Bangalore: Speedy passport to power

Dilshad Hussain ran in circles for 10 long months for the travel document. Fed up, he finally filed an RTI.When Dilshad Hussain, 44, applied for a passport in February 2011, little did he realize what he was up against. All he wanted to do was go to Mecca and visit some relatives abroad. But it wasn’t as easy as he thought. First, the wait for the document stretched on for months, and then endless rounds to the passport office followed. It would have taken the small-time Delhi businessman longer had he not filed an RTI. Looking back, Hussain shakes his head in disbelief. “After my ordeal, I wonder how ordinary people get their work done in government offices. RTI is a boon for all of us,” he says. In 2011, when he stood in line at Delhi’s Bhikaji Cama Place passport office, he had been warned by touts milling around that unless he greased palms he wouldn’t get the document. “I didn’t listen to them. I am a poor man, how could I afford to hire their services?” asks Hussain. However, when the police came to his house later for verification and asked for kharcha pani, euphemism for a bribe, he obliged. There was no getting away from them. He then waited like a good citizen for the wheels of government machinery to churn and deliver the goods. It was not to be. The stipulated three months needed to get his passport processed came and went. He sought redressal from the public information officer, but was asked to “come back in a week”. Another six months passed. “I was fed up and just wanted to extricate myself from the mess. My embroidery business suffered too. I spent close to Rs 5,000 running from pillar-to-post. That’s when I filed an RTI after being counselled by an NGO.” He asked all kinds of questions in his RTI application — the process for getting a passport, progress of his case, reasons for delay. That did it. He was issued a passport within days. And it came with an apology. As for his queries, no answers were forthcoming. Instead, he was told the delay was due to staff shortage. He didn’t buy that. “I knew that was just an excuse, but I let it be,” he smiles. Having earned his spurs with one RTI, Hussain followed it up with four more — against the police for not filing an FIR, against his gram pradhan for siphoning off panchayat funds, over NREGA funds. “Many people don’t know how to file an RTI,” he says, unhappy at the lack of awareness regarding the law. “They assume a lawyer will be needed to do so. It’s important to educate them. RTI is so empowering.”