Jis waqt jo dil kahe, woh tabhi kyon nahi?
Isi waqt isi jagah, abhi kyon nahin?
… goes a voice-over in Pepsi’s latest campaign titled Oh Yes Abhi!
The lyrics of the peppy song go, ‘Mujhe abhi, abhi ke abhi’, demonstrating the impatience of youth.
Let me digress here, please! This is as youth’y it can be for a 30+ year old actress and a cricket captain. I suppose this obsession with ‘older youths’ is national, given that youth leaders in political parties in India are well over 40. Ironically, this in a country which has more than 50% of its population below the age of 25 and more than 65% below the age of 35! Digression ends – thanks!
This impatience… and urgency to do things, or at least fanning this urgency to get things done is perhaps the root-cause of many of India’s problems – like the anger in traffic snarls and the uncouth breaking of queues in our cities. Social media seems to have compounded this problem, particularly for the highly competitive private sector. Someone tweets, ‘Hey Airtel, my blah blah blah. Get it sorted soon’. His ‘soon’ means 2-3 minutes and all Airtel could manage is a auto-response to mere acknowledge that the complaint (via tweet) has reached them. If things don’t happen within 5 minutes, there’s the eventual brand-name-sucks barrage of tweets. Besides such trivial issues, another larger-level issue seems to be channeling this impatience and urgency to seeking quick-fix solutions to deep-rooted problems in our democracy.
One such problem in our democracy is letting the elected government be held accountable for their actions. It is in this context that I’d like to write about my dad, in this blog, for the 2nd time (the first time? Here – Social media lessons from a 70+ year old man!).
My dad is a huge supporter and ardent believer in the power of RTI. He uses it day-in and day-out, actively canvasses for others with problems with civic bodies/government to use RTI and goes out of his way to help others in educating them about the usage process.
Yes, there IS a process for usage of RTI. It is not a self-serve, go-to-this-website and get this information, Oh Yes Abhi. It takes time! 30 days, to start with, to get a single response. Then, you need to escalate it and wait for another 30 days.
But, the more I hear of my dad’s exploits, the more I’m impressed with the system. My dad’s own house in Coimbatore is unused, since my parents are with me in Bangalore now. The electricity meter reading for the unused house should be bare minimum, in terms of electrical consumption. But, it turned out to be quite high, in a particular month last year and dad got a call from the bank through which the amount is automatically transferred since it crossed a threshold.
Luckily, he was in town during this time and went to the local electricity department office. As expected, they treated him callously. After being patient for a few minutes, he said, quite politely, that he has no other option but to opt for an RTI to know the process in which meter reading is done when the occupant is unavailable. Within a few seconds a servile looking chap came up to him and told him that he need not do anything like that should simply wait in his house for the meter reading to be done correctly in half a day’s time. That guy was the office in-charge!
That is the power of RTI!
My dad has used it for anything and everything – problems in gas connections, land paper issues, local land encroachments, apartment complex regulations in Bangalore… you name it, he has used RTI to get answers, to make things happen and getting things done. He has even bought multiple copies of a book in Tamil that explains in simple language how to use RTI and distributes it freely to people who come to him with problems.
The only difference is that the so-called youth in this country want instant solutions and RTI is anything but instant. The minimum instant in RTI is a month. But it is expected, given the complex web of administrative machinery that exists in India.
I find this to be an interesting dichotomy. On one hand, we have advertising campaigns targeting the youth to do their own thing, that instant. No waiting, just do it, then and there. On the other, we have one of the most potent ways to make the government answerable – the RTI – that demands time, patience and follow-ups to get answers to things that one actually deserves without a question! But hey, we at least have a process that is efficient and works, since failure to answer would result in salary cuts of the office head of the department that has been asked the question via RTI!
It is also heartening to see media making good use of RTI to gain answers that would otherwise require investigative tactics. Besides mainstream media, online sources like MediaNama use RTI frequently to gain information and insights!
I feel the time is right for a brand to embark on a more pragmatic campaign – to educate the youth of this nation to not be impatient… abhor urgency and quick-fix solutions… and patiently fight for your answers. That is more meaningful and useful in real life since it teaches one the virtues of patience where necessary. I’m assuming the same would translate in other forms of civic sense too – to not honk incessantly on a crowded road and create a pointless scene by being a jackass. Or, to appreciate the queue in public places like an elevator entrance or a cinema theater.