Whispers Forum

The Minister for Education, Australia, Jason Clare is on a visit to India from February 28 to March 4 to foster India-Australia relations in the field of education. India's Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan has announced two Australian universities will soon establish campuses in the GIFT CITY of Gujarat. India is encouraging the opening of campuses of reputed foreign universities in India. If this materializes then India can stop brain drain and our students will get better opportunities in their own countries.
Shruti Kumari

Customers of banks using or intending to use locker facilities have received a message from their banks that they need to sign a new agreement on Rs100 stamp paper as per RBI directive. The whole exercise is irrelevant and a waste of customers' and Bank's time. Do we sign an agreement every time we buy a flight or train ticket? All that is required is for RBI to release a press note drawing the attention of current and future bank customers that use of locker facility is governed by the rules and regulations contained in the RBI circular the contents of which are available in RBI/Banks website. Since customers cannot amend these rules but have to comply with them to use lockers this notification should be adequate.
Raghavan

Artificial Intelligence is no match for human intelligence. Asked to answer sample Questions from GS Papers 1 & 2 for CS Preliminary Exam 2022, Open AI's ChatGPT failed to qualify. P. K. Dash, Retd IAS (MP:81) administered the Test, and has written a Blog on it .
Lack of knowledge on citizen's part
Majority of the problems, relating to the RTI regime, is because of lack of knowledge on the part of citizens. The biggest blunder is their lack of ability to make a proper RTI application. 17 years have passed since the RTI came into being. People still think that their RTI applications is a grievance of theirs. They are still not aware that in their RTI applications they cannot ask question, raise queries etc. They also cannot ask for third party information. They are expected to simply ask for information through their RTI applications. A lot of time can be saved, if along with their RTI applications, apart from sending Rs.10/- as basic RTI fee, they can also send some approximate additional amount @ Rs.2.00 per page based on 'say some pages of the document', of the photocopy of the document, which they may be needing. They should most of the time send their RTI application through Speed Post and maintain a copy of their RTI application and the Speed Post receipt. If they do not receive response from the PIO after 30 days, they should wait for 15 more days (in order to cover time of the post travel) and make an application to the FAA. Even again after 30 days, he/she does not receive response from FAA, then he should make his Second Appeal before the CIC.
Anurag

The ignorance of the provisions of the RTI Act and the apathy of the bureaucracy towards it is the prime reason for the decline of the RTI Act. The sunshine act is a pale shadow of what it was originally thought of achieving. The first appellate authority has poor understanding and a pathetic approach which is killing the RTI. With no fear of penalty, the FAA hardly cares about the role they are expected to play. There is hardly any training and the all pervasive environment of secrecy accentuates it. The net result is the poor RTI applicant runs from pillar to post with no information in hand.
V Krishnamoorthy