Commencing a RTI Campaign to save our Cities

Bangalore is the most pedestrian unfriendly city in the world. Footpaths are badly laid in most of Bangalore. In residential areas they are used for car parking or a huge slope is created on the footpath to ensure smooth entry and exit of the vehicle. Commercial establishments treat footpath as extension of their business area. Builders use it to construct temporary structures. Two wheelers use footpaths to commute in case of traffic hold-up.

The High Court of Karnataka has ruled in the recent past that it is the duty of the concerned authorities to ensure that pedestrians have free access to the footpaths but nobody seems to be bothered. The traffic police and BBMP (Authority in charge of ensuring Bangalore’s municipal well being) shift the responsibility of clearing footpaths on one another. Unlike traders, pedestrians don’t have any lobbying power (read political influence) to ensure free access to footpaths.

Encroachment of footpath by shopkeepers poses the biggest danger to pedestrians. They encroach upon the footpath and their customers park vehicles on edges of the road. Thus, pedestrians are compelled to walk on middle of the road.

Email complaints to these authorities never get answered as is the age old practice of writing to the newspaper. Any personally written letters with your residential address only leads to pressure for withdrawing the complaint.

RTI Act, 2005 is the only way such authorities can be made accountable. However a single application may not be of avail. There should be a RTI deluge from across the country. Any Government Officer would prefer to solve the problem than sign a few lakh applications. Please remember that only a senior officer is appointed as the Central Public Information Officer and lies cannot be told under the Act.

The ground work for this campaign is as follows:
The nature of the problem has to be identified and atleast 25 related questions evolved on the subject.
If citizens from Bangalore have a problem with their municipal authorities, in addition to RTI applications from them, lakhs of applications from all parts of the country should flood to the concerned authority with atleast 5 questions from the Question Bank formulated above.
Each applicant should insist for an individual reply. If you require to protect your identity you can insist for a reply by email, since there is nothing in the RTI Act to the contrary.
This is just a test campaign. We can initiate many more such campaigns for every city based on suggestions from co-bloggers.
I will be posting the set of 25 questions and who to address the application to once I receive atleast 20 to 25 replies to this blog. Choice of which 5 questions you want to ask will be left to your discretion.

We can change the way this country is governed if we can use the RTI Act, 2005 in an innovative way. Quell them with quantity that is our motto. We the upper middle class don’t vote in elections atleast let us spend Rs.10 per month to try and ring in radical changes in the country. I look forward to your suggestions and cooperation in this regard.