As part of our advocacy on the right to information, CHRI conducts workshops, consultations and seminars for better implementation of the RTI Act across India. Our workshops have served to raise awareness about the importance of the right as well as the manner in which it can be used strategically for the protection of human rights, ensuring that the disadvantaged segments of society claim their rightful entitlements and hold public authorities and public servants accountable for their actions. CHRI has conducted training programs and workshops at the national level and in many States across India. Please contact us if you are interested in finding out about how you can organise an RTI workshop in your own State.

 ‘PROACTIVE DISCLOSURE: A CASE STUDY’

In the dusty reaches of the Gujarat in Western India lies the Municipality of Kalol, a sub-district of Panchmahals with a population of just over a 100,000. Malav is a tiny village in Kalol, rarely making news even at the State level. Yet, the village became the object of media attention when its Panchayat became a model example of compliance with India’s Right to Information Act. In the Malav Panchayat, information about their administration, finances and activities are displayed innovatively as wall paintings in the local language, to be viewed by anyone. The colourful writing livens up the otherwise plain, whitewashed building, now plastered in posters, notices and wall paintings. Up to even a few months ago, anyone who wanted information about the Panchayat would be obliged to file a lengthy RTI application, whose results would only be revealed a full month later. Instead, active members of society who believed they had the right to know what their local administration was doing are able to merely come into the Panchayat building and find the information they require displayed. Buriben discovered that she was entitled to benefits under the housing assistance scheme which helped her build a sturdy roof over her family’s heads. She had thought that only people above the poverty line could avail those benefits and missed out on them for years. In 2008, Nagarik Adhikar Kendra (NAK), a local NGO, worked with CHRI to assess compliance by selected public authorities with the RTI Act. NAK previously received training as paralegals from CHRI, and implemented this while working towards deepening transparency and accountability at the district level in Gujarat. Over time, they developed templates and guidance material to proactively disclose information at the Panchayat level.

With so much information now readily available, many citizens began participating in the Panchayat’s decision-making processes. With the awareness campaign around this project, the initiative spread to 15 other Panchayats in the same district. Later in adjoining Dahod, the district administration ordered replication of this model in 200 other Panchayats. Through sensitisation and training workshops, officials in the area have been made aware of the advantages of proactive disclosure and the importance of RTI, to create model democratic institutions. To make this initiative accessible to a wider Indian and international audience, the scheme has been captured in a documentary in Hindi and Gujarati, and is being contextualised for a wider audience and translation into English.

This proactive disclosure model may have a wider influence to develop guidelines for Central and state governance. These grassroots initiatives have found their way to policy-level recommendations, which will be circulated to all state governments seeking compliance with the RTI Act. Civil society organisations too have taken an interest in the project, and have visited and studied the Malav Panchayat in order to replicate and then broaden the reach of the initiative. This experience fed into the development of guidelines for improving proactive disclosure of information at the national level. In 2013-14 CHRI took this expertise to Bangladesh. The Access to Information programme housed in the Office of the Prime Minister has worked out an indigenous set of guidelines for improving automatic information availability through Internet websites and other means for their public authorities.