Government to go textbook on RTI

On the very day the central government notified new rules diluting the Right To Information Act (RTI Act), the HRD ministry decided to make the ironical decision of telling school children that the transparency law was an effective tool for fighting corruption and effecting good governance.

Updated on: Aug 20, 2012, 09:18:13 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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On the very day the central government notified new rules diluting the Right To Information Act (RTI Act), the HRD ministry decided to make the ironical decision of telling school children that the transparency law was an effective tool for fighting corruption and effecting good governance.

The National Council of Education Research and Training (NCERT) has decided to print an RTI message in textbooks for classes from VI to VIII, stating that the law combats corruption and "promotes transparency and accountability" in the government machinery.

The message - to be displayed on the inner side of textbook back covers - is expected to reach nearly one crore students in 2012.

Besides creating awareness, the initiative will encourage children to use the tool for seeking information from the government. "You can seek necessary information about various activities of the government through an RTI application," the message reads, before detailing the information-seeking process.

Schoolchildren, however, are no strangers to the RTI Act.

They have used the tool to gain access to their answer sheets, and even seek information on facilities available to them. Aishwarya Parashar, a class VI student from City Montessori School, Lucknow, made headlines when her RTI application revealed that the government had not notified Mahatma Gandhi as the Father of the Nation.

The message tells students that the RTI application can be filed on plain paper, even though several government ministries have prescribed a particular format for using it. The application can be sent from a post office too, it adds.

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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