RTI plea reveals, small village in Jamnagar district suggests huge toilet scam in Gujarat

Pankti Jog

A huge scam is suspected to be taking shape in Gujarat -- the scam to build toilets on paper. The first signs of the scam were visible in a small village in Jamnagar district, Nandana, situated in Kalyanapur taluka. "Things would have never come to light had a casual worker not filed a right to information (RTI) application in order to find out how many persons of the village had applied for grants to build individual toilets in their houses and how many of them were approved by the District Rural Development Agency (DRDA) under Government of India's total sanitation programme", said senior activist Pankti Jog of the Mahiti Adhikar Gujarat Pahel (MAGP), a state-based RTI NGO.

The casual worker, Rughabha, recently did receive the list of names who had been granted money, but the road to get the information was not easy. His decision to gather information on the persons who had applied for grant to build under toilets was followed by allurements to take back the application and threats. He had earlier applied for constructing a toilet in his house a year ago, but he failed to get positive response. This prompted him to re-apply this year, and he was told by the taluka development officer (TDO) that as he had already "received" the grant his application was rejected.

Significantly, Rughaba was not alone whose application was rejected. There were as many as 15 other applicants who had reapplied and their applications were rejected citing the same reason. This prompted Rughaba to take the leadership and file an RTI application before the TDO to give the list of beneficiaries of the total sanitation programme. Instead of the list, the local sarpanch threatened Rughaba, asking him why did he want the list. This made Rughaba to file a voice complaint on the MAGP's RTI helpline No, 9924085000, and lodged a complaint at the local police station. However, he was advised to move to safer place to ensure safety, as the sarpanch was "very close relative of political leader".

Shailesh Gandhi

Meanwhile, Rughaba's voice complaint was immediately taken note of, and a documentation of the case was prepared and sent to the Gujarat Information Commission (GIC), the District Superintendent of Police, the DRDA director, among others, with two specific demands -- immediate disclosure of information of the list of beneficiaries who got support for making toilets; and ensure protection of the citizen. The document was also circulated to a few RTI activists.

Jog said, "In this small village there are hundreds of names who have been listed as beneficiaries, but have never availed support. Rughaba is one of them, but he dared file a complaint about it to the TDO after seeking the list under RTI. After the intervention of the RTI helpline and the GIC, the sarpanch was arrested. This prompted the president of the block panchayat and the politician-relative, Pabubha Manek, a BJP MLA, to give phone up DSP, giving oral instructions to release him."

However, it was a call from former Central information commissioner Shailesh Gandhi to the DRDA director which worked. The DRDA director was forced ask the TDO to release the information of the list of beneficiaries. "A scrutiny of the has revealed that as many 300 persons have been listed as beneficiaries but they have never received any benefit from the government to build toilets. If this is true of a small village, we fear, a similar scam is taking shape in other villages, too", Jog suspected.

The sarpanch was released on bail two days later. Jog said, "The villagers phoned us up to say that the RTI helpline indeed worked wonders. It has helped expose the sarpanch, who is close relative of the political leader. Thanks to timely intervention by Gandhi, the powerful political rulers stood exposed." Now, RTI activists have demanded to paste the list of beneficiaries on the panchayat notice board for all to see. "The DRDA director has agreed to do it orally, though he hasn't so far", alleged Jog, adding, "The list should have been made known under the RTI's proactive disclosure rules much earlier."

Comments

Ahmedabad's civic chaos: Drainage woes, waterlogging, and the illusion of Olympic dreams

In response to my blog on overflowing gutter lines at several spots in Ahmedabad's Vejalpur, a heavily populated area, a close acquaintance informed me that it's not just the middle-class housing societies that are affected by the nuisance. Preeti Das, who lives in a posh locality in what is fashionably called the SoBo area, tells me, "Things are worse in our society, Applewood."

RP Gupta a scapegoat to help Govt of India manage fallout of Adani case in US court?

RP Gupta, a retired 1987-batch IAS officer from the Gujarat cadre, has found himself at the center of a growing controversy. During my tenure as the Times of India correspondent in Gandhinagar (1997–2012), I often interacted with him. He struck me as a straightforward officer, though I never quite understood why he was never appointed to what are supposed to be top-tier departments like industries, energy and petrochemicals, finance, or revenue.

PharmEasy: The only online medical store which revises prices upwards after confirming the order

For senior citizens — especially those without a family support system — ordering medicines online can be a great relief. Shruti and I have been doing this for the last couple of years, and with considerable success. We upload a prescription, receive a verification call from a doctor, and within two or three days, the medicines are delivered to our doorstep.

Powering pollution, heating homes: Why are Delhi residents opposing incineration-based waste management

While going through the 50-odd-page report Burning Waste, Warming Cities? Waste-to-Energy (WTE) Incineration and Urban Heat in Delhi , authored by Chythenyen Devika Kulasekaran of the well-known advocacy group Centre for Financial Accountability, I came across a reference to Sukhdev Vihar — a place where I lived for almost a decade before moving to Moscow in 1986 as the foreign correspondent of the daily Patriot and weekly Link .

Environmental report raises alarm: Sabarmati one of four rivers with nonylphenol contamination

A new report by Toxics Link , an Indian environmental research and advocacy organisation based in New Delhi, in collaboration with the Environmental Defense Fund , a global non-profit headquartered in New York, has raised the alarm that Sabarmati is one of five rivers across India found to contain unacceptable levels of nonylphenol (NP), a chemical linked to "exposure to carcinogenic outcomes, including prostate cancer in men and breast cancer in women."

Dalit rights and political tensions: Why is Mevani at odds with Congress leadership?

While I have known Jignesh Mevani, one of the dozen-odd Congress MLAs from Gujarat, ever since my Gandhinagar days—when he was a young activist aligned with well-known human rights lawyer Mukul Sinha’s organisation, Jan Sangharsh Manch—he became famous following the July 2016 Una Dalit atrocity, in which seven members of a family were brutally assaulted by self-proclaimed cow vigilantes while skinning a dead cow, a traditional occupation among Dalits.

Tracking a lost link: Soviet-era legacy of Gujarati translator Atul Sawani

The other day, I received a message from a well-known activist, Raju Dipti, who runs an NGO called Jeevan Teerth in Koba village, near Gujarat’s capital, Gandhinagar. He was seeking the contact information of Atul Sawani, a translator of Russian books—mainly political and economic—into Gujarati for Progress Publishers during the Soviet era. He wanted to collect and hand over scanned soft copies, or if possible, hard copies, of Soviet books translated into Gujarati to Arvind Gupta, who currently lives in Pune and is undertaking the herculean task of collecting and making public soft copies of Soviet books that are no longer available in the market, both in English and Indian languages.

Boeing 787 under scrutiny again after Ahmedabad crash: Whistleblower warnings resurface

A heart-wrenching tragedy has taken place in Ahmedabad. As widely reported, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner plane crashed shortly after taking off from the city’s airport, currently operated by India’s top tycoon, Gautam Adani. The aircraft was carrying 230 passengers and 12 crew members. As expected, the crash has led to an outpouring of grief across the country. At the same time, there have been demands for the resignation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, and Civil Aviation Minister Venkaiah Naidu. The most striking comment came from BJP MP Subramanian Swamy, who stated : "When a train derailed in the 1950s, Lal Bahadur Shastri resigned. On the same morality, I demand PM Modi, HM Amit Shah, and Civil Aviation Minister Naidu resign so that a free and fair inquiry can be held. All that Modi and his associates have been doing so far is gallivanting, which must stop." Amidst widespread mourning, some fringe elements sought to communalize the tragedy. One post ...

Revisiting Gijubhai: Pioneer of child-centric education and the caste debate

It was Krishna Kumar, the well-known educationist, who I believe first introduced me to the name — Gijubhai Badheka (1885–1939). Hailing from Bhavnagar, known as the cultural capital of the Saurashtra region of Gujarat, Gijubhai, Kumar told me during my student days, made significant contributions to the field of pedagogy — something that hasn't received much attention from India's education mandarins. At that time, Kumar was my tutorial teacher at Kirorimal College, Delhi University.

Search This Blog