Sandeep Pandey
SandeepPandey’s two lectures on the Right to Information and the Right to Food, with a special focus on the Public Distribution Systems, are educative in terms of their illustration of citizen’s rights and participation in governance. The lacunae in governance in India are exacerbated by the lack of access to minimum conditions of survival that the poor and the marginalized in India experience everyday. The Public Distribution systems meant to address such concerns has morphed into an instance of a bureaucratic regime made rotten by corruption. On the other hand, the Right to Information Act, enforced as law in 2005, is an effective tool for citizen participation in disseminating information and in ensuring transparency and accountability in the workings of the government. Pandey supplements this with a trip to a village in Ahmedabad districtby which he draws attention to rural India as representative of the unheard voices in the Indian imaginary.
