CHRI Newsletter

Role of Civil Society Organisations in Implementation of RTI in India

Sohini Paul
Project Officer, Access to Information Programme, CHRI

From 12 October 2005, the Right to Information Act (RTI Act), 2005 became fully operational across India. The Act provides people the right to access government-held information and requires systems to be set up for ensuring transparent and accountable government. The purpose of the Act is to create an informed citizenry capable of participating in the decision-making processes of government at all levels. In this context, the right to information becomes a key tool for ensuring that public authorities more effectively meet their goal of promoting participation and entrenching accountable government at the grassroots level. It has been nearly two years since the RTI act has been enacted, yet its use especially in the rural areas has been very low, mainly due to the fact that there has been hardly any training or orientation or large-scale awareness generation campaigns amongst the rural masses. Lack of awareness and training and public education are the main reasons why people find it difficult to access information from various government bodies. Civil society organisations (CSOs), especially those working at the grassroots in rural areas need to be aware about this landmark legislation in our country. More importantly they have the specific responsibility to spread awareness about this Act amongst the people and monitor its implementation.

Therefore, in order to strengthen the implementation of the RTI Act and spread awareness about it, the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) in partnership with the Poorest Area Civil Society programme conducted a series of six cluster level training and capacity building programmes for CSOs on RTI in the eastern states of Bihar and Jharkhand. These workshops were held over a period of three months from May to July 2007.

One of the main outcomes of the workshops was to develop detailed action plans on the roles of the CSOs and identify activities in strengthening the implementation of RTI Act in Bihar and Jharkhand. The main roles of the CSOs and activities as identified by the participants in the workshops have been given in the table below:

Major Roles	Activities
Awareness generation and public education	• Print handbills, posters and pamphlets on RTI for wide-scale distribution • Spread awareness about RTI through wall writing, group discussions, pamphlet distribution, rallies, street plays, awareness camps etc. • Inform people about governments duty to proactively disclose information;· • Share successful case studies on use of RTI by ordinary citizens in order to enable people to understand its value and importance;
Set up RTI resource centers or help lines	• Set up Information Resource Centres which will provide technical support to people in drafting RTI applications as well as help people to get justice after using the RTI Act. • Demonstrate their value and usefulness by helping the poor who are living below the poverty line to file RTI applications. • Follow-up with applicants and document case studies.
Advocacy	• Organise a workshop on advocacy around RTI issues. • Use RTI for the effective and successful implementation of National Rural Employment Guarantee Schemes. • Use RTI to reduce corruption in the public distribution system.
Capacity Building	• Organise RTI workshops at village, block and district level with the purpose of increasing awareness and knowledge about RTI. • Organise RTI workshops for CSOs, media, government officials, women members of Self Help Groups, Gram Pradhans (elected head of village council), retired government officials, teachers, media.

It must be borne in mind that awareness generation in citizens and capacity building of government officials need to be done side-by-side in order to strengthen the demand side for accessing information as well as the supply side for giving information. As a follow-up to these workshops CHRI will continue to provide educational support to CSOs throughout India with a particular focus in the states of Bihar and Jharkhand in order to continue the momentum generated as a result of these workshops.