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HINDI REVIEW New-Age Brahmastra Ashok Malik Soochnadhikar : Naya Loktantra, Nayi Patrakarita Arvind Kejriwal and Vishnu Rajgadia, Lohia Granthalya, Ranchi. Pages 112. Rs 225. (HB) Rs 65.00 (PB) 
Corruption is so widespread in India that it is practically impossible to get your passport, driving licence or ration card without paying a bribe. If you refuse to pay a bribe for getting a new electricity connection, replacing a faulty meter or rectification of a wrong bill, endless objections will ensure that you keep making the rounds of offices. The Right to Information law has potential to change all this by making the government set-up accountable to the citizen. Use this Brahmastra and you won’t need to pay bribes to get your legitimate work done. Exercise your right to know the status of your application or petition, demand the names of officials sitting on your file and see the magic happen. But that may take time, patience and preservation. The common man is yet to wake up to the potential of RTI, he is yet to get used to asserting his rights. Bureaucracy and the political establishment are used to the shield of official secrecy. ‘The system’ they represent is not prepared to give up the habit and become transparent overnight. Proposals to amend the RTI law suggest that ‘the system’ is trying to take back some rights given in the law. However, experts are sure that use of this law will enable the system to become more transparent andn accountable in the near future. Arvind Kejriwal of NGO Parivartan (recently selected for the Magsaysay Award) and Vishnu Rajgadia of Ranchi-based Prabhat Khabar have both used this law. They recount how over 200 people got their grievances redressed using RTI; how grievances lying in limbo for years or months for extorting bribes were addressed in a matter of days. The experience of Prabhat Khabar, which used RTI as a tool for getting ‘impossible’ information for newspaper stories, suggests that the RTI is a new powerful tool for the hacks. It is already making waves in the media world. Many newspapers and news channels have started using the RTI effectively. The book recounts experiences by both –public and media—in some detail. Kejriwal is an alumnus of IIT; he worked for Tata Steel, Missionaries of Charity and the Indian Revenue Service, which he left some years back to work in the field of RTI. Rajgadia is a former journalist currently with Prabhat Khabar Institute of Journalism at Ranchi. The book is a well-meaning attempt to tell the common man and the media person how to use the RTI act. The subtitle of the book Naya Loktantra, Nayi Patrkarita rightly says that the RTI is redefining relationships between people and governments. Equipped with right to demand and get information, any "Tom, Dick or Harry" can literally make the neta, saheb or babu stand in the box and sweat under his collar. That he cannot be put off easily is demonstrated by examples in the book and in newspaper columns from time to time. The full text of the RTI Act in Hindi, draft application forms for various day-to-day situations where right to know may be exercised, names of authorities under the RTI act in Jharkhand state, fees applicable under the act and list of Central and State Information Commissioners make it very useful for readers and potential users of RTI act, even journalists who are trained to ferreting out information.
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