The Trek by Pallavi Rao

On the first day of trekking, but missing the chief instigator who was also photographer in chief

When my Massi asked me if I wanted to come for a trek with the family, I jumped at the chance, not knowing what I had gotten myself into.

The juicy side of summer

It is damned hot here in India.

My father’s village in Gujarat easily tops 100 degrees Fahrenheit before breakfast. And here in relatively “cool” Dehradun, the temperatures have been in the high nineties. Add to that water shortages, power outages and mosquitoes, and you have to wonder why any sane person would willingly come to India in the summer.

But there are a couple of reasons….

Working kids at play

Keera Jardi

There’s gold in them thar hills, and people of all ages are flocking to the mountaintops in search of a worm on a stick.

On our recent trek in the Nanda Devi biosphere, after we had huffed and puffed our way to some 13,000 feet above sea level, we looked at the mountains rising up around us and were surprised to see them dotted with people.

Children hunting for Keera Jardi near Kawari Pass

A long journey

The other day, Aditi was diverted from her usual morning ritual of checking the water level in our underground tank by the sight of a disgruntled looking baby mynah sitting on the ground near the water pump. There’s a nest in the upstairs bathroom window, but this little fellow seems to have taken a rather long excursion.

Job Security?

The Hindu superdiety Jagannath (from whence comes the English term “Juggarnaut”) is down with his annual cold, brought on by being given too many baths by his devoted followers, according to a story in today’s Hindustan Times.

He is being treated by an astrologer whose family has been treating the powerful diety during his annual fortnight-long illness for some 300 years.

He is expected to survive.

Unlocking the Right to Information

We thought we’d inaugurate this blog with a little good news. Asha-SV has partnered with the MCF on a campaign to teach young people in rural mountain communities how to use India’s amazing Right to Information Act to start fixing problems in their villages.

Here are a few stories from the kids showing how they used the law:

The RTI really works !!!

Greetings to all members of PABAM.

I am a member of the Thati Bal Panchayat and my village comes under the Bilangana Development Area, District Tehri. Our 25-member Bal Panchayat works in the areas of Health, Education, and cleanliness of the village and we are helped in out endeavor by the NGO, Mount Valley Development Association (MVDA), who from time to time gives us training on various issues. In Jan 2009, our Bal Panchayat received training from the Mountain Children’s Forum and MVDA on the “Right to Information Act” and how to file an application.

We attended a 2-day intensive workshop which culminated, after great discussions, in the filing of a number of RTI applications. The applications have to be filed by an individual and not a group so I decided to file an application asking the Block Education Dept. to give me information regarding the attendance requirements of a primary school teacher. Our village has a primary school and there are 46 children who attend this school. In the last 3 years the teacher has been present for only 10 days in a month.

On receipt of the application, the Block Education Officer along with an 11 member team visited our village. The teacher was absent on that day as well and had to be called from his residence. During the course of the questioning it was learnt that the not only had the teacher not been attending school but he had not been distributing the scholarship money to the children.

The Block Education Officer was extremely annoyed with the teacher and issued a warning: That the teacher was to distribute the pending scholarship money to the children in the month of March and must attend school every day.

Information regarding attendance of the teacher and amount of scholarship to be distributed was handed over in writing to us.

Since then the teacher has been attending school every day, classes are being held regularly and finally the children are all now learning something new every day.

On behalf of the members of the Thati Bal Panchayat I would like to take this opportunity to thank the MCF for not only making us aware of the RTI but also empowering us to use the RTI to our advantage.

Mahavir
Village Thati
Bilangana Dev. Area
Dist. Tehri Garwal
Uttrakhand
_______________________________________________________________________

We Solved a Problem Using the Right to Information Act.

With the support of the Mountain Children’s Foundation, I took part in a workshop on the Right to Information Act that was organized by the Horrawala Bal Panchayat. In this workshop, we learned a great deal of important information about the RTI. We learned what types of information we could request from the government and how we should write our RTI requests, and that each government department was required to have an information officer, to whom we could address our inquiries, and what that officer’s responsibilities were.

This workshop generated greater awareness about government works that were being carried out in our area and inspired us to use the RTI to address our community’s needs.

A few months ago, several huge cement pipes were delivered to my village. They were to be used to divert water from a canal along the road and move it underground. These cement pipes were placed haphazardly on both sides of the main road. This was causing a great deal of trouble for anyone using the road and greatly increased the risk of accidents and injuries.

I filed an RTI request about this problem at the irrigation department and asked when these pipes would be removed from the road. Within a few days of my request, the pipes were removed from the road. I am very pleased with my success and when I told my family about this, my mother and father didn’t believe me! They only believed me when a Junior Engineer from the irrigation department came looking for me at my house. He told my mother, “Your son wrote to my department asking about the pipes and it was only because of him that they were removed. I hope that now no one will be inconvenienced because of the pipes.” A few days later, I also received an official response to my original RTI request.

For me, this is a completely new experience. I used to think that government work could only be influenced by big people. If we ever had a problem with the government we could only get it addressed by going through a politician or government official. But this experience has shown me that with a little attentiveness and awareness, and the proper use of the government’s RTI law, we can solve many of our own problems.

Devrat Varma
Bal Panchayat Horrawala
Dehra Dun
_______________________________________________________________________

The Use of the Right to Information Act (RTI)

The children of our village bal panchayat participated in a workshop on the Right to Information Act sponsored by the Mountain Children’s Foundation and Asha SV. In this workshop, we discussed our village’s problems and how the RTI could be used to solve those problems.

For two months, the lights in our village were very dim due to the extremely low voltage electricity. The children of our village decided to ask the electricity department about this so we wrote an RTI request. Our application had a great impact on the officers in the electricity department and they immediately improved the voltage to our village. In this way, our village’s electricity problem was solved. And respect for our bal panchayat among the villagers greatly increased.

Our village also has a severe water problem. We have submitted an RTI request for this as well and are hoping to hear back soon. I want to ask all my PABAM colleagues to make better use of the RTI so that you can all be part of the development of your village.

Vimla Baseda, Class 12
Rani Laxmi Bai Bal Panchayat
Askote, Pithoragarh
(MCF partner ARPAN)
_______________________________________________________________________

Helping others through the RTI

Pranaam to our PABAM companions:
Mount Valley Development Association held a workshop on the Right To Information (RTI) in our village with the support of the Mountain Children’s Foundation. As part of this workshop, some members of our bal panchayat filed RTI inquiries with the relevant government organizations to address problems in our village. We also helped adults in the village, who could not read or write, file applications of their own. Here are two cases in which the RTI helped us find the truth and help members of our community.

Case Study I:
In our village, Ms. Sulochana Devi, wife of the late Buddhi Lal, is a widow living in poverty. We wanted to find out if she was entitled to a widow’s pension. Some people of the village had taken money from her and promised that they would file the papers for her widow’s pension, but none of these people actually sent her papers to the Social Welfare Department. We got to know this when we filed an RTI request asking “Why is Sulochana Devi not getting her widow’s pension?”

In just a few days, we received a written response saying that her papers had not reached the Social Welfare department. They also said that if we sent the papers to the office, they would release her pension as soon as possible. In addition, they gave us a list of the people in our village who are currently receiving a pension from the department.

We immediately sent her papers to the department and they have accepted her application.

Thanks to the Right to Information Act, we were able to learn the truth and found a solution to our problem.

Case Study II:
Mr. Sohan Lal also lives in our village. After his wife’s death, all the responsibility of caring for their two children has fallen on him. He has no cultivatable land and has been working as a day laborer to make ends meet. In December of 2008, he received an electricity bill of Rs. 5000/-. He has a BPL (Below Poverty Line) meter and appealed to the electricity board that he had not used so much electricity. But the workers at the electricity board refused to listen to him and threatened to cut off his electricity and take other punitive actions against him. Because of his current financial situation, Rs. 5000/- is an unmanageable amount of money and as a result he was extremely worried.

The members of our bal panchayat inspired Mr. Sohan Lal to file an RTI request. We helped him write the application as we had learned in our RTI workshop. In his application, Mr. Sohan Lal asked the electricity department why his bill was so outrageously high. Within a month, a Junior Engineer came from the electricity department and, along with some other people of the village, went to Mr. Sohan Lal’s house to check his meter. The meter was found to be faulty and the Rs. 5000/- charge was subsequently waived. Mr. Sohan Lal thanked our entire bal panchayat for helping him.

In this way, by getting training on the RTI Act, we were able to solve several problems in our village. We all thank the Mountain Children’s Foundation for their support.

With thanks,
The Members of Bal Panchayat Khal
(MCF partner – Mount Valley Development Society)
Tehri, Garhwal