Would You Like A Cup Of Tea With Your Government Accountability?

How one tea stall in northern India is teaching rural communities about a law that lets them get information from the authorities.

On a windy October afternoon in 2013, then-25-year-old Krishna Murari Yadav stood nervously beside the tea stall that he had set-up at a prime location in the small village of Tatiyaganj, just outside Kanpur City in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. The odds of success seemed to be assured; India is a chai loving country after all. Still, he was anxious.

But Krishna Murari Yadav — or KM Bhai (KM brother) as he is known — didn’t just want to sell tea. The beverage was a ploy.  The real plan was to serve the chai with some activism. KM Bhai had recently become passionate about the Right to Information Act, a national law that allows Indian citizens to request information from a public authority or government body, similar to the United States’ FOIA laws. 

Motivated by his own personal experience of getting information about a gas cylinder application through the RTI, he wanted the public to know of the law. Tea was his way in.

“I wanted the tea stall to become a space where everyone could come together and exercise their rights,” KM Bhai said in a phone interview. 

The RTI requires public authorities to reply within thirty days, to digitize their records, to make them available, and to require as few steps as possible for people requesting information. But this openness is not without its drawbacks. Between 2005 and 2021, there have been media reports of more than 459 instances of attacks on or harassment of citizens who sought information under The Right to Information Act, according to the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI).

The act came to power in 2005 to encourage accountability and transparency in public records. While the right to get information has always been protected by the Indian Constitution, which guarantees freedom of speech and expression to everyone, the RTI Act takes that guarantee one step further by making the process easier. Any Indian citizen can file an RTI for a nominal charge of INR 10, equivalent to 0.14 US dollars, either online or offline by making an application to the appropriate Public Information Officer in government departments. People who are below the poverty line can file an RTI free of cost.

In a developing country like India, where corruption in bureaucracy runs rampant, connections within public offices and bribes are required to not just avail information but to even get simple jobs done. This is why an RTI becomes a powerful tool for its citizens ⁠— especially for the marginalized communities who, owing to systemic inequalities, face restricted access to information and resources.

KM Bhai, a sociology graduate, realized this around 2010: “I learned about the RTI when I attended a legal camp in Kanpur, my hometown. While information about it was widely accessible in the cities, people in rural India are less aware of the law, due to the lack of higher institutions, awareness seminars, and a solid communications infrastructure.”

He quit his job in a local development organisation and set out on a padayatra — a foot march — in March 2013, walking through about 15-20 hamlets in the Kanpur district, with a small yet heavy jhola (cloth bag). He had planned to distribute informational pamphlets on the RTI, hold workshops, and assist local citizens in filing RTI requests. 

“Most people ignored me, some laughed at my face and even tore up the pamphlets,” KM Bhai said, “They simply lacked faith in the government and didn’t wish to involve themselves in a system that had failed them with its bureaucracy.”

On his way back to the city, after the padayatra, KM Bhai stopped by a tea stall to drown his sorrows. “I was sorting through the torn-up pamphlets when the stall owner enquired about them,” KM Bhai said, “I saw him getting interested as I explained the RTI to him. Others at the stall joined into the conversation and we discussed the RTI over several cups of tea.”

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In a country that consumes almost 837,000 tonnes of tea every year, one is never too far from a chai tapri, a roadside tea stall⁠ brimming with people from various walks of life. Social scientist Arul Kani told the BBC that this sharing of food in public space acted as an equalizer. 

Later that same year, KM Bhai set up a modest brick-and-mortar roadside tea stall at a bustling intersection in a market area in Tatiyaganj village. This particular village, according to KM Bhai, is home to 200 families and was chosen for its strategic location — most people from nearby villages have to cross it to get to Kanpur, a larger city. The tea stall is uncomplicated: a few old plastic chairs and a big yellow banner that reads RTI Tea Stall. RTI forms and pamphlets are kept next to the kitchenette counter behind which stands Moolchand Baba, a tea maker and KM Bhai’s ally. 

Moolchand Baba had his own tea stall at Tatiyaganj which is where KM Bhai met him and lured him in. Over a phone call, he told me, “I was scared at first, but I knew the proposed location of the tea stall would be good business and I will also be aiding in good work which would help our community.” Apart from handing out pamphlets and guiding customers, Moolchand Baba enjoys conversing with the customers over the various varieties of tea he makes — ginger, black, spiced, basil and sweet. At this unique tea stall, a cup of chai sells only for INR 5 (0.069 USD), and information about the RTI act is distributed for free.

It has been a struggle to convert the tea drinkers into RTI enthusiasts. “People had tea and even enquired about the RTI but were not showing a lot of confidence in the act,” KM Bhai said. Some were put off by the little formalities, some were scared to question the authorities. “We kept on pursuing the cause as we were succeeding in creating awareness, hoping confidence would follow,” KM Bhai added.

It wasn’t until one year later, says KM Bhai, that a daily wage labourer named Anuj came by the tea stall for a cup of tea and learned about the RTI. “He appeared fascinated and wanted to enquire why his home village of Jaguapara had not been receiving electricity but was being given bills. I helped him file an RTI then and there. Within two months, Anuj not just had a response to the information he had requested, but also electricity.”

Hearing about Anuj’s success story with the RTI Act, people in the villages around Tatiyaganj started filing information requests on a variety of issues from land conflicts to public welfare schemes, ration cards and public distribution systems, and educational scholarships.  

Over the last seven years, KM Bhai has assisted almost 5,000 people in filing RTIs, across approximately 50 villages. On an average, 10 RTIs are filed from his tea stall each day. He also occasionally helps journalists and activists from cities in filing RTIs. 

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On November 8th 2016, the government announced a policy of demonetization; currency notes of INR 500 and INR 1,000 would cease to exist as legal tender. The sudden announcement  resulted in people lining up outside ATMs to deposit and withdraw their money. Pushpendra Kumar from Nankari village deposited INR 48,000 via the ATM and got a receipt. But the money never went to his account. 

A worried Pushpendra filed several complaints over the next few months but did not get his money or a satisfactory response. Finally in February 2018, a mutual acquaintance brought Pushpendra to KM Bhai. Under his aid, Pushpendra filed an RTI. 

“I did not have much hope, but filed an RTI as a last resort enquiring about the status of my complaint. I never checked if I got a response for my RTI because soon after I filed my RTI, I got my money back,” he added. KM Bhai feels that this was because of the pressure and the enquiry that the RTI application created. 

“Without KM Bhai’s guidance, we wouldn’t have been able to understand our rights,” said Ramkalp Mishra, a 75-year-old retired railway employee from a village in Jaunpur. Mishra heard about KM Bhai in a local newspaper in 2018 and set off to the tea stall, around 300 km from his village. “I had applied for my BPL Card in 2016 to get subsidized ration, but local authorities kept rejecting my application even when I met the criteria,” said Mishra to me over a phone call. (A BPL — Below Poverty Line — card is given to families living below the poverty line as specified by the state government, to provide subsidies and welfare schemes.) Mishra alleged that he was asked for bribes to get this job done. 

With KM Bhai’s help, Mishra filed an RTI about his application. 

“As powerful as the RTI act is, in the end, its operations are still handled by public office bearers who might not want to reveal their inefficacies. This considerably slows down the process,” KM Bhai said.

This is what Mishra experienced. He first filed his RTI addressing the Public Information Officer of the Block Development Office. These officers — who have 30 days to provide an answer — failed to do so. Following the rules, the RTI was then sent for a first appeal to the senior authorities of the department. It went for a second appeal to a state-level body usually composed of journalists, social activists, and workers. 

With the second appeal, he got his answer within a month of filing the RTI. Shortly after, and perhaps as a result of the questions from the RTI, he was issued his ration card.

Galvanized by this success, Mishra has become an evangelist for filing information requests. “Within one year, I was helping people across 18 villages to file RTIs,” Mishra said. 

Filing RTIs require patience and determination, virtues Mishra was tested upon when one of his other RTIs — an enquiry into why his family had not received the stipulated money to build a toilet in the house under the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan scheme (Clean India Mission) — also went beyond the first appeal.

An RTI is a good tool, but it doesn’t necessarily solve everything. It took Mishra almost 6 months to get a hearing and then the money. 

“In my experience, getting an RTI response for a general query rather than a personal one is more difficult,” said Satyendra Yadav, an advocate from a Kannauj village, about 63 kilometers, or 39 miles, from Tatiyaganj. Yadav has filed about 25 RTIs since 2013, some from the tea stall. “On several instances, the information officers at various levels have misbehaved with me and interrogated me on why I am seeking this information,” alleged Yadav. Despite those unpleasant experiences, Yadav, a regular at the tea stall, asserts that the RTI needs to be relentlessly pursued to implement on-the-ground change. 

In some cases, this relentlessness has also exposed applicants to acts of violence. In a 2016 article, CHRI told The Wire, a local news outlet, that “scores of RTI users have lost their lives for seeking information of public interest. Hundreds have been attacked, assaulted, harassed and threatened. Not all of them were seasoned RTI activists. Some were seeking information for the first time. The state of Uttar Pradesh; where KM Bhai’s tea stall situates itself appears to rank third in the attacks against RTI users with “six alleged murders and one suicide.” KM Bhai’s tea stall was attacked by local thugs in 2015 after he had sought information under the RTI Act that would have exposed the Land  department’s inefficiency. 

Thus, encouraging the filing of an RTI might also mean a risk of threat or violent attack for the applicant. To this KM Bhai said, “It was also very dangerous to fight the British for the freedom of our country. We had to sacrifice a lot to achieve it. If you sit in the fear of danger, an empire of evil may spread. RTI is a hope that keeps the people’s fight against corruption alive.”

And yet, the RTI’s power is in danger of waning. In 2019, the act was amended to remove the 5-year tenure for the act’s independent Chief Information Commissioner, and left both compensation and term limits for the Commissioner at the discretion of the central government. KM Bhai feels this blunts the independence and objectivity of the information commissioners. 

But despite the challenges, KM Bhai’s RTI activism and social service have had a ripple effect in the communities. They’re not just armed with information but are using it to demand their rights, and the correction of institutional inefficiencies at a personal and community level. 

These thoughts resonate with senior journalist Ajay Patrakar from Kanpur’s Zee City Channel. Ajay sees RTI Act as crucial to understanding how reality differs from government records and data. “KM Bhai is selflessly working to empower the community. As a journalist I cannot stress enough on the importance of the RTI Act. I have myself filed several RTIs under KM Bhai’s guidance into my news investigations,” said Ajay. 

KM Bhai has been in touch with other RTI activists to replicate the tea stall model in other states. But his mission now is to get more women to participate. “Unfortunately, the patriarchal set-up in the villages is such that not many women frequent the tea stall and speak amongst groups of men. We want to change this and are considering different ways to conduct workshops for women at the tea stall,” KM Bhai stated.

“I am a simple person who wants to help people,” KM Bhai said. 

“There’s nothing like cups of tea to fuel the movement for everyone to have the right to information.”

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