From: *Ganesh Devy* < This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it <mailto: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it >>
Date: Oct 30, 2006 10:11 PM
Subject: Re: Discussion about the Right to Information Act

Dear Supriya,
Diwali Greetings !

Dr. Kejriwal's work has been of a great significance for our society
where even simple entitlements of citizens are denied to them by
blocking the simplest information.

Bhasha has implimented the Right to Information Act by making the Bhasha
related information available to the members of public (mainly adivasis)
available at all offices of Bhasha. This was an important part of the
Organisational Handbook created recently. SImilarly, we have incorporaed
the "Security to Women at Workplace and Protection against Sexual
Harrassment" provisions in the Handbook for the benefit of
Bhasha's karyakarta (we do not like the term 'employee').

In India, during the past sixty years, the entire Establishment has
remained confined to a few thousand elite families. The rest have been
relegated to an existence eeked out from poor quality education, poor
infra-structure, poor healthcare facilities, and so on. The RTI is bound
to break open the solid wall of vested interestes dividing the class
possessing all power and the class that has been denied it.

But, the RTI needs to be seen as a beginning, and not an end to the
process of empowerment of the people. Of course, the processs is long,
and may take time for its ultimate unfolding. At the end of it, one
dreams of an ulternate society which lives a need based life rather than
looking for a greed based life-style that is devastating our ecology and
the good earth.

Bhasha is slowly creating a model of such a society. Or at least that is
its aim. This will require undertaking a thousand different experiemnts
in the field of livelihood practices, energy consumption, economic
transactions and social relations. Bhasha is currently trying out but a
dozen or so of these experiments. One knows that there are other
organisations working out other experiemnts. Together, and a s a
cumulative effect of all of those, some day, we will have a paradigm
shift in the way we have defined the human existence at present.

Obviously, while Bhasha values the RTI initiative immensely, it has not
been on the forefront of Information Right Activism.

I will be happy to discuss the issue with you in a telephone conference
on the dates you suggest. It would be a pleasure.

Warm regards to our AID friends !

Ganesh Devy