Taunts, casteist slurs and the borewell motor turned off by upper caste households at whim have haunted members of a Dalit settlement at a village in Rewa district for 20 years. But not any more, thanks to a Right to Information (RTI) query which got them a borewell dug, a water source they can finally call their own.
At the Nevaria settlement in Gangeo block, around 100 members of Dalit families took turns, mostly girls and women bearing the burden, to make the perilous trip to fetch water from handpumps and private borewells controlled by upper caste Mahajans more than a kilometre away.
“The only route passed through their fields and you can’t cross them half the year as they are ploughed and crops cultivated,” said Krishna Saket, 21, a resident of the settlement. “And during rain, it was almost impossible to find a route.”
“Oh, you are here again! You lowly people shouldn’t come too often close to us,” the owners of borewells exclaimed routinely, seeing groups carrying pots and buckets approach them at least two-four times a day. Since 2017, the settlement has been demanding the government provide for a separate water source, closer to them.
“We even approached the local MLA. People say he is a messiah of the poor. But honestly, he is a messiah of only seeking votes from us. Shivanand bhai is our real messiah as he sent some papers over WhatsApp to some official and got the job done,” said Mr. Saket, a Class XII graduate.
Those papers constituted an RTI query, Shivanand Dwivedi, a social worker, sent to the district Public Health Engineering Department via WhatsApp, seeking information on the action taken to dig a borewell in the settlement. As the matter pertained to the life and liberty of persons, Mr. Dwivedi contended authorities had to provide the information within 48 hours under section 7(1) of the Right to Information Act, 2005.
When the department didn’t respond, he first approached the first appellate authority, and then the Information Commissioner Rahul Singh, who on June 2 asked for a written reply from them and called for a hearing via WhatsApp video call two days later.
The night before the hearing on June 4, authorities reached the settlement with drilling equipment and pipes. And past midnight into the wee hours, they managed to dig a borewell, that too during the just-easing lockdown, to the surprise of residents. “They told me during the conference the borewell has been dug,” said Mr. Singh, who sits in Bhopal, 500 km from Rewa.
The officials were not fined for not providing information within 48 hours. “Staff crunch and limited resources due to the lockdown probably caused the delay in the response. Moreover, they told me the pandemic is taking most of their resources. So, I exempted them from a fine,” said Mr. Singh.
However, said Mr. Singh, this was a unique instance with regard to the RTI Act. “Both the provision of information and grievance redressal has been achieved. We need to praise the system at times,” he said.