India has been called a licence raj because citizens need permission from thieving civil servants for any activity such as building a house or opening a business. To build a house one has to submit plans for approval and this file then disappears into the system. To know the status of the file one has pay bribes and then more bribes to get the plans approved. Without bribes any enquiry would be rudely refused or the person sent from one department to another in circles. This way the thieving scum have maintained a stranglehold on the people for 63 years. The Right to Information Act was passed to solve this problem. Under the Act civil servants are obliged to give clear answer to any enquiry put to them by citizens thus causing them enormous discomfort. They have now prevailed on their criminal politician friends to come up with a bill which will reduce the effectiveness of the Act by putting up more hurdles such as, any enquiry cannot be more than 250 words and multiple questions may not be grouped together in one application. While people are appalled at the recent revelations of so many cases of blatant larceny this utterly shameless defiance of the scum has to be fought vigorously. The RTI Act is not enough. To really give power to the people we need a law that makes it obligatory for a civil servant to approve or reject any application within a fixed time frame, say one month. Instead of going through different levels of civil servants only one high ranking officer will handle the case and will give reasons in writing for his opinion. If his reasons are frivolous he will lose one month's salary and after 3 offences will be sacked. Hit the scum hard.