RTI (Right To Information) Assessment
An 85-year-old lady was having problems getting her passport. She needed it to go and live with her children abroad. The status, the website showed, was delivered. Visits to the passport office yielded little results. “We helped her draft a right to information (RTI) application. When the department concerned was informed of the application, she got the passport immediately,’ says Shekhar Singh of National Campaign for People’s Right to Information (ncpri), Delhi. But not all RTI applications are as smooth and appeals against disclosures are common. The RTI Act, which came into existence three years ago, is now undergoing a review of its performance. Here too, the issue has triggered a debate on the agency conducting the appraisal.
The department of personnel and training (DOPT) under the Union Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions has commissioned international accounting firm PriceWaterhouse Coopers the responsibility to review the RTI Act 2005. Activists say the study may end up protecting government officials. They are conducting a parallel study on how far the RTI has been able to keep up its mandate of providing timely response to “citizens requests for government information’. Continue reading »
Filed under India, News | Tags: * Government Of India (GOI), Andhra Pradesh, Assam, India, Information, Maharashtra, NGO, Orissa, Right To Information (RTI), Uttar Pradesh | Comment (0)Biometric Data to keep tap on Beggars
At the end of a daylong futile search for job, Mohammad Javed made his way to a temple in Old Delhi’s Meena Bazaar in the hope of getting some prasad. Little did he suspect a ‘raiding squad’ swooping down on him and bundling him off to Sewa Kuteer, a beggars’ home at Kingsway Camp. “I do not beg. I came here to work. But when there is no work we go to the temple to take the prasad. And if somebody gives a little money I don’t mind taking it, but I don’t ask for it,’ pleads the 26-year-old, who ran away from home in Sultanganj, Patna, six years ago. Javed will probably escape punishment for ‘begging’ this time but his data has been entered into a biometric identification system, which means he has been tagged a beggar by the government for the rest of his life.
At Kingsway Camp an experiment is under way. Delhi’s Department of Social Welfare (DSW) has installed a biometric machine at its classification centre there. It records the picture, fingerprint and the height of the person brought there by the department’s raiding squads, besides his/her address, begging history and health record. The system is part of a grand plan to rid the city of beggars by the 2010 Commonwealth Games. “We have increased the pace of raids. In 2005, we caught 1,000, while the number went up by 475 in 2006. In 2007, we apprehended 2,533; target is 5,000,’ says a DSW official. Continue reading »
Filed under Delhi, India, Livelihood | Tags: Delhi, India, Information, People, Poverty, Unemployment | Comment (0)