Can RTI Act continue to remain meaningful?

Roy: It depends on where you sit and what you see. I see 8 million Indians now getting the right to question the states, the governments, their departments, what they interface with, to question corruption, to question arbitrary use of power, to get their rations, to get medicines and it is a phenomenal change from what I saw 25 years ago in rural India amongst the poor in urban India, even ordinary citizens. So, there are always problems. Any enactment, any legislation will bring forward a huge hoarder problems and in this case we are really asking for a share power from the system. So, the system is going to react and these are reactions of the system that Satyananda Mishra has defined. Those will have to be fought, they will have to be changed. 15-20 years ago no one thought we would get the right to information and we got it. The UPA - I, the National Advisory Council and the chairperson Sonia Gandhi were all politicians but they pushed the RTI through. Of course 11 months later they asked for a amendment but the fact remains that they pushed it through. So, it depends on people whether we can really make the political establishment see it our way, whether we can make bureaucracy work, I am not at all pessimistic.

Q: Would you share that optimism because if I look at the CIC annual report findings of 2013-14, let us just take a look at the rejection rate - at the PMO 20.5 percent, Rashtrapati Bhavan almost 11 percent, Supreme Court almost 24 percent, CAG 7 percent, the ministry of corporate affairs about 29 percent, the power ministry 16 percent. What gives you the optimism if at all you share Aruna Roy's optimism about the RTI remaining meaningful and relevant going forward?

Gandhi: RTI will be as strong and as irreversible as the right to vote. The percentage of voters, turnout at elections is not as good as it can be or it should be, that does not mean that the right to vote has become irrelevant. RTI is a twin to right to vote. It is an ingredient of our democracy and an essential part of our republic. It can only grow stronger and stronger.

There will be disappointments with the nature and the pace of official responses but they can be no going back. The RTI act is here to stay.Q: The RTI Act is here to stay but let us talk about the road ahead and how do we make this act much more robust when we talk about implementation and effective implementation. If I were to ask you what is it that you would like to see now for effective implementation and use of the RTI act? Gandhi: The most important thing would be for the RTI movement to regain its character as a movement and as a catalyst for further deepening and intensification of the provisions of the act and one of the things that need to be done very quickly is the follow up on the appointment of the Lokpal. It has been languishing for a very long time and completely inexcusably and the activation of the Whistleblowers Act and the Grievance Redressal Act these are essential corollaries of the RTI act and the movement must continue to ask for it and so should the media in the country and all concerned citizens.Q: If I can put to you one of the other comments that came in from Satyananda Mishra and he said that he worries about the lack of civil society enthusiasm for the RTI. He believes that civil society enthusiasm has declined and that activists like yourself perhaps or others have moved on to other spheres looking out for other interests, so to speak. Do you believe this movement that Mr Gandhi was talking about, how do we keep that movement alive?Roy: The movement is alive. We are not seen on television because we are not a priority. The print media doesn't report us because we are not a priority because you have fashions, you have times when you think something is fashionable we are there, we don't think it is fashionable we are not there. And we are not in Delhi, we are spread out all over the country in small villages, every day people are questioning authority. Those 8 million applications are put in every year. If somebody or the other every so many kilometres that is questioning authority. If this is not keeping the movement alive, I don't know what is.It is an act which is being used and it is asking questions and demanding answers in so many multiple ways and we must stop thinking of the RTI as of itself. It is a transformatory act. It makes other act perform. It makes other people deliver, it makes other departments - it might be the environment, it might be the education, we recently have a huge program in Rajasthan where we are visiting every single government school called Shiksha ka Sawaal which the Rajasthan Patrika is covering where we are going to every single government school with students to look at basic right to education facilities.Right to information has to be applied to something else and if that is done it will deliver and all of us are working, but we don't necessarily congregate in Jantar Mantar or outside parliament. We work at several places in this country and we do, believe me.