Case studies related to probity in governance

There are numerous incidences of building collapse reported across the country on regular basis killing innocent labourers and people living in them. Poor and shoddy construction along with non-compliance of regulations has done immense damage to the life of people.

The reasons that could be attributed to such incidence on regular basis are discussed in following points –

• The ease with which rule and regulations are bypassed by the builders remains the main concern. The National Building Code that provides guidelines for regulating building construction activities, are not adhered by builders.
• Apathy towards laws make illegal construction a trend that continues to take life of innocent citizens.
• Moreover, the standards prescribed for construction are at best poorly defined that people either do not understand or are not aware of.
• Poor designs of buildings that could not withstand extra floors are also no less to be blamed. Poor quality materials used in construction makes any expansion a tough proposition.
• At the root of such incidence is unplanned urbanisation that forces one to opt for accommodation that is built illegally on face of limited choices that people get in ever expanding urban areas.
• Somewhere government has also failed in providing affordable accommodation to citizens hence they go for illegal properties.
• Above all the builders’ moral attributes are to be blamed in totality that finds it alright to compromise people’s life in return for monetary gains.

Measures to prevent such occurrences–

• First and foremost, rules and regulations need to be defined in clear terms and enforced effectively. Standards defined in National Building Code need to be effectively adhered to.
• Those who break laws should be given stringent punishment to deter others from breaking such laws.
• Citizens should be made more aware about laws and rules regarding construction activities, so that they avoid purchasing any such illegally constructed property/building.
• Crèche facilities and proper welfare mechanism should be put in place for children of women labourer working at construction sites.
• Planned urbanisation will go a long way in addressing this concern. Satellite towns need to be built to ease the pressure on main cities.

Over the year the RTI act has emerged as a milestone in assuring transparency in administration and governance. It has provided a tool in hands of citizens to bring the best out of the government but in many cases the act has also served as a way to harass government officials and extort money.

To deal with such situations following measures are available –

• Those filing RTI applications may be asked to mention about any connection/interest they have in the concerned department. Applicants might be given options to specify whether information asked serves public purpose or private interest.

• Merit: It might help to identify the persons who indulge in misuse of RTI and other wrong doing.
• Demerit: It makes the process a little cumbersome for the genuine applicants.

• All the previous applications under the RTI could be scrutinized to bring out the trends in asking questions so that genuine applications can be segregated from the non-genuine ones. Habitual offenders can be closely monitored.

• Merit: It will help in creating a robust database of almost all applicants for the future reference of the department and also identify the miscreants.
• Demerit: It will create extra burden on the employees of the department as they might have to take help of other departments and law and order agencies.

• Few changes regarding charges and fees associated with providing information can be made in the law. There should be no changes in the fee for initial filing of the applications. But if they are found to be false or serving the vested interests of someone in later investigations, then a suitable monetary fine may be imposed.

• Merit: It will act as a check on insincere and unscrupulous applicants and hit others economically for wrong doing.
• Demerit: It will create a divide and discrimination between rich and poor people. Economically well off and non genuine applicants will not hesitate to file applications while the poor will be discouraged to do so. 

The above steps will help in segregating genuine applications from the non genuine ones and will help take the effective actions accordingly. However in the given question, there are RTI activists who are attempting to extort money from the decision makers. It indicates the systemic flaws in the government department itself. Besides it points to the fact that decision makers want to hide the information as it might expose the wrongdoings in the governance. Therefore the governance itself should be reformed and transparency and accountability should never be forsaken. The genuine applicants must be provided with the requisite information. Better option would be to play a pro-active role and put most of the information that are not exempted under the act in the public domain for easy accessibility by public.