Experiences with TNEB

I some interesting experiences with the Electricity board this week. The ruling party here DMK was conducting all the many sports activities to rope in youth into the party. So what they did was just conduct these events in all the government grounds (like government schools, play grounds etc). There was one such ground in Kodambakkam and another one in Gopalapuram near our office. There they conduct events using lights and the electricity is naturally stolen from the nearby transformers (or whatever they are called). They have absolutely no qualms about it. So I took photographs of these and went to the TNEB office to complain. I showed them the photographs. The Asst. Engineer at the Kodambakkam office was pretty responsive. He told me that he knew this very well, and that all these are also metered and that they will have to pay for it. But only later did I realise that only those that are taken from the street lights (picture 3) were metered and were paid for. But those that were taken directly from the transformer are not accounted for. But even drawing from from the street lights is not justified just because they are paying for it, because going by that argument, even residential houses need not get electrical connections, we can just draw electricity from the nearest street light and pay for it.


Here are some photos

From switching boxes (I think they are called that)





From street light poles




Coming back to the complaints, the Kodambakkam engineer said that it would be really helpful if a written complaint was given, and so I gave him one the next day. But the Gopalapuram officer was evasive. He first sent me off saying that electricity was drawn only from street light poles. I then went took photographs of power being drawn from transformers, and then he asked me for a written complaint. I gave him one. I asked him when these will be disconnected. He said that it will be done the same day. The next day morning I had a look. Nothing was done. I again went to the Gopalapuram office. On enquiry I learnt that the officer I gave the complaint to went on leave. There was somebody else sitting. He told me that he has already talked to those who installed those illegal connections and that they will disconnect it today. I was stunned. Why the hell does he need to talk to them. As though they are respectable people. The wires should have been forcibly removed and action should have been taken on them. Instead of that, they are holding negotiations. But I chose not to talk then. I came off. This was on friday. Friday evening I checked. Again nothing happened. This will be followed up next week only.

RTI Project Updates 17

Awareness
A friend Kabilan had told me that he had contacts with a person in Doordarshan and that he will talk to that lady and tell me. So once that happens there will be some progress on the DD program. The BIG FM radio program continued and this week too. We took three callers, and all of them had problems with their ration card. The sunday awareness session in Tiruthani was postponed due to my health. A person from a consumer protection group Dilli Babu had called me up saying he wanted training for RTI for his group. Meanwhile he personally wanted to learn RTI and so he came home. I trained him about RTI.

Working with the commission
Keen on going ahead with putting pressure on the Commission, I am looking at decisions of about 6 months (Jul 2007 - Dec 2007). So far I have looked at decisions given in July and Aug 2007. They would be roughly about 210 cases. Out of these, Penalty was obviously due in 84 cases. This does not include cases where information was given after a lot of delay or where information was denied on flimsy grounds. And out of these 84 cases penalty was imposed only in 1 solitary case. Even interpreting the act leniently the penalising percentage is just at 1%. How will the act survive. That too in most of these 84 cases, the commission itself, has issued a Show Cause Notice. But they have simply not followed them up. So the commission feels that fine should be imposed. But have not taken the necessary steps. I really dont think that this percentage would have improved by the end of looking at all the decisions of the 6 months. This process will be over in another 2 days' time. Once that is done, I intend to talk to Nity and Ossie of HRF and go with them to meet the commissioner urging him to impose fines whenever it is due.

RTI Project Updates 15,16

State Information Commission
This is an update of the last two weeks. THe first week was spent in preparing the report for the Madurai workshop. The report was the compilation of data I had collected over the last three months regarding implementation of RTI in government departments, and the SIC's functioning. The report can be viewed here. This was done in consultation with Nity after which Mr.Ossie of HRF had also had a look. At the last minute I thought of doing the tamil translation and this itself took one whole day :-). I spoke about this report at the Madurai workshop. It was also decided at the workshop that a statewide campaign on RTI awareness has to be conducted (tentatively from Mar 1st to Mar 10th).

Awareness
During the first week I also went to Doordarshan and gave them a letter saying I wanted to do a program with them on RTI. If this program happens, then awareness would go to even the remotest villages. Last week when I went to the Doordarshan again, I was told that the letter was marked to the Program Executive. I will have to meet him the coming week.

There was a call from one Mr.Parthasarathy, who had called me up on the RTI helpline, saying that he had applied for Ration card and that it had been more than a year and is yet to receive the card. So I told him how to file an RTI application. Within fifteen days people from the government department had come come for inspection. What is even better is that at that time, he was not at home, and so they came back again. Now they have promised him that he will get his ration card soon. He was very excited and called up to tell me this.

As was mentioned in some previous posts, I had been trying to get some publicity for the phone helpline through BIG FM and it happened this saturday. The people at BIG FM were very supportive and we did a one hour program hosted by RJ Dheena which was a kind of Q & A session between him and me wherein he asks questions about this act and I answer them. All this happens between songs that are played. They have also suggested that we do this program for one more week where we can look at more questions and also take some viewers' questions on the radio itself. That would be really interesting. This can be heard on 92.7 FM saturday 10 AM to 11 AM.

Filing RTI Applications
There were also a couple of interesting replies to my RTI applications. I had filed one with the DoME asking about section 4 disclosures made by various government hospitals. They in turn forwarded it to all the hospitals and asked them to reply to me. Only 3 hospitals replied till a week back, but this week I received a reply from the Government General Hospital (opp. Railway station) saying that the information asked for has been enclosed. But the envelope had no enclosures at all. It was just a single page letter. I was shocked. I just hope it was genuine mistake by the GH. I have written back to them with a copy to DoME saying that there were no enclosures and asking them to send me the enclosures immediately.

The second one was regarding the RTI I filed with Railways asking for details of various quotas like Tatkal, Emergency etc. I had also asked for the number of tickets booked under various quotas for a period of 10 days of 1 train. The information was very specific. For this I received a reply saying that the information has been collected and that it comes to 47 pages and so I have to pay 94 rupees. Moreover, they also said that they spent 8 hours collecting the information regarding the specific train and hence I have to pay Rs.750 for the effort. This is rubbish. Since all the data is computerised (to the extent that even online booking is allowed) it is unthinkable that it takes 8 hours to get the data. For somebody who knows the structure of the database, it will take a maximum of 15 mins to come up with the proper query to get the data. And they say that it took them 8 hours. And that I have to pay 750 rupees for that. Naturally, I intend to go in appeal against this, but this is one of the methods that Govt departments use to discourage usage of RTI.

Also I have filed an RTI application to know the applications for licenses of firearms that have been issued by the government. An other application I filed was to know the exact procedure that has to take place for disbursal of application forms for various government pension schemes like Old Age Pension, Widow pension etc. I have also asked for the procedure for a new ration card. I have also asked for the time limit that each official should do his part of the procedure. This will help in filing RTI applications since these are the areas most people have problems in.

RTI Project Updates 14

Working with the Commission
Last week I learnt from Nity that HRF (Human Rights Foundation) was organising an RTI conference in Madurai on 17th. So when I showed Nity the analysis I had done with 83 cases of the commission. He suggested that we can do a report on this at the conference. Another problem for the commission was that, when the SIC imposes fines, the Public authorities go to the high court challenging the decision. The High court grants an interim stay, and once the case enters the cour, it will rest there for ever. Hence I was also thinking of trying to look at the Public Authorities (PAs) who were going to court with Writ Petitions against the SIC's orders. Hence I met Mr.Dhandapani on Monday asking him to give me the files relating to the cases in HC against SIC's orders. He told me that he will instruct Mr.Jayaraman and asked me to come back on wednesday for those files. When I came to the SIC on wednesday, I was told that he had gone on leave and will be back only on Monday. I was irritated. I met the chief commissioner and I told him that it is really tough to get files from Mr.Dhandapani. He thought for a couple of seconds, called MR.Jayaraman and asked him to let me look at the files. So I started looking at th files. I learnt from Mr.Jayaraman there were about 23 cases in all. So starting Wednesday I started looking at those files. By the end of the week I had looked at about 15 of them. The analysis is given here.

In the meanwhile I met Nity and discussed with him if the data I was collecting for High court cases was sufficient and also discussed the format of the report we were going to present in Madurai. We decided to call it "The status of RTI Implementation in Tamilnadu". Having discussed the structure, I have to prepare th report, get some comments from him and get it translated into Tamil (for which Nity has said, that he could be of help in giving me contacts). We hope this will have some impact since there will be good media coverage for this event.

Awareness sessions
This saturday there was an awareness session in Manali a municipality in North Chennai in a church where about 15 women and a few men had come together. The session started pretty late. I got the feeling, that the audience were not sure what they were going to get, and hence it was more of a speech to them rather than something they can practically use.

RTI Project Updates - 12, 13

It has been two weeks since my last update and hence this is going to be a two week update. The past two weeks have given me new ideas, better understanding of commissions etc.

Working with the commission
One important work that happened this fortnight was that I analysed close to 80 decisions of the State Information Commission. The analysis reveals that decisions were by and large fair and shows that the commissioners are well intentioned in getting information from the petitioner. The major problem is that fines are not imposed in most cases. Out of the 83 cases analysed, 59 cases were fit for penalty. Out of these 59 cases, Show Cause Notices have been issued only in 35 cases. That leaves about 24 cases. Moreover, impositions of a SCN does not mean penalties are imposed, since later when I spoke to the Chief Commissioner, he said that they did not look at the replies to the SCNs since they did not have time. That means no PA gets really fined. Which is pretty bad, since the only reason why a PA might give information is the fear that he may be fined. But there will be a hundred reasons why a PA will NOT want to give information. So if that sole reason to give information is not there, information will not be given. This has always been the argument from my side.
There have been few important cases too. There was this case where the teacher had sought some information from the headmaster and he is suspended for it. The case come to the commission, and the commission strongly condemns disciplinary action just because the teacher had sought information.
Another case is where the PA had repeatedly ignored the orders from the commission, and finally at the hearing he is given a 24 hour deadline. Since the order says this, I got in touch with the appellant (after writing a letter to him) and he says that he has still not got information. It is precisely instances like these, that support the case for stringent penalties on erring PIOs. The analysis excel can be viewed here.
I have taken copies of 4 important decisions and have uploaded them here. 1,2,3,4.

I would like to state here, that analysis has been done based only on the Final orders given at the hearing, since accessing the relevant files for each order was not feasible, since searching for each file would take a really long time.
I also attended a day of hearings of the Central Information Commission. This was handled by Ms.Padma Balasubramanian and I have blogged the details here.

On 19th Feb, Rupesh and I represented Nity at the commission for a hearing wherein Nity had asked for information (like copies of MOU, land acquisition details) regarding TATA's Titanium dioxide project in Tuticorin. The PIO had rejected information saying it was confidential information, but for the hearing Nity had given detailed point by point rebuttal, and at the end of the hearing, the Chief commissioner ordered that information has to be given within 15 days. The PIO then asked for one month, for which the commissioner refused. What was interesting was that, when we were about to leave the room, the PIO asked the commissioner to talk to the secretary. But the commissioner plainly refused to do anything of that sort. The 15 day time period will end on March 5th.

Awareness sessions
In the last two weeks, not much awareness happened. There was a follow-up of the Saidapet slum awareness session. Lokesh, Raj sundar and I went to the saidapet slum on 27th Feb. Filed first appeals for 3 cases, and one more RTI was filed. I have talked to L&T and Infosys to conduct awareness sessions in their companies. I have talked to bothe their HRs. There will be two sessions in Infosys (in their two development centres) and one in L&T. Am also trying to talk to other companies and give their people training. The program in Big FM should also happen in March 1st week. I have talked to Mr.Ramamurthy of an organisation called SODEWS for a session in Yelagiri in Vellore district for SHGs there. This will most probably happen on March 15th. I have also placed the publicity cards at the commission after talking to the Chief Commissioner. There are quite a few people who come to the commission without much idea about the act. Hence I told the despatch clerk there to give these cards to those who want to know about the act.

A sad monday

The beginning
On Monday (25th Feb) I went to the commission because I knew that the CIC is having its hearings at the SIC. I went there at 10. There I met a person who was obviously a lawyer, since he asked the clerk there whether he had to wear a court gown. He was there to represent Mr.Easwaran who was part of an organisation called "People's Watch for Banks' accountability". I was surprised that there was such an organisation at all. He told me how they filed RTIs asking for account details of the unions of Indian Overseas Bank. Then I told him that I was an RTI activist and showed him the card I had printed for publicising the helpline I was running. He went on to tell me how the unions are corrupt. First he said that the unions were not supposed to take donations from clients but that they take huge amounts of money that way. And then went on to say that clients can pay an amount to the unions and get their loans written off. It seems that even bank employees use unions to get transfers etc after paying some amount to the union or the union leader. While our discussion was going on the hearings started at about 11. He did not go in. I asked him why he didnt go in. He told me that he himself was an employee of IOB, and that even from inside he started creating a lot of trouble, and then cases were foisted on him, which he fought for many years and then took voluntary retirement. He said that if anybody has any problems with these public sector banks they can be contacted. Their address is

Peoples' Watch for Banks' accountability
Mr.Easwaran
No.3 Model House Lane,
CIT Nagar,
Nandanam,
Chennai.
Phone: 044-24329078

I didnt attend the first hearing but from the second hearing I was inside. I dont know what decision was given in the his hearing, which was the first, but by the end of the day, I got an idea how it would have went. I sat through about 7-8 cases but since I could not take down notes, I remember the details of only a few cases. (Because, for the SIC hearings I was told that it was ok for me to sit at hearings as long as I did not take notes :-)).

What I saw today has made me write such a long blog. It was bad. I have always heard about bad commissioners, but when I saw what happened today, I was stunned. It is as much in the technical issues of cases as much as in the manner of conducting hearings that really enraged me. In this report I intend to capture the details of two cases as much as possible, so that the readers get an idea of the way hearings went on today. All the cases today were related to banks. The first 5 cases I saw was with the Indian bank. The commissioner was Smt.Padma Balasubramanian.

Case 1
In one case, there was a lady, a lawyer who was representing the appellant who had come from a village saying that the appellant had applied for a loan and that she had not got any replies and that they later said that she had to apply at a different branch, since the area she was in was not covered by the branch at which she had applied. But for this she wanted to know why the delay in giving information. She also wanted to know the date on which this new branch was taking care of the area in point. This information was already available in one of the letters from the bank. The lady wanted to know whether there were any people who were given loans in the same area after the new branch came up. The bank's representative said no. And different things were discussed. Finally when the hearing was about the be completed, the appellant's representative again asked the commissioner whether she could compile a list of people in her area who did receive loans from the branch, after the given date when the jurisdiction has been, according to the bank, moved to a new branch. At this, the commissioner said "Neenga ethukku kutham kandu pidikkarthuleye irukkeenga. Kutham kandu pidikkanumna kandu pidichikitte irukkalam. Ungalukku vendiyathu Loan thaane, athu kedaikka muyarchi pannunga" (Why do you want to insist on finding mistakes? If you want to find mistakes, you can keep doing them, go and make efforts to get your loan). At this the hearing was closed, and the lady left. I couldnt believe that I was hearing this from a commissioner. Isnt it one of the goals of the RTI that there is absolute transparency and isnt making sure that no mistakes happen part of the goals of the RTI act. How could she say, that the appellant should not insist on finding mistakes. If mistakes happened, they ought to be brought out. Why should the commissioner say that? But wait. There is more to come.

Case 2
There was this advocate, Mr.Suresh Kumar, who had come to represent his father. He had filed a long list of questions to the PIO of the bank. For which there were some really funny answers from the bank. But this case also showed how the officers go about creating documents that are not there. Though I could not get much details of the case while the hearing on, I talked to him during lunch and learnt a lot of details in his case. During the hearing, the appellant said that he was not given any information even after 4 reminders from the commission (which in itself shows how much the commission's word is respected). The representative of the bank seemed to know well that nothing would happen to him, and he was not worried in the least. The representative pointed out that though there was communication from the commission, there were no enclosures to it, which would be first appeals, which would have anyway been sent to him by the appellant. But even worse is that when the commission did not attach the enclosures, why did the PIO not talk to them and get the enclosures and waited till just 2 or 3 days before the hearing. The PIO then contended that he has brought the information today and that he will hand it over to the appellant now. The commissioner asked the PIO to explain in writing why there was so much delay. The appellant pointed out, that if only the PIO had already sent this information to the appellant before itself, there would not have been any need for the hearing now and that he had to spend 1000 rupees just for this. For this again, the commissioner asked the PIO to explain. I was wondering what this "explaining" meant. It amounts to nothing. The appellant asked for compensation and she said she will consider it next time. What was she doing? As if doling out some sort of alms. The appellant was very right in claiming compensation, since the only outcome of the whole hearing was that he got a set of papers from the PIO. But his story for the day did not end there.

The next appellant walked in. Mr.Suresh Kumar was sitting in a chair in the enquiry room itself wanting to go through the documents given to him. The PIO objected to his being there when the next case was going on. This showed how antagonistic the PIO was towards appellants. On hearing this, the commissioner also asked him to leave the room. But Mr.Suresh Kumar rightly pointed out that there is every right for public to watch enquiries and that as a member of the public he had every right to be there. When he and the PA's representative started arguing, the commissioner said that she did not want to waste her time and hence was getting on with the next case. This was not fair to Mr.Suresh Kumar, since if the commissioner felt that Mr.Suresh Kumar should not be there, she should have insisted on leaving. Or if she felt that the PA's representative was wrong in asking him to leave, she should have suitably chastised the PIO. She did neither. Probably she didnt want to commit to either side, which is not becoming of a commissioner. So Mr.Suresh sat through the next hearing, and at the end of it, wanted to tell the commissioner that he already had objections to the documents given to him. But the commissioner was not willing to hear anything from him since his hearing was already over. She wanted him to go through the route of sending a letter to the appellate authority and then to the commission. This I thought was extremely bad. The appellant is here, the PA's representative is also here, and he has some objections (which I later learnt were very valid), then what stops her from looking at the objections. The PA's representative was fully aware that things could be kept postponing, till the appellant is worn down using these delaying tactics. But the commissioner should atleast realise it and act based on that. After all, does not the act envisage information within 30 days? And this paticular case has gone on for more than 300 days. And even now the commissioner did not try to speeden up proceedings when possible. She just was not concerned about whether the appellant was given Information or not. She seemd to be only worried about closing this hearing and moving on to the next one. The spirit was absent. Totally.

Some interesting "information"
During Lunch Suresh and I were discussing his case. (Mr.Suresh can be reached on his mobile number: 9345902978). He had filed a complaint with the Indian bank about 2 years back (in 2005) and wanted to get information as to what action was taken on it. He showed me a reply to a specific question regarding complaint registers. He had sought a copy of the complaint register and had also asked why the complaint register was not kept in a public place in the bank. And the reply to this was "Copies of the complaint register are personal information and hence cannot be given. The branch has been isntructed to keep the complaint register in a public place in the bank". How much more absurd can things get? If it is indeed personal information, which in itself is so obviously wrong, how can it be kept in a public place. How can something be both personal enough that copies cannot be given, but also be public enough to be kept in the bank at a place where everybody can access. And now comes the biggest fraud. When filing the RTI, the appellant asked the PIO to furnish copies of acknowledgment of his complaint, and also copies of the communication that happened regarding the complaint. Here the fact, was that the bank had lost the complaint. But they did not want to admit it. So they created documents as if they have acknowledged the complaint. And how did they do it? And how did he find out that it was a cooked up document. Here is an interesting story.

When the RTI application the complaint attached a copy of the original complaint he filed in 2005. Now this copy of the complaint filed (let us call it A1) was a one page letter which had From address on the top left. It did not have any heading. When the appellant filed a copy of that complaint, what he did was he took a xerox and wrote on top of it "Copy of the complaint filed - Enclosure 3". Let us call this copy A2. Now the bank should have had the copy of A1 which was sent to them. But they did not have it. So they just took a copy of this A2 put a seal on it as if it was received on that day in 2005 (by just adjusting the date on the seal) and gave that as acknowledgment. Obviously, how the appellant found it was, beacuse this acknowledgment had the heading "Copy of the complaint filed - Enclosure 3" on top. This clearly showed that they have taken a copy of the complaint that the appellant had attached in his RTI application and then cooked up documents. This clearly exposed the PIO. And he did not know that there was a flaw in his cooking up the documents. But all this could have been replied to on this day itself at the commission, but since the commissioner did not permit him to speak, he could not get it redressed here. And he naturally lost hope. It almost happened like in courts. Where it is only adjournment that is the goal of a hearing.

The representative of the Indian Bank was very rude and knew very well how to dither. And whenever the appellants pointed out that there was some wrong info, the only option the commissioner gave was to go and ask the appellant to look at the files, without seeing why the appellant said that it was wrong information. That could have helped resolve cases then and there. Throughout the hearings, the commissioner was not ready to go into the details of the objections raised by the appellant in an exhaustive way. Neither did she let appellants finish their representations. Though it will be right on her part to ask them to be specific with their queries, she must give them time for a proper hearing, because after all not every appellant is a lawyer. She should stand firmly on the side of justice and ensure all information asked for comes out. She seemed to look at appellants more as irritant and less as people who were wronged and wanted justice (technically, information). There were more such instances which I havent reported here on the day.

If information takes for ever come, will appellants believe in RTI. RTI is a wonderful tool. People are using it. The government authorities dont want it. The problem with the government authorities can be solved only if the commissioners are good. But what I saw on monday doesnt augur well for transparency. I realise that this is not the first time they are conducting enquiries. Nobody really knows how many people have already been affected and demotivated by such commissioners. Monday was a sad day. But for all I know it was just one among many such days.

Accountability in Government hospitals - Update saying "No updates"

A small note on our work in Government hospitals. As for the corruption complaint enquiry at GOSHA hospital, we have not yet been called for another round of enquiry. We are waiting for that.

As far as the GH is concerned, we met the superintendent to give us permission to implement a waiting list system at in the Cardio Thoracic department, but he was not very co-operative. He told that many students come and ask for permission to do work, they work only on one day but ask for certificates indicating that they worked for 2 monhts. So we told them that we are not students and so dont need any certificates. Then he looked at the letter that the CT dept HOD forwarded to the dean and said that the details are not sufficient and asked us to give him more details.

So went back to him with a brief background about us and AID India and about the system we are intending to implement. In that we had said taht we wont need any funds from the GH for the funds since we will raise it ourselves. He again objected to this saying, how can you raise fund yourself, the government gives us lots of money and that he will not let us go and ask for funds for GH, as that would bring a bad name to the GH. Moreover he also said, that NGOs do this all the time, they raise money and do not do anything. We tried to explain to him, that if the GH itself gives us money we are more than happy. But he was not at all convinced. He anyway asked us to meet the Dean.

The problem is exactly that. The Dean has been given the additional responsibility as the director of DoME. So he is not in office. That is why we had to meet the superintendent. Now he asks us to meet the Dean. Since that day we are daily calling up the GH to find out if the dean is present. We call up -3 times everyday, but we are not able to meet him. Let us see when we are going to get a chance to meet him. Till then there will be very little update on that. :-)