NRI Uses New Law to Beat Bribing

An NRI used a new Indian law to get his Income Tax refund without bribing. After waiting for five years without any reply from the Income Tax office, 60-year old Tushar Dalvi, an NRI living in Mumbai, filed an application under the one-year old Right To Information (RTI) law and got his refund pronto - in fact, in a week. Earlier, he tried to use the services of a chartered accountant who wanted Rs 50,000 ($1,130) as his fees and 'other expenses'. Since this amount was almost half of the refund, Dalvi looked for a solution and filed a query under RTI and got speedy action.

People are now taking the RTI route in a big way to get what is rightfully theirs. Take, for example, Radhey Shyam, a construction worker. He wanted to go to the Gulf for work, and applied for a passport in May 2006. He didn't get it till October. Fed up, he filed an RTI application in the Regional Passport Office. Sure enough, he got his passport by December.

Though it's been more than a year since the Act has been in use, not many are aware of it. So a series of awareness campaigns in different cities and parts of India have been organized. These awareness drives have been a great success as the poor people do know about their rights to get information on their applications or dealings with the government and the corrupt babus want bribes to part with any information leave alone solve their problems.

RTI is a fundamental right of every citizen buried by red tape and corruption. But if the right to information is a fundamental right, then why does it need a law? Simply because if you go into a government. office and demand that they tell you why your work has not been done, they will not entertain you or might even throw you out. If it's a law, then it becomes harder to do this. If they do not give you the information you want, they will have broken a law and can be punished for it! To provide the information, every Indian government department has a Public Information Officer or PIO responsible for collecting the information you need and giving it to you within a short, specific period. Of course, some information on defence, scientific and economic matters and foreign affairs and other sensitive areas cannot be disclosed. Since most people do not require information on these matters, RTI can serve them well.

All NRIs moan about the apathy and corruption of government offices and how they are sent from one dreary office to another to get nowhere. Now RTI can help them but, like all government departments, it has piled up hundreds of cases and a large number of irate applicants accusing PIOs of dismissing their applications summarily. The authorities respond that the number of applications has increased so much that they are unable to handle them as enough staff is still to be appointed. A new government body just over a year old is drowned in paperwork and lack of action. Typical of any government department!

Instead of appointing more clerks, perhaps technology can solve registering and tracing applications with a heavy-duty scanner to create a computer database. But an application pointing to high corruption got 'lost' although most officers know about it! Another criticism is that the PIOs should be appointed from the private sector and not from government departments. RTI came into effect on 12 October 2005 but has not been fully implemented in all states and at all levels. RTI requires an aggressive and massive campaign to inform the people about their fundamental right to information.

Despite its slow start, RTI heralds a new era for government accountability and transparency for the common man. Next time an NRI gets frustrated with no response from the apathetic and pathetic government departments, there is hope of speedy action as Tushar Dalvi discovered.