Are one per cent of Indians using RTI?

BY HOOT| IN Special Reports | 29/10/2015
A decade of RTI, Part II---How many Indians are using their right to information? Studies suggest that the figure of users has yet to cross one per cent of the population in a given year, but there could be substantial under-reporting.
A HOOT analysis
RTIIndia.org
Millions of applications are now received each year

 

More than eight million Right to Information applications are being made now, 10 years after the law was introduced. That’s the figure that was given by Aruna Roy of the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan of  Rajasthan on the 10th anniversary of the RTI Act at an event in Delhi on October 14. Roy’s organization played a key role in the fight for this right. The figure led us to a quest to find out how many people are actually using the central or state RTI acts in a year.

Despite the infirmities in implementation, even the humblest citizens of India have woken up to the power that these laws confer on them. RTI activist Subhash Agarwal said on a recent NDTV programme that it has given more power to the citizen than to the parliamentarian. But power only comes with use so how many applications are made each year? And given that many file multiple applications, how many users do the figures represent?

A decade of use has not resulted in comprehensive updated statistics being available.  Both the Central Information Commission (CIC) to which the central government departments report and the State Information Commissions (SIC) generate usage figures but both are handicapped when the government departments and public authorities reporting to them do not send the numbers on applications received.

NGOs tracking the application of the RTI law have carried out sample surveys  from which estimates can be derived on numbers, and who the applicants are.

According to the CIC, the total number of application received per year are as follows:

Year

No of Applications

2009-10

626748

2010-2011

437744

2011-2012

705976

2012-2013

886681

2013-2014

962630

In other words in the last year for which figures are available, it was less than a million.

The Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) which tracks trends in the use of the RTI across India uses both CIC and SIC figures to arrive at estimates about the number of applications filed across India. A recent study by the CHRI which sampled 12 states was titled “The Use of Right to Information Laws in India: A Rapid Study , October 2013, New Delhi”.

Some of the main findings of this study give RTI application statistics from across the country and offer several interesting nuggets:

Extrapolating the total number

To return then to the question of the 8 million applications which Aruna Roy gave as an estimate, this figure has been extrapolated from this CHRI study. If in 10 sample states and the Central Government, over 2 million RTI applications were filed in 2011-12 and this sample covered less than half the states in India, it would not be an overestimate to put the national total at four million for 2011-12.

The figure of 2 million RTI applications was based on the figures reported by Information Commissions in their annual reports. The figure of 8 million RTI applications was over 2 years. 

However, there is also the question of under reporting to be accounted for. Former Central Information Commissioner (CIC) Shailesh Gandhi  in comments made for this article estimates under-reporting to the extent of 40% based on two factors:

1. I had seen that in the CIC various significant public authorities like the Municipal Corporation of Delhi did not send a report of the number of RTI applications. Hence my guess is that there is at least a underreporting, which would raise the figure of RTI applications from 2.5 million to about 3.5 million.

2. I had done some estimate of the population of the states who had reported. The population represented by the reporting states (in the CHRI study) was less than 50% of the population of India. Hence my estimate of applications being nearly double. Based on this, I guessed that the total RTI applications was likely to be about 6 to 8 million. However, many of the regular RTI users are likely to make multiple applications in a year. There are, of course, a very large number who may file only one RTI application. Hence I feel we could assume the average RTI applications per user to be about 3. This would lead to a conclusion of about 2 to 3 million users.” 

Gandhi adds that it would be fair to say that over the decade the total applications are likely to have been over 20 million which may have been made by about 0.6 to 0.7 million separate citizens. “I agree these are guesstimates, but given our extremely poor ways of data collection and collation, we cannot get greater accuracy. The most important change is in citizen empowerment, and I had the opportunity to witness this closely for nearly four years,” he said

 

Who is using the Act?

What does the data from the studies say about who the applicants are? The CHRI study gives some clues:

 

More details about the users

The Centre for Equity Studies headed by Harsh Mander has done the major study available on who uses the Act. The RAAG RTI study (RTI Assessment and Advocacy Group of the Samya-Centre for Equity Studies) is available here.  

 

Urban-rural divide

Their data shows that more than half the urban applicants and all of the rural applicants were from among those living below the poverty line (BPL). In fact, 2% of the urban and 90% of the rural applicants belonged to this category.

Only 14% of the applicants were from rural areas, even though over 70% of India’s population lives in rural areas. Though the sample might have a bias in favour of urban areas, even after adjusting for such a bias, the proportion is too small. Awareness levels about the RTI also seem low in rural areas.

Also, copies of RTI applications were accessed from sample public authorities in the sample districts and state headquarters (see Chapter 2 on methodology, for list), and a sample of 987 RTI applications were analysed - about 200 from each of the three states, the union territory of Delhi, and the Central Government. Based on the addresses of the applicants, a determination was made of whether they lived in rural areas or in towns, cities, or metropolises.

 

Rural users of the Act

Please see the report for more details on methodology, but these are the operative paras:

The rural research teams sought out and interviewed, in each of the 24 randomly selected villages, all the individuals who had filed an RTI application in 2011-13 and could be identified and located. A total of 12 RTI applicants from these villages were interviewed, giving a density of 0.5 applicants per village. By extrapolation, given that there are about 600,000 villages in India, there would be an estimated 300,000 RTI applicants from the villages of India over the two years, or 150,000 rural applicants per year.

However, it must be remembered that the 12 applicants interviewed were the minimum number, for there must have been others that the rural research teams could not identify or contact. A much higher proportion was suggested by another estimate, based on an analysis of the addresses of 987 RTI applicants who filed RTI applications during 2011-13. This analysis showed 14% of the applicants lived in rural areas and the remaining 86% lived in urban areas (for details see Table 5.1 below).

Using the earlier mentioned Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) estimate and our resultant extrapolation that 4 million RTI applications were filed in 2011-12, the figure comes to about 560,000 rural RTI applications filed per annum.

 

Poor awareness of the RTI Act, particularly in rural areas

 There is poor awareness about the RTI Act, worse in rural areas than in urban areas. In 64% of the rural focus group discussions and 62% of urban focus group discussions, no participant had heard of the RTI Act. However, in the state headquarters and in Delhi, 61% of the respondents interviewed through street corner interviews said that they had heard of it.

 

Women play little or no role  

The participation of women in the RTI process, especially as applicants, has been minimal, with a national average of 8%, and two states - Assam and Rajasthan - recording 4%. Bihar recorded an abysmal 1%, though with a truncated sample. Many reasons can be attributed for this gender imbalance but there is no scientific understanding of why so few women file applications. If RTI is a means of empowerment, then there should be a special focus on ensuring that women are aware of the RTI Act and willing and able to use it.

 

The departments which receive the most applications?

The highlights of the  CHRI study contradict conventional wisdom which presumes that ministries and departments that have the largest clientele will receive the greatest number of RTI applications. The  departments responsible for land records, education and health, which have the largest clientele and more frequent direct dealings with the public, have not always figured amongst the top three of the list of ministries/departments receiving the most RTI applications in all the states included in the CHRI study. The main findings: