There is an old story about a corrupt minister in a Kingdom, who was the Queen's relative. He was extremely corrupt. The King gave him 5 different portfolios, but in each of them he made money through naked corruption. The King got fed up with him, but couldn't remove him as a Minister for he didn't want to displease the Queen. Finally, the King thought of an ingenious idea - the Corrupt Minister was allowed to retain the title, but was given the job of sitting on the sea shore and counting the waves. This, the King thought, would put an end to the ministers corrupt ways as he felt it was impossible for someone to be corrupt doing nothing but counting the waves.
The King had unfortunately underestimated his ministers ability to make money. Within a week of him taking charge as "Minister for Counting Waves", the fish started becoming dearer in the Market. This created considerable panic amongst the people, as being a Coastal Kingdom, Fish was the staple food. On hearing about the scarcity and rising price of fish, the King ordered an enquiry and to his dismay found that the Minister was running a huge racket on the beaches by terrorising the poor fishermen. He was threatening them that, since he was asked to 'count the waves', the fishermen were standing in the way of his duty when they launch their boat, as he claimed that the boats were cutting and destroying the waves!!. And further, anyone who wanted to launch his fishing boat has to pay a hefty 'mamool' to him!!!!
Our bureacrats are like this corrupt minister. They will go to any extreme to scuttle a good initiative. The Right to Information Act (RTI) was promulgated with great fanfare by the UPA Government, with an aim to create transperency. RTI gave any citizen the right to ask for any information from the Government including confidential files. That the Government itself diluted and stonewalled giving information under this Act is well known, but it took the geniuses at Punjab University to find an ingenious way to turn the table on the petitioner, as reported in TOI below,
When it comes to asking a question under Right to Information Act, be careful about what you wish to know, as you might just get the answer. A Panjab University LLM student, Varun Malik, who sought detailed replies for 19 queries including one regarding fines that hostellers had to pay over the past five years, has been asked to provide Rs 12.22 lakh as fees, because the varsity’s answers will need more than six lakh pages. Rs 2 per page is the charge that the questioner has to pay under the RTI Act. Malik alleged that the university’s move was intended to discourage him from seeking information that could cause various scams to surface. “It’s surprising that it would take so many pages to provide me the details,” he added. PU has sent two reminders to him for the payment and it has been mentioned in the letters that photocopying of the pages is almost complete. The university has also advised him to avoid using unparliamentary and threatening language while talking to its officials. Malik had asked the 19 questions on August 10 and replies were provided on September 9. However, not satisfied with the answers, he sought comprehensive information regarding all the questions. In one of their letters, PU authorities told Malik that as the kind of details sought by him could only be provided through photocopies of the relevant documents and for that, he would have to pay the requisite amount. Malik said he consented to paying Rs 2 per page for extra information at the time. However, he added that he was not told about the replies stretching into six lakh pages. He added that PU was pressuring him for the money and threatening him that they would have to take action for recovering the amount from him.
