On Tue, Apr 28, 2009 at 5:09 PM, Zainab Bawa <[email protected]> wrote: > [snip] > circumstances. Also, lower level officers tend to get fined more often than > the higher level bureaucrats and this could mean a lot not only in monetary > terms, but also bringing them under the ire and fire of seniors,
Wasnt the Act supposed to introduce transparency in the first place? So it would be interesting to see the fines shared across the hierarchy. Not sure if it will change the bureaucratic attitude though. > Albert O Hirschmann's work titled "Exit, Voice and Loyalty" is very > interesting in regard to RTI. Hirschmann analyzes what happens when people > have too many options to exercise their "voice" and when too many people > decide to express their "voice" in particular circumstances. He tries to > understand these patterns in the context of feedback cycles and how these > cycles can get skewed in situations when one option is exercised excessively > than the other. Well, democracy is not always democratic and freedom does not mean absolute freedom either *shrug* > As in? What would be the examples. Just curious. ... and then there are cases where the acts could have been used to harass another officer (or seniors), stop promotions, question X/Y/Z action and raise straw-man arguments, allude and ... you get the point !! Frivolous cases do reduce the positive impact an Act could bring about and the officer (you cited) has a point about the right information falling into wrong hands (think terrorists with local networks). Kinda sad but not surprising. Perhaps corruption and dirty politics is so brazenly woven into the fabric of daily life that we have no choice but accept and live with it. Is there no scope for change? :( > Would be interesting to know which cases these are. Yes indeed. Atleast Kejriwal was honest enough to admit that he had not expected the misuse of the Act nor the delays within the system. > was associated with in Mumbai tried to help a person to file an RTI with the > metropolitan development authority to know how and where builders had used > development rights in the city, we got a blatant response saying, "Here are > the contact details of the Appellate Authority. Go an lodge an appeal saying > we are not giving you this information." !!! hah, the case would take years to be heard, another few years to get a judgement, and so on... take the Mumbai 26/11 terrorism case where despite the evidence, Kasab's lawyer is trying to pass him off as a juvenile, .... Who is to blame for the frivolousness being indulged in, while a terrorist enjoys state hospitality at the tax-payers expense. -- .
