Despite threats, activists soldier on, ask for support

Despite threats, activists soldier on, ask for support
times of india, chennai edition page no.4, 8th july 2011
Karthika Gopalakrishnan | TNN

When RTI activist V Gopalakrishnan gets a call on his mobile from an unknown number he starts recording the call. “Do you hear the beep? It’s recording. Please cut the call and call back later,” he says after he is convinced that the caller is not going to threaten him.
For Gopalakrishnan, threats are par for the course. They come with the territory of RTI activism.
Last year, he had filed an RTI request asking for the property details of an official when he got a call from a local politician asking Gopalakrishnan to withdraw his request. But Gopalakrishnan had used his mobile phone to record the conversation and used it as audio evidence in a complaint to the police. Though not much came of the complaint, such precautions help, he says.
P Balasubramaniam, an activist in Cuddalore, says that he was threatened by a builder when he filed an RTI request asking if government poromboke land had been converted to housing plots.
The threats first start
as soft and polite conversation, says V Balakiruttinan, an activist in Vayaloor, Vandavasi. Those who could land in trouble due to the RTI request then send those known to the activist with a request to compromise. “We explain to them that we are doing this for a larger social cause. We want solutions and are not interested in compromise,” he says.
Balakiruttinan explains that networking with other activists and working as a team helps to handle threats. The activists, however, are convinced that threats and attempts to browbeat can be beaten back if there is a critical mass of people joining the fight against corruption using the act.
At the same time, many TOI readers, while supporting RTI as a tool to fight corruption, ask for more details. They want to know how to file RTI requests and take follow up action. But, already, many NGOs have taken up the cause of promoting awareness of RTI and popularizing it among the people.
Various fora have come up to address this gap starting from RTI clubs in educational institutions such as the one run at Shree Niketan Matriculation School. Institutions of higher education such as Vellore Institute of Technology have an RTI chapter, set up in association with Fifth Pillar India, a non-governmental organisation.
“We distribute ‘zerorupee’ notes at schools as a symbolic gesture of our bid to discourage corruption and talk to students from classes VI to XII about the RTI Act and how they can use it,” said T Jayaseelan, Manager — Administration and RTI, Fifth Pillar Indian NGO.
He suggested that each district collectorate could conduct RTI awareness programmes every Monday as grievance redressal meetings were held on the same day. Gopalakrishnan said that advertisements in Tamil dailies and allocation of funds from the government for non-governmental organisations to carry out awareness campaigns on RTI, as carried out by National Aids Control Organisation on HIV-AIDS, would help carry the message to the grassroots, Gopalakrishnan suggested.

Social studies textbooks in schools should describe the RTI process
Information commissioners should be non-bureaucrats so they have no vested interest
Funds can be given to NGOs promoting awareness like in the AIDS control programme
Signboards in all offices needed to explain the process