RTI comes to the rescue of IITians

Their latest experiment with the Right to Information (RTI) has helped about 1,200 IIT research scholars in matters as varied as hiking scholarships, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Jun 19, 2008, 24:49:05 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Innovation is not the only forte of IITians. Their latest experiment with the Right to Information (RTI) has helped about 1,200 IIT research scholars in matters as varied as hiking scholarships and finding out the reasons for the spurt in suicides in IIT-Kanpur as well as felling of trees in the IIT-Bombay campus.

Arvind Kejriwal, RTI activist and Magsaysay Award winner, described this as the real magic of RTI. "An RTI application can provide instant solutions to problems of a large number of people if real public interest is involved," he said.

A simple RTI application of research scholars at IIT-Bombay to the HRD Ministry and the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) earlier this year seeking information on the fellowship hike for M.Tech students had the HRD Ministry announcing an increase in fellowship for students who had cleared the Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering last year. Before 30 days, the stipulated period for providing information under the RTI Act, the ministry released additional money to all IITs and the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, to increase the stipend.

Earlier, the research scholars got the University Grants Commission and the ministry moving on an RTI application on the increase in fellowship for Ph.D scholars enrolled under the UGC programme. Within a month of receiving the application, the UGC released Rs 2.14 crore. Till then, the IIT authorities had been blaming the UGC for not paying dues for three years. The UGC said IITs had failed to submit the utilisation certificates.

IIT-Bombay student Amit Jariwala asked his institution the reasons for the delay in giving the stipend. His RTI application prompted the IIT to instal new software to ensure that the students get the stipend of Rs 5,000-Rs 6,000 per month on time.

In IIT-Kanpur, the alumni association filed an RTI application seeking the results of two girl students who had committed suicide earlier this year. The association found that they were declared failed despite having scored high marks.

An IIT-Bombay student had in his RTI application asked why trees on the campus were being felled. To his surprise, the authorities sent him a detailed reply in time.

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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