He juggles info roles with flair

His weapon is information and both as a seeker and provider of it, Ram Samar Singh has scored many a hit.

Updated on: Jun 24, 2009, 23:17:16 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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His weapon is information and both as a seeker and provider of it, Ram Samar Singh has scored many a hit.

In his two-year stint as the Public Information Officer (PIO) at the National Institute of Science, Technology and Development Studies (NISTADS), Singh, 56, handled 26 Right to Information applications. Only two of them were appealed against. He has been nominated for the national RTI award under the PIO category.

Delhi-based NISTADS is one 38 institutes/labs of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the country’s premiere state-funded research and development institute.

As PIO, Singh also provided information about the administrative decisions of his boss, which even earned the institute a rebuke.

But, Singh knew the RTI Act well. While seeking information from other officials, he would apprise them of the powers and responsibilities under the Act.

“In this role (as a PIO or any official custodian of information), we are not even answerable to the director of NISTADS or director-general of CSIR,” he used to tell them.

“The CSIR is unfortunately a closed system that allows little flow of information,” said Vajendra Joshi, librarian with NISTADS. It, too, has its share of manipulation of rules and arbitrariness, particularly in recruitments and promotions, he said. “As a conscientious PIO, Singh has been able to make some serious dents into this culture of manipulation and secrecy.”

Singh turned an applicant to ensure water supply to his house and neighbourhood. He asked the Delhi Jal Board, the Capital’s water supply utility, why water was not being supplied to the 40-house neighbourhood in Uttam Nagar.

His efforts of two years paid off in July 2006. The water utility launched a Rs 37 lakh borewell project to supply water. It also agreed to send water tankers to the neighbourhood and promised supply from the mainline at the earliest.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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