{"id":9277,"date":"2010-07-14T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-07-14T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2010\/07\/14\/right-to-know-law-gives-india-s-poor-a-lever\/"},"modified":"2010-07-14T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-07-14T12:00:00","slug":"right-to-know-law-gives-india-s-poor-a-lever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2010\/07\/14\/right-to-know-law-gives-india-s-poor-a-lever\/","title":{"rendered":"Right-to-Know Law Gives India’s Poor a Lever"},"content":{"rendered":"

Source: www.nytimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n

BANTA, INDIA, June 28, 2010: India may be the world’s largest democracy, but a vast and powerful bureaucracy governs. It is an imperial edifice built on feudal foundations, and for much of independent India’s history the bureaucracy has been largely unaccountable. Citizens had few means to demand to know what their government was doing for them. But it has now become clear that India’s 1.2 billion citizens have been newly empowered by the far-reaching law granting them the right to demand almost any information from the government. <\/p>\n

Chanchala Devi always wanted a house. Not a mud-and-stick hut, like her current home in this desolate village in the mineral-rich, corruption-corroded state of Jharkhand, but a proper brick-and-mortar house. When she heard that a government program for the poor would give her about $700 to build that house, she applied immediately. She waited four years, watching as wealthier neighbors got grants and built sturdy houses, while she and her three children slept beneath a leaky roof of tree branches and crumbling clay tiles. Two months ago she took advantage of India’s powerful and wildly popular Right to Information law. <\/p>\n

With help from a local activist, she filed a request at a local government office to find out who had gotten the grants while she waited, and why. Within days a local bureaucrat had good news: Her grant had been approved, and she would soon get her check. Ms. Devi’s good fortune is part of an information revolution sweeping India.<\/p>\n

The law is backed by stiff fines for bureaucrats who withhold information, a penalty that appears to be ensuring speedy compliance. The law has not, as some activists hoped, had a major effect on corruption. Often, as in Ms. Devi’s case, the bureaucracy solves the problem for the complaining individual, but seldom undertakes a broader inquiry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Source: www.nytimes.com BANTA, INDIA, June 28, 2010: India may be the world’s largest democracy, but a vast and powerful bureaucracy,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9277\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}