Delivering his speech on Saturday at the Sixth Annual Convention of the Central Information Commission at Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi he said if even for a fraction of a minute the artery is blocked, the heart stops beating and the body becomes lifeless. RTI keeps the entire democratic system alive. It is the source of transparency and propriety in the functioning of the entire political and civil steps.

He asserted that the transparency negates corruption and strengthens good governance which in turn helps citizens evolve faith in the system, the government and themselves. Governance improves with heightened trust between the people and the Government.
In his opinion every decision and every act of the government should be open to public scrutiny. Thus, in a certain way, RTI makes the system more accountable.
He chose the occasion to explain measures taken by Bihar to improve governance through innovations and use of technology. Jaankari is a telephone based interactive system. It aims to provide information under RTI Act to general public quite easily. Jaankari is part of his government’s initiative to bring the government at the people’s doorstep. Instead of running from pillar to post one can just pick up his or her phone and call Jaankari facilitation centre, which in turn, notes down the question, even helps the caller to frame questions properly and forwards the same to the PIO concerned.
He informed that it is being monitored by his secretariat and the calls to Jaankari would soon cross one lakh mark.
The Bihar chief minister informed about the introduction of video conferencing system, another innovation for the benefit of information seekers in remote area. Instead of calling the information seekers to travel to the state capital, waste time and suffer wage loss to get replies from officials, they are called to district headquarters on the fixed date and they are linked through satellite and cases are heard by the State Information Commission.

He said that Bihar has for centuries preached and practiced the concepts of grassroots democracy, transparency in governance, peace and non- violence. It was in Bihar that during Lichchivis period, the world’s first Republic was established in Vaishali. This Vaishali Republic in sixth century BC had given the concept of good governance, transparency and free flow of information to the masses.
Bihar is the place where Gautam Buddha attained supreme Enlightenment and spread the message of Satya and Ahinsa (Truth and non-violence) to the world. It was here that Lord Mahavir and Guru Govind Singh were born. Much before the world could think of Right to Information good governance and transparency, Chankya wrote about these concepts in Arthshastra. It is the first political, administrative treatise that focuses on governance.
Nitish also cited the example of Mahatma Gandhi launching Satyagrah at Champaran in Bihar and Loknayak Jayaprakash Narayan launching Total Revolution movement that ultimately changed the political contour of the country. JP movement aimed to root out corruption and ensure good governance.

Nitish explained that Bihar has shown the way in fight against corruption by empowering the marginalized sections of society. He underlined that our commitment guided us to be the first state in the country to enable the bureaucracy and ministers along with the Chief Minister to declare their assets every year and put the same in public domain on internet. He said that to effectively check and deter corruption in public life the state has enacted the Bihar Special Courts Act that allows the government to confiscate ill-gotten properties of the corrupt public servants.

Nitish explained about Right to Public Services Act. Under the Act, Bihar government officials are bound to provide services to the public with in a set time frame, failing which they are liable to be fined.
There is provision for appellate and review authorities who will look into complaints of non-delivery of services and imposition of fine. It would also be treated as misconduct on the part of erring officials, inviting administrative and disciplinary action against them. Right to Service act is expected to cutdown red tape and harassment.
Nitish demanded a national law for Right to Services which would go a long way to bring about transparency in governmental functioning and thereby checking corruption and facilitating good governance.
He urged the Chief Information Commissioner of India to organize an all India Workshop on Right to Information in Patna with participation from all states and other countries as well. The latter accepted his request.
The two day conference was inaugurated by the Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh. Chief Information Commissioner, Satyanand Mishra, Bibek Debroy of Centre for Policy Research, Ms Aruna Roy etc were among those who took part in the meet.

Comment

comments...