For Ramesh Phongde, who worked for the government for forty years, the RTI came as a blessing.

After retirement when his first pension cheque arrived he was puzzled to see that the total amount on the cheque was less that the amount due.


"I have been working with the Pune Municipal Corporation for the last 27 years. When I retired they sanctioned a pension of Rs 5000 when I should have got Rs 7000," he said.

Ramesh Phongde then made several attempts to figure out why such an error occurred. He wrote numerous letters from the Pune Municipal Corporation to the Government of India, however he was unable to get any response.

"For four years I fought for my rights. In the last four years I have filed 16 applications and have visited the pension court five times, but I never got any positive response," he said.

He also tried to get his pension papers released from the Corporation but access to those papers was restricted until a bribe was paid.

Throughout his career as a government officer, Ramesh Phongde had never demanded nor paid bribe and he was certainly not going to pay one now.

Frustrated with the manner in which his own department was dealing with his request, Ramesh Phongde soon realised that he will eventually have to make do with Rs 5000.

Just when he was going to give into the systems inefficiencies he learnt about the Right to Information Act.

Phongde decided to make one last attempt and made use of the RTI Act to access all the papers related to his pension from the PMC.

He also asked for the status of his grievance applications made to the PMC in relation to his pension.

In three months Phongde's papers were revaluated and his pension was upgraded to Rs 8000 per month. He also received a cheque of Rs 1,78,000 as payment due to him for the last four years.

"I do not believe in giving bribes. I knew my case was strong and I had all my paper work in place. I got all my pending money with the help of RTI. More than anything, my experience sets an example for others, I think I set a good example," he added.

For four years, Ramesh Phongde could not get officials to act on his grievance, but as soon as he fixed the responsibility on each one of them in his RTI application, the same officers had no choice but to act.

In April 2006 I had gone to Bangalore city railway station to drop my daughter. The contractor charged me Rs ten instead of Rs 5 for parking my car. I had estimated that the contractor was making about Rs 5,000 extra a day or Rs 1, 50,000 a month on around 1,000 cars parked everyday.
I filed a complaint with the Senior Divisional Commercial Manager, South Western Railway and waited for some time. I followed it up with phone calls but there was no response.

Finally, I filed an RTI application and asked the following questions:

1. Who is the officer in charge of taking action in such complaints?
2. Has an enquiry been conducted in the matter? If yes, please provide copy of enquiry report.
3. What action, if any, has been taken against the parking contractor? If action has been taken, then please provide copy of action letter.
4. If action has not been taken, then likely date by which enquiry will be started.
5. Please provide copy of agreement awarding parking contract.

Within 30 days, I received a letter informing me that the parking contract has been terminated and the official rates have been displayed prominently.

I also received another letter asking me to pay money and collect the information.

         RTI definitely works.
                                                                                                     CN Kumar, Bangalore

(Taken from ‘Express Initiatives’ of ‘The Indian Express’, July 5, 2006.)