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Infocracy India

20 June 2011

Rights through InformationAs the government has constituted a new taskforce to enforce implementation of access to the Right to Information, research by Infocracy India suggests that most law schools are not complying with the law.

02 April 2011

You can sign the petition here http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/rti-in-schools/

 

It reads:

 

School children in India should be taught on how to draft an RTI (Right to Information) application as a part of their school curricullum.


Just as students learn 'letter writing'  in English, Hindi or other language courses, they should learn 'writing RTI Applications'. Not only the students, but teachers as well as parents will thus become aware of this tool.


Policy makers of our leading education boards viz. CBSE, ICSE and other State Boards should include this as a part of Class 10 syllabus.


General information about the RTI Act is already there in the Civics course which the school students are taught. This petition wants that the language courses viz. English, Hindi and other vernacular languages should have a chapter on 'drafting RTI applications'.

 

Very little is achieved when a student get to know just that a Right to Information Act exists through a small description in the civics course. When he/she actually writes to an RTI application in class and for his exams, we believe, he/she is doubly empowered and enabled to use the tool to fight corruption.

 

While the civics course tells the student that a tool called the RTI Act exsits; the RTI application writing helps him/her actually learn to use the tool.


If you want every literate Indian to be able to fight corruption, please do sign this petition. The future participants in our democracy will thus be able to fight corruption with information!

 

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See our website at www.infocracyindia.org


31 March 2011

Infocracy India, an initiative to increase RTI activism amongst Indian law students, is launching a project to make RTI drafting an obligatory part of the Class 10 school syllabus and to investigate whether minimum wage is paid to campus labourers.

24 March 2011

Infocracy India, legal aid societies

 

The legal aid societies whom we’ve contacted have asked us a few questions. Very pertinent and straight-forward too. Here are the questions and our answers. For more details please see www.infocracyindia.org


What do the legal aid societies get? 

 

 

A chance to make an impact? Yes.

The law school legal aid societies, we believe, have been formed to achieve two objectives:

  1. Take legal aid to the downtrodden.
  2. To teach law students the skills and help them imbibe the values which make a good pro bono lawyer.

Infocracy India helps legal aid societies achieve these objectives.

The RTI applications we file will have a significant societal impact.

Moreover, not only will the law students involved learn the art of filing good RTI applications but they’ll also know for themselves, how information when available freely, is a powerful catalyst to make democratic changes.

 

Money? No.

Secondly, we don’t promise much money, but in case we receive funding from members of the legal industry, we will distribute the funds to our LAS partners.

Also, we don’t believe that money is an incentive in initiatives like Infocracy India. None of the founders are making any money, nor do we plan to.

We are passionate about this cause and would like to partner with passionate groups and individuals.

 

Recognition? Yes.

Thirdly, in case you do genuinely good work, LegallyIndia, Lawctopus and other media, both print and online, will surely cover our work.

You’ll be thus recognised for your efforts.

 

 

Why shouldn’t we do it alone/independently?

 

Work independently, but share.

Infocracy India is a collaborative effort and it in no way discourages or hinders independent activity.

All that we require you to do is tell us about the RTI applications you’ve filed, the results which you’ve got and the impact that has made.

The RTI application, the response of the public information officer will be shared on our website for free upload. This will allow anyone to replicate these RTI applications in their own areas.

 

Consider this:

Someone from NUALS Kochi files an RTI application relating to an issue ‘X’ and someone from say, ICFAI Dehradun believes that his/her region too needs the issue ‘X’ to be addressed.

The person from ICFAI can then download the NUALS’ RTI application, see what information it yielded and even talk to the NUALS person to see if a better worded RTI application can be filed. Thus the RTI application gets filed more quickly and will yield better results.

Legal Aid Societies are free to file independent RTI applications. As a part of Infocracy India we only require you to ‘share’ the application, the results and the impact with us.

 

Pan India projects require a pan India collaboration.

Secondly, Infocracy might sometimes take large, pan-India projects; like getting the details of how the MPLADs funds are being used. We’ll get our team of 10-15 student researchers to work for sure.

At the same time, we’ll surely require support from the LASs. Herein lies the power of collaboration.

 

Finally consider this:

If someone in NUJS Kolkata files an RTI application against a public authority in Bangalore, we might have someone in NLSIU Bangalore go and inspect the documents. It saves the person in Kolkata time and money and makes the whole process efficient.

 

 

What will the work of a Legal Aid Society team exactly be?

Infocracy India is a very young initiative and some of our ideas are presently being executed. It is thus difficult to define the nature of tasks. We plan to be flexible and evolve as we move ahead. However, here are a few things which LASs are expected to do.

 

Share. Share the RTI applications you file, the responses which you get and track the impact it makes. We’ll put the applications and the responses on our website.

The stories of societal impact will be shared with media, both print and online. Rest assured, we won’t take the credit of your efforts. We are not in this business!

Sharing RTI applications and the results are the only mandatory things we want you to do. Other things may include:

 

Joining us to implement a pan India project. Most of the types we’ll have our team of student researchers/activists doing the work.

Sometimes, we might require the help of legal aid societies. In cases you want to help, just let us know about it.

 

Include information on RTI as a part of your legal literacy camps. You can put videos, pictures, presentations and modules on our website.

This will help other LASs better their legal literacy camps. We’d also be covering these camps from time to time on our website.

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The question really is...

 

 

OR

 

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Images from here, here, here and here.

17 March 2011

Fourth monkey is the monkey of the 21st century. The poor animal can't help but see evil all around. The poor animal can't help but hear evil all around. And what does he/she do? He raises his voice against it.

14 March 2011

image A man walks along a beach, picks up a starfish and flings it into the ocean. He does it with all the starfish he finds. Someone asks him: “Hey! There are thousands of starfish here. What difference are you making?” The man bends down, picks up another starfish and flings it into the ocean. “It makes difference to this one.”