If a road caves in, like it did in Chennai while working on the underground portion of the metro, if pot-holes afflict your city or you find the roads poorly constructed, you can take the authorities to task.In this specific case it will be the Chennai Metro authorities as well as the Chennai Municipal Corporation and in general any municipality/municipal corporation/national highway authorities or states’ road development corporations.We read news items pertaining to accidents due to pot-holes, particularly in the monsoon season, when water covers them up, making bikers vulnerable to accidents. If it happens to someone else, we merely curse the authority, discuss it at get-togethers and carry on with our lives. In case it happens to you or your family members, you quietly bear the pain of injuries, but you are rarely angry enough to take on the authorities. As for a fatal injury, you feel, your loved ones cannot come back, so it is pointless to pursue the matter with municipal or other road authorities, which are mandated to ensure quality roads as per the Indian Road Congress specifications.Let us take the latest example. Last week, a portion of one of Chennai’s arterial roads – Poonamalle High Road - caved in partially in the afternoon near the Rajiv Gandhi Government Hospital. The road was damaged due to tunnelling work for the Chennai Metro being conducted underneath the road.Read: Chennai Metro: By not suing authorities, are citizens partly to blame for growing negligence?In this case the direct victims are the driver / owner of the car, and every commuter using the road. The indirect ones are the entire Chennai citizenry as the road was made out of their collective tax money.Time has come to wake-up and collectively take the culprit head on and demand accountability. It requires each one of us to be pro-active and go beyond mere words and on-line signatures. If you really care, you cannot shoot from other people’s shoulders.What the people of Chennai can doFind out from the Chennai Municipal Corporation the name of the contractor who built the road and details of when it was constructed (though in this case it may not be as responsible due to an unusual jerk it received from the metro work underground). Nevertheless, we must have this information, which, under Section 4 of the RTI Act makes it mandatory for every public authority to suo motu put up this information on its website and upgrade it at regular intervals.Find out from the Chennai Metro Rail Ltd (CMRL) details of the excavating work, which officer/officers are in-charge of it and the inquiry/investigation report of the incident. Demand to make the report public, as also the reports on action taken against the officer/employee and action for prevention of such incidents in future.Here’s what the affected party needs to doBesides seeking information as suggested for the people, they should immediately slam a legal notice for compensation. Upon the advice of the lawyer, the amount of compensation should be worked out which would include cost of the damages, the number of days the car was out of action and the mental agony caused due to distress of the driver and the owner who has spent a fortune on buying a car.Simultaneously, the information regarding details of the road construction from the Chennai Municipal Corporation and from the CMRL authorities (as described above) should be sought under RTI Act. For this – all/or one of these three sections should be used:Section 4 – the owner should meet the Municipal Commissioner and demand inspection of files pertaining to the road immediately.Section 7 – make a RTI application in the required format seeking information within 48 hours as it affects the lives and limbs of citizens.Section 6 – make a RTI application wherein the Public Information Officer is given 30 days to respond to you. Section 4 is by far the best solution or else Section 7.(File RTI to the correct Public Information Officer (PIO) – see the website or call up the public authority concerned)Odds against being a pro-active citizenI have no time for all this social work. It takes 10 minutes to fill a RTI application and you can dispatch it by speed post so that you get an acknowledgement.Who’s going to visit a municipal corporation for some silly road that has caved in? True, it is cumbersome to even think of doing this, when it does not directly concern you. Time to think the owner and driver of the affected car are members of your family and you must show concern, not by mere lip service, but by taking that one step to show the authorities that people cannot be taken for granted.Netas and babus have become indifferent and insensitive to online petitions or mass signatures on hard print submitted to them. Even if you submit one lakh signatures, demanding let’s say action on the contractor/officers of CMRL or the municipal corporation, they will say for a population of 50 lakh, 1 lakh signatures means a minority wants this action. Hence, the best way is that each one bombards them with legal notice and files RTI. Imagine if one lakh citizens of Chennai individually file RTI, what the impact would be? All that you need is a piece of paper, asking for information as mentioned in this article.Why doesn’t the media take it up?It should and it does. Help it to be more pro-active by writing a letter to the editor on this issue via an e-mail. Imagine if even 1,000 letters go to the editor daily, he or she will perceive it as a bigger public issue and will continue to write about it and inspire it to take up a campaign through news columns.(Vinita Deshmukh is an Award-winning journalist and RTI activist. She begins an occasional column on civic issues and what citizen can do to make authorities responsible and responsive.)