RTI Warriors I – 'Truth Is Inconvenient'

Jagjit Singh Walia was always pained by the rampant corruption, red-tape and profligacy that ate into government machinery. In 2006, he discovered the power of Right to Information. Since, he has made a minister of state for agriculture surrender eight of his vehicles that he had solicited from different departments, forced several central government offices being run from five-star hotels to shift to humble buildings.

And the list is growing:  The first time I used RTI was in 2006, to know the status of my wife’s passport. Her passport application was long pending with the department concerned. And we were running pillar to post trying to find a reason for the delay. I filed my first RTI, and it worked wonders for me. We soon got my wife’s passport. Empowered, I decided to use this weapon to clear out the rot in my own workplace – the CPWD.

The organisation is involved in large-scale construction and maintenance of government projects and thus, is a hotbed of corruption. I filed an RTI to know why CPWD was not asking for a discount from electricity product suppliers, as huge discounts are given as a routine. No discounts meant pay-out of large-scale commissions, at the cost of the government exchequer.

Once the RTI was filed, it led to a veritable commotion among the ranks of CPWD and it ultimately led to a vigilance inquiry as well. Finally, CPWD had to start asking for discounts. Since 2006, I have filed hundreds of RTIs to get information about policies, projects, and systems in the government. In 2011, in another RTI application, it was revealed that many offices of the central government ministries were running out of five-star hotels in Delhi.

And we, the taxpayers, were paying for it! As a result of this RTI, the Central government had to shift these offices to other buildings. Another RTI filed by me, once, forced the then Minister for State for Agriculture to surrender eight vehicles that had been solicited from different government departments. As a rule, a minister is entitled to only one vehicle. On several occasions, I have been confronted and stopped by my colleagues on behest of corrupt babus and contractors.

Senior officers from my department lured me with favourable posting, and when that didn’t work they resorted to threats. But nothing has refrained me from in unearthing the truth. Truth isn’t always what meets the eye. As a government servant for decades, I understood that in a typical bureaucratic system. Truths are inconvenient.

Interestingly, our ‘babudom’ has achieved excellence in keeping these inconvenient truths hidden from the public eye — under layers of dusty files. Since independence, the draconian Official Secrets Act – a relic of our colonial past — had played a pivotal role in hushing up inconvenient truths. But in 2005, the introduction of Right to Information, ushered in a new era of accountability and transparency.

For 1.3 billion Indians, RTI became a powerful tool to explore the truth. All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered, the point is to discover them, said Galileo hundreds of years ago. We, the citizens of India have finally got a potent weapon to unearth the truth.