Sarvesh Kumar, a shopkeeper from Tatiyaganj, a village in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, was anxious. He’d received his daughter’s high school results only to find she had been marked absent despite having taken the exams. But Kumar knew that getting an explanation would mean navigating the notoriously corrupt bureaucracy of his state. In search of a solution, he headed to Tatiyaganj’s ‘RTI Tea Stall’, where chai is served with awareness of people’s right to answers from the public authorities.
Like Freedom of Information laws elsewhere, India’s RTI – Right to Information – Act entitles any citizen to make a written application to a government body. Public Information Officers are obliged to respond within 30 days.
