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| Ritesh Singh |
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| Anand Sharma |
1a. Could you briefly tell me how Ritesh , Avnish and Anand came to collaborate on this initiative.
The fire of activism was always there within the three of us. Anna’s 14 day fast, spurred us into action.
Ritesh (19 yr. old 3rd Computer Sc. Student IIT Kharagpur) ended up fasting for 14 days in Ramlila Ground and was admitted to ICU.
Avnish (An Entreprenuer, who heads various web-based companies) was a volunteer in Ramlila Ground, helping in the cleanup/crowd control, getting beaten up/yelled at by huge amount of people in Ramlila.
Anand Sharma (Sr. Staff Engineer - Seagate Technology, USA, was involved in various protests during Anna’s fast).
We may have not touched each other physically, but have seen/heard & read about each other, with the help of today’s technology
1b. One of Ritesh's article mentions, that he had envisaged RTI Anonymous originally with Shehla Masood. Was that the original inspiration for the initiative?
Shehla was Ritesh’s close friend and both used to do RTI activism together. Ritesh & Shehla had envisaged a slightly different service named RTI Leaks. RTI Leaks was planned to be a one stop source for all RTI related expose throughout India. While the plan was materialising, Shehla attained martyrdom.
After about one month of activism through our facebook page https://www.facebook.com/JusticeForShehlaMasood and other initiatives, we noticed that there was a gaping hole in the existing anti-corruption laws. People who dared to stand-up against corruption, were being being victimised. RTI Anonymous, is one solution that would hopefully reduce this issue to a significant extent.
Long brainstorming sessions between the three of us, finally resulted in this idea.
With the technical expertise, experience and background that the three of us already have, implementing this idea on a website was the next most logical thing to do. And thus RTI Anonymous was born.
1c. How many individuals form your core team?
Ours is a movement where everybody is welcome and there is no specific core team.
However right now, we three (Ritesh, Anand and Avnish) are working the hardest for the cause and we like to fondly call ourselves the core team.
2a. When was RTI anonymous operationalised (rough date).
The site was operationalised on Oct 15th 2011
2b. What has been the response of the public, as of now?
From the day of launch (Oct 15th), we have had an overwhelming response from people and it was highly motivating to see that they started believing us and putting their faith in our organization.
As of Oct 30th (within 15 days) we have a a total of 130 RTI Requests.
What started of with just three people has now expanded to a volunteer group of about 35 people, from different parts of India & USA. .
We now have a team of about 15 IIT Kharagpur Students, working through the night, learning and drafting RTI’s
We have about few retired government officials, who are not only experts in legal matters/labor laws & state laws, but have also been Public Information Officer for few years, before retiring. They now do a final review of all RTI applications.
For Example: Mr. Ramakrishna Manja of Bangalore is a 65 year old retired Registrar and had been a Public Information Officer in the Institute of Mathematical Sciences.
We have about 10 experienced RTI activists from different parts of India, who are helping us too.
So the response is two fold -- 105 RTI Requests & about 35 volunteers and this number is growing
2c. Any success story you'll would like to highlight? (Eg: Your site shows number of RTIs filed/printed/resolved etc. Are those the latest figures or please send me the latest ones.
Yes, we have a very important success story that we want to highlight. It is about Madhya Pradesh High Court Judges given undue favours by Chief Minister’s Office. This can be a big story since the Chief Minister's Office was directly involved (see Document Number 3 from top on http://getup4change.org/rti/madhya-pradesh-high-court-judges-given-undue-favours/) and it was because of recommendation from that office that public money was used to pay for the judges' trips. Furthermore, 4th Document from top clearly shows written records by Sahayak Satkaar Adhikari stating that wife of Rajasthan High Court Chief Justice Shri Arun Mishra utilized all facilities provided by the state even though she wasn't officially a state guest.
This is clearly a misuse of Public Money for personal luxury and shows one instance of how Chief Ministers can keep High Court Judges Impressed, even more so when India is a country of starving millions. It has taken a lot of time for us to expose this. Your coverage will help to prevent such irregularities in future.
Yes, all figures available on the site are latest.
3) At a time when the government is trying to clamp down on the reach of the RTI, what according to you is the role/importance of a platform like yours.
RTI Anonymous clearly assumes much more importance in current scenarios where RTI Activists are frequently being victimised. About Government clamping down on the reach of RTI, we as part of RTI Activist community are fairly confident that we won’t allow that to happen through peaceful and democratic assertion.
4a) Could you elaborate a little about how your initiative actually functions?
On RTI Anonymous, a user can simply click on ‘Submit RTI’ on the homepage to file an RTI Application. They can also send their request directly to us through email (by creating a dummy email address).
He/she has an option to give his email address if he/she wants to be notified about the status/progress of his RTI Application through his email. Otherwise he/she can very well file it through a dummy username. Once the user Submits his/her RTI Application on RTI Anonymous, we extensively edit it to make it stronger and less ambiguous.
And then we file it through a random volunteer, who are based in different parts of India completely bypassing possibility of any victimisation” So this means a volunteer in Delhi with a proper Delhi Residential Address will file an RTI for an issue with say BBMP-Bangalore.
4b) Does an RTI applicant need to pay RTI Anonymous any fees for the data he/she desires? What about RTI charges or xerox charges for documents that need retrieving?
We don’t charge anybody for any of our services. We are self funded but also supported by few generous donors. All our accounts are openly available on the website since we believe in 100 % transparency: http://getup4change.org/rti/fund-rtis-save-india/.
There are absolutely no charges of any kind we charge from applicants. All the charges related to RTI filing is been covered by organization itself. 5a) As you are aware RTI activists across the country have been under attack. What are the measures you think the government needs to incorporate to ensure the safety of such individuals.
We need strong whistle blowers protection clause as part of the Lokpal Bill with provision of severe punishment for harassing and threatening RTI activists
We never care about threats, every threat makes us more stronger and more determined towards our goal. The more you try to eliminate us, more we will increase in numbers and every time more stronger than earlier.However, we also do believe that RTI Anonymous can do a really good job in solving the problem of whistle blower victimisation.
5b) Have you'll had any such experience of threats/intimidation since the platform was floated? Given the experience of Wikileaks, do you'll fear a similar backlash from powers-that-be?
We did face hacking attempts to get our website down a few weeks ago.
We are prepared to face any such threat at all levels. Avnish himself is a x-Anonymous activist (an international group of people working for anonymous activism) and actively participated in Wikileaks movement. We have helped Wikileaks and IAC (India Against Corruption) technologically, by managing their web traffic and mirroring their website. .
6) There could be a fair deal of skepticism among users about how your platform would ensure anonymity of RTI applicants. What are the measures you'll take to protect the identity of applicants?
We don’t ask for any detail whatsoever of any applicant on RTI Anonymous. We deliver the reply on the site and send an email notification to the applicant (if he has put in his/her email address while Submitting his RTI). Since even we ourselves don’t have any details of the applicants, there is no room for skepticism/doubt that we would reveal it.
7a) Have you'll had any prior experience with RTI or is this a first-time foray into the field.
Among the core team, Ritesh is the most experience , since he has so far filed more than 100 RTI’s. But as mentioned above. The organization comprises of about 10 RTI Activists, 5 Retired and highly experienced government officials, who have been Public Information Officers. These retired government officials are experts in legal matters, State labor laws and also the entire RTI process.
7b) What according to you are the biggest challenges facing the RTI movement in the country, currently?
- A deliberate attempt to create red-tapism, by making the whole process of filing RTI’s extremely complicated
- Lack of Whistleblower Protection Act
- Government trying to dilute the RTI Act
8) Your site mentions that many members of your core group are based abroad. Could you please elaborate your source of funding the RTI applications, given the back-and-forth correspondence it would entail to India.
The original model of RTI-Anonymous was supposed to be a self-funded initiative and we consider any donations, as motivation and encouragement to our cause.
There are several people from India and abroad(NRIs) who have pledged to send us donations.
RTI Anonymous is going to train NRI’s in USA, to draft RTI’s, using Skype-based Conference Call on Nov 5th. We have so far had about 15 NRI’s from different parts of US, enrolled for this training.
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