (DCID). The Graduate and Professional Student Council (GPSC) of Duke University and Spice & Curry restaurant sponsored the event.