Commencing a RTI Campaign to save our cities

[balu m]

Bangalore is the most pedestrian unfriendly city in the world.
Footpaths are badly laid in most of Bangalore. In residential areas
they are used for car parking or a huge slope is created on the
footpath to ensure smooth entry and exit of the vehicle. Commercial
establishments treat footpath as extension of their business area.
Builders use it to construct temporary structures. Two wheelers use
footpaths to commute in case of traffic hold-up.

The High Court of Karnataka has ruled in the recent past that it is
the duty of the concerned authorities to ensure that pedestrians have
free access to the footpaths but nobody seems to be bothered. The
traffic police and BBMP (Authority in charge of ensuring Bangalore’s
municipal well being) shift the responsibility of clearing footpaths
on one another. Unlike traders, pedestrians don’t have any lobbying
power (read political influence) to ensure free access to footpaths.

Encroachment of footpath by shopkeepers poses the biggest danger to
pedestrians. They encroach upon the footpath and their customers park
vehicles on edges of the road. Thus, pedestrians are compelled to walk
on middle of the road.

Email complaints to these authorities never get answered as is the age
old practice of writing to the newspaper. Any personally written
letters with your residential address only leads to pressure for
withdrawing the complaint.

RTI Act, 2005 is the only way such authorities can be made
accountable. However a single application may not be of avail. There
should be a RTI deluge from across the country. Any Government Officer
would prefer to solve the problem than sign a few lakh applications.
Please remember that only a senior officer is appointed as the Central
Public Information Officer and lies cannot be told under the Act.

The ground work for this campaign is as follows:
The nature of the problem has to be identified and atleast 25 related
questions evolved on the subject.
If citizens from Bangalore have a problem with their municipal
authorities, in addition to RTI applications from them, lakhs of
applications from all parts of the country should flood to the
concerned authority with atleast 5 questions from the Question Bank
formulated above.
Each applicant should insist for an individual reply. If you require
to protect your identity you can insist for a reply by email, since
there is nothing in the RTI Act to the contrary.
This is just a test campaign. We can initiate many more such campaigns
for every city based on suggestions from co-bloggers.
I will be posting the set of 25 questions and who to address the
application to once I receive atleast 20 to 25 replies to this blog.
Choice of which 5 questions you want to ask will be left to your
discretion.

We can change the way this country is governed if we can use the RTI
Act, 2005 in an innovative way. Quell them with quantity that is our
motto. We the upper middle class don’t vote in elections atleast let
us spend Rs.10 per month to try and ring in radical changes in the
country. I look forward to your suggestions and cooperation in this
regard.

[Viraj Kansara]

The bare truth.