Subhash Agrawal: RTI crusader

In the summer of 1985, a cloth merchant in Chandni Chowk, the crowded market in the old quarters of Delhi, received a call in response to a letter he had written to the papers asking why his favourite weekly television serial, Rajani, could not be aired daily on state-run Doordarshan. The caller was Pulok Chatterjee, then a deputy secretary in the information and broadcasting (I&B) ministry, now principal secretary in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO).

“Pulok Chatterjee called me personally,” said Subhash Chandra Agrawal, emphasizing the last word. “He said he wanted us to discuss something along with my wife. We did not know then how bureaucracy works—we did not know how important the secretary was.”

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