Opening Files, Indians Find Scams

Freedom of Information Laws Slowly Change a Culture of Secrecy
By Rama Lakshmi

Special to The Washington Post

Tuesday, March 9, 2004; Page A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41489-2004Mar8.html?referrer=
email
KELWARA, India -- Lal Singh Rawat, a thin, turbaned quarry worker, came to
the meeting clutching a yellow ration card. The card, given out by the
government to those living in absolute poverty, entitled him to buy
low-priced wheat every month under India's food security program. But for
the past six months, the government ration distributor had repeatedly turned
Rawat away, forcing him to buy wheat elsewhere, at a price he could not
afford.
A man called Rawat's name. "Did you buy 77 pounds of wheat every month from
your local ration shop?" he asked.
"I did not," Rawat answered.
"But the register says you have been buying wheat every month," the man
said, pointing to a copy of the government food register, which he had
obtained under a state law that grants citizens access to government files.
"How can the records say that? The ration shopkeeper in my village said
there was no wheat supply from the government for the last six months,"
Rawat said, as the crowd of about 600 villagers shouted, "No wheat, no
wheat!"
As ration shopkeepers tried in vain to disrupt the public hearing convened
by the Workers and Peasants Empowerment Organization, a grass-roots advocacy
group, the names of 30 more impoverished villagers who had been cheated out
of their wheat entitlements were read out.
The shopkeepers in Kelwara -- a village in the state of Rajasthan, about 250
miles southwest of the capital, New Delhi -- routinely abused the government
program by making fraudulent entries in the official registers and selling
the poor people's wheat at a higher price on the open market. Not long ago,
the scam probably would have gone unnoticed, because most Indians would not
have been allowed to see the government food register. But since Rajasthan
adopted a state law three years ago guaranteeing the right to information,
villagers have opened previously inaccessible government files on food
supply, health programs and development projects, exposing fraud and
forgery.
British colonial rulers left India a massive bureaucracy with a culture of
secrecy, and throughout more than half a century of democracy, governments
tended to remain opaque, dodging accountability and fostering corruption.
Even requests for official information on such innocuous matters as the
stock of free medicines for malaria and snakebites or the amounts spent on
sewer lines and schools were met with official hostility.
In response to a grass-roots movement born in Rajasthan, India has begun
loosening its hold on information. Nine states have passed freedom of
information laws in the past six years. A national law has cleared
Parliament and awaits the president's signature.
"People's right to information will make governments transparent and
accountable. It puts the officials under people's watch," said Aruna Roy,
head of Workers and Peasants Empowerment Organization, which spearheaded the
campaign.
India is still a long way from eradicating the problem of access. Despite
the laws, official reluctance to open files still runs deep. The Delhi state
government has 2,000 pending requests for information.
A New Delhi-based civic action group, Parivartan, applied for information on
what the 70 elected members of the Delhi state legislature had spent from
the development budget during their term. The group was sent from one office
to another for more than six months, even though the law says the wait
should not exceed a month. Activists say the laws are deliberately vague
about penalties for officials who hold up access to files.
Here in Rajasthan, it still takes months for people to gain access to
official files. But the delays have not deterred them.
Three years ago, farmers in the village of Janawad made headlines when they
dismantled an elaborate network of corruption after a year-long struggle to
obtain government files. Lachchi Ram Meghwal and a friend stopped at the
village council office one day and were shocked to read, painted on the
wall, proclamations listing various projects that supposedly had been
implemented.
"It was a wall of lies," recalled Meghwal, 70. "It said money had been spent
on building a village road, a well, a cattle shed and a water tank. When I
went to check these claims, I saw no road, no water tank, no cattle shed and
no well. They merely existed on paper. Where did the money go?"
Meghwal informed other villagers, and the group marched to the village
council chief demanding to see the accounts. "But the chief threw us out and
said, 'Go away, I have swallowed the money and you cannot do anything
because I will not show you the files,' " Meghwal said.
For eight months, the villagers knocked on every official door in their
district requesting to see the files on money spent in Janawad. "Every
officer kept turning us away. We had a right to see the files," said
Meghwal, "but nobody took us seriously."
Finally, the villagers contacted the Workers and Peasants Empowerment
Organization, which used its clout to pull the files and hold a public
hearing in Janawad in April 2002. Fraud amounting to more than $100,000 was
exposed; the village council chief and a group of officials had manipulated
government rolls, bills, vouchers and monitoring books to show that the
projects in dispute had been implemented. After an inquiry, the state
government charged 26 officials with corruption. Their cases are pending in
the courts.
"People have woken up to their rights after Janawad's example," said Parag
Choudhury, a government official for rural development in Rajasthan. "They
are no longer willing to accept corruption. They now want detailed
information on everything."
He added that after the Janawad scam came to light, it has become mandatory
to submit photographic evidence of project work when it is completed.
However, Meghwal asserted that the new village council in Janawad was not
squeaky-clean either. "Earlier, the entire money was swallowed by the
corrupt. Now at least one-fourth of the money is spent on genuine work," he
said. "Even this is a big victory for us."

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