Right To Information platform

The RTI Act has several warts, it faces a lot of pressure from the bureaucracy which is being forced to take action, it is dependent to a large extent on the diktats of the information commissioners; but it is causing a number of long pending cases to be heard and resolved. And the prime reason, the main advantage of the RTI Act being that it gives people the right to take a peek inside Government file movement and decision making. The RTI Act remains one of the key laws passed in the recent past by parliament, and as it sinks more deeper into society, people will use it far more.In this particular case, a widow whose husband was employed with the Government was entitled to receive Rs. 53,000 under a group insurance scheme after his death. For 12 years (12 years is a very large period of time in such circumstances), she was battling with the Gujarat state revenue department to get this money. There were some procedural issues with the premium that her husband had to pay, but she was not aware of these details. Finally, she filed a case under the RTI Act, and the Gujarat Information Commission asked the revenue department to file a reply. Based on this reply, the widow had to pay some amount against unpaid premium, and then she was allotted the insurance proceeds.Besides the obvious issue of an uncaring department, the bureaucracy is normally unresponsive because the details of file movement are not disclosed to the applicant. However, the RTI Act entitles the applicant to know about current status of the file / application, and when the concerned babu is brought under the laser spotlight of the RTI application, things move.All of us know this, that the bureaucracy is a picture of sloth, with things normally moving at a slow pace. Until there are some systemic reforms, the RTI Act presents a very good way (much better than other ways) of getting information (as a right) and then being able to get action taken based on this information.There are a number of movements geared towards getting people aware of their rights under the RTI Act. Some of these are:
1. NCPRI
2. NDTV
3. India Together
4. RTI (Govt)
The true powers of this Act are only possible when people use this right to information whenever they feel stone-walled or when they need information for a public cause (like amount of money allocated and spent in their sorroundings).

Want to make money, be a politician

It just cannot get more brazen than this. Mayawati, a chief minister is from humble upbringin, and not known to have a rich uncle who died and left her a fortune in her will. So consider her 'declared' wealth - she has a total holding of Rs. 52.5 crore. This is an incredible amount of money, and I am sure that Mayawati is not a big player in the stock market or a property builder, so how would she make that amount of money ?
In a word, corruption of the greatest order. Read some of these details:

UP chief minister Mayawati's wealth has grown by over 400% in the last three years. While filing her papers for the Lok Sabha election in 2004, she had declared her assets at a little over over Rs 11 crore. And now, as reported by TOI on Tuesday, she has declared in a sworn affidavit that her wealth amounts to Rs 52.5 crore.On April 4, 2004, when Mayawati filed for contesting from the Akbarpur Lok Sabha seat, she declared that she owned four houses — all of them at Inderpuri (C-57, 58, 74 and 75) in Delhi — which were cumulatively worth 1.25 crore. This time, she has declared some prime pieces of property in Delhi — one of them on Sardar Patel Marg, an exclusive locality abutting the Capital’s diplomatic enclave. According to her, this alone is worth Rs 18 crore, although real estate agents place its market value at much higher. The rest are commercial properties in the city — two in Connaught Place, worth Rs 3.3 crore, and another in Okhla, worth Rs 15.5 crore.
As the excerpt shows, she has managed to acquire some additional property worth Rs. 40 crores in 3 years, and she has obviously not shown any sales of some big asset to finance the purchases of these properties. These properties are obviously new acquisitions, and seemingly difficult to do on a MP's salary.These are examples of gross corruption, and she has the guts to declare these properties, and what has given her the guts to make such declarations. The positively inept Congress Government. I no longer believe Manmohan Singh to be a honest person, he is as bad a politician as any. A person is honest not only by himself, but by his actions. And the Prime Minister is behaving like as venal a politician as any other. He has accepted criminals in his cabinet, has behaved like a total poodle in the manner of letting Quatrochi go scot-free, connived in the dismal actions of his Governors such as Buta Singh, let the election of the President get into a loyalty game, and allowed his current useless Governor of Uttar Pradesh to refuse to give permission to prosecure Mayawati in the Taj case.And now this, the Chief Minister of the country's most populus state is openly declaring her corruption, and he will refuse to get involved in any way. He will be remembered for inaction in the face of corruption of the polity.