I started off my day as usual with the morning cup of coffee, a cigarette and the news paper. Online news sites being are now my primary source of information. Hence I start off with the local and city section of the news paper. The Bombay Times and After Hrs section go straight to the bin, in mere seconds.
I was shocked to see how the people deliver justice to the weaker sections of society but keep quite when put against some one on their level. In this case it was two 12 year old children.
Bangalore: Intel India Develoment center (IIDC)along with Intel Oregon co-developed the 80-core teraflop chip. The IIDC handled more that 50 percent of the chip development.
The chip has a powerful programmable processor that can undertake trillions pf calculations per second, consuming only 62 watts of power.
Where was I when this happened! This was something great that took place, and I was busy programming and too busy partying to bother with things happening in the Indian Blogging World.
You may have seen full page ads of a guy in a glasses sporting a ponytail, and a big heading which generally goes as "Management Guru", or author of the management book "Counting your chickens before they are hatched" which apparently landed in the Humor section of FabMart. For some reason when ever I passed by a magazine running this advertisement, I just wanted to tear it up, or light it on fire.
Some where in October 2005, a blogger named Gaurav Sabnis posted a blog pointing to a article on a local newspaper targeting college and high school students, about how a management university IIPM is nothing they claim they are. Generally you find them advertising things like "Top 5 b-schools" in India, and other things like WiFi Towers and Free Laptops.
*Have people been victimized who used RTI and exposed corruption?*
Yes, there have been some instances where people were physically harmed when they sought information which exposed large scale corruption. But this does not mean that ever applicant faces such a threat. Filing application to seek status of your grievance or for knowing other similar routine matters does not invite any retaliation. It is only when information is likely to expose bureaucratic-contractor nexus or any kind of mafia that there could be a possibility of retaliation.
*Then why should I use RTI?*
The entire system has become so rotten that if all of us individually and together do not do our bit, it will never improve. If we don't do it, who will? Therefore, we have to act. But we should do that with a strategy and minimize risks. And with experience, there are some safeguards and strategies available.
*What are these strategies?*
Please go ahead and file RTI application for any issue in the first instance. Normally, anyone would not attack you immediately. They would first try to cajole you or win you over. So, the moment you file any inconvenient application, someone would approach you very politely to request you to withdraw that application. You should gauge the seriousness or the potential of the person approaching you. If you consider it to be serious enough, ask 15 of your friends to immediately apply to the same public authority asking for same information. It would be better if these 15 friends were from different part of India. Now, it would be most difficult for anyone to target all of your 15 friends all across the country. And if they threaten anyone from amongst the 15, let more people file similar applications. Your friends from other parts of India can file their applications by post. Try and give it wide media publicity. This will ensure that you will get the requisite information, and you would have sufficiently minimized risks.
Have you ever wondered how the Maximum Retail Price of a product decided in India? Is it decided by the companies manufacturing it? Is it by the government? Do the retail outlets and wholesalers have a say in it?
The answer is yes. The price for a product is decided by all of them.
When a product is launched, wholesalers, retailers, manufactures and governments have a say in the price. So every time you buy a bottle of Cola, and you end up paying a buck extra for it; you are doing something wrong.
India is currently trying to implement a maximum allowable profit on the maximum retai
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