5th national convention of the national campaign for people right to information

5th national convention of the national campaign for people right to information 
RTI and Governance: the distance yet to be travelled I thank Aruna Roy ji for inviting me today to this important conference. I am particularly happy to participate because, in another capacity, I had heard a good deal about the perceived benefits and limitations of this important piece of legislation.The principle of information being made available to those affected by it is
an ancient one. In our own times, numerous international covenants have
subscribed to it. Despite it, governments have been slow to give it a practical
shape. Apart from Sweden’s transparency law of 1776, only 20 countries
had such a law till 1995. Thereafter, the pace picked up and till 2011, over
85 countries had enacted and implemented legislation pertaining to it. Civil
society pressure in most cases played a critical role in shaping opinion.
In our own country, progress towards right to information legislation was
slow and hesitant. The culture of secrecy was pervasive; it was compounded
by low levels of literacy and ignorance of the public about government
procedures.The impulse for change came from demands for minimum wages for
landless labourers, as also from environmentalists and advocates of human
rights, and was helped by decisions of the higher judiciary. An initial effort
to legislate faltered in 2002; the law finally saw light of day in 2005. Its title
and substance also registered the important transition from freedom to right.
The concept of right to information resonates deeply with the notion of
citizenship. The objective of the Right to Information Act, 2005 is spelt out
in its preamble. Democracy, it asserts, requires an informed citizenry and
transparency of information is essential to contain corruption and to hold
government and its instrumentalities accountable to the governed and to
harmonize it within a framework of operational efficiency and
confidentiality of sensitive information.


II

2-The RTI Act of 2005 marked a move from opaqueness to the beginning of
an era of transparency. ‘It thus fundamentally restructures the debate on
governance from what should be revealed to what must be kept secret.’
Twelve years after its enactment, the official view, as reflected in the latest
annual report of the Central Information Commission, is reasonably
satisfactory. Reports of the State Information Commissions paint a varied
picture. The perception within information providing agencies often is that
much of demand is frivolous and vexatious. The civil society view,
however, is that its implementation remains inefficient and as a result,
transparency and accountability seems to be under threat.
Experts cite poor record-keeping practices within bureaucracy, lack of


infrastructure and staff for running information commissions as the reason
for this. Despite it, the culture of transparency brought about by the RTI Act
has empowered the citizens and emboldened them to seek information and
seek accountability.
What is the element of truth in these perceptions? The different ingredients
of the favourable and unfavourable perceptions therefore need to be
segregated and analyzed.
Some time back a former Central Information Commissioner, writing about
his personal experience, divided RTI applications into 4 categories: (a) those
who hope to expose corruption or arbitrariness and improve governance (b)
those who wish to correct a wrong and get justice (c) those who wish to
blackmail persons who have allegedly violated the law and (d) those who
wish to harass public officials to get undue favours. He added that
applications in the third and fourth category did no exceed 10% of the total.
In the first place is the principle and practice of transparency in governance.
This is critical to the notion of accountability. It is the corner stone of good
governance. It ensures that actions and decisions taken by public officials
are subject to oversight so as to guarantee that government initiatives meet
their stated objectives and respond to the needs of the community they are
meant to be benefiting, thereby contributing to better governance and
poverty reduction. This accountability could be legal, political or social or
may even cover all these aspects. It can be, and has been, sought through
elected representatives at municipal, state or parliamentary levels. The RTI,

3-however, adds a new dimension to it since in this case, accountability is
sought by the citizen directly at individual level.
The hard question is about the efficacy of the Act in actual implementation.
To answer this, the experience of twelve years is to be analyzed critically
from the viewpoint of the information-seeker particularly amongst the poor
and needy and those in rural areas. It is here that response of the information
giving agencies, and the rules and procedures under which information is
sought to be denied, becomes critical.
A harsh reality cannot be overlooked. According to credible civil society
activists and organizations, a good number of information-seekers on
sensitive issues have been threatened and some even lost their lives. Specific
allegations in this regard have generally gone unanswered.
It is evident that as in other walks of life, surrender of power is resisted.
Record shows that procedural devices will be resorted to. One critic has
opined that many information-giving agencies view the Act as “the right to
reject, deny, obfuscate.” The current controversy over the new RTI Rules
made public recently has to be seen in that context.
Many in this audience know that much of the information being sought can
easily be made public but has not been done thanks to our legacy of colonial
rule and closed governance. A typical case is about land records. A Central
Information Commissioner has observed that about 66 % of litigation in
courts is about land. It results in loss of GDP. If land records are updated and
access to them made easier, it would have a positive impact on pendency
before the judiciary and would lead to all round improvement in governance.
The same holds good for educational qualifications of those seeking public
office and the requirement to comply with prescribed limits.
The question of exemptions under section 8(1)(a) of the Act has been
discussed extensively. The exemptions for the listed security agencies are
formulated very generally and could do with precise definitions. Without it,
the PIOs has a lot of space to define overarching terms like ‘sovereignty’
and ‘integrity.’ Some judicial rulings have been helpful in this regard. The
same holds for invoking the economic interests clause.
III

4-Any serious discussion on the RTI Act must be premised on its intent and
purpose, as spelt out in the preamble. The letter of law is one aspect of the
matter; its intent is another. Today it is undeniable that the Act in the years it
has been in existence has changed the public discourse and has brought into
being a new framework and a new imagination within which governance is
to be viewed. By the same token, the wide-spread public perception about
high level corruption has given impetus to a new imagination about
countering it. The RTI Act is not an anti-corruption act but given the level of
transparency it is intended to achieve can contribute to this objective. It is
the beginning of a long journey. Since other nations started on this journey
earlier, we can also benefit by taking cognizance of their experience and best
practices.
Much depends on the functioning of information commissions. They are
critical to the RTI regime and must be endowed with the resources for
discharging their functions efficiently. Available data indicates high levels
of pendency; this cannot but impede the achievement of the stated
objectives. The only corrective is public pressure. The CIC’s decision in
May this year that all cases filed in 2015 and 2016 will be cleared by the end
of this year is a step in this direction. Another initiative by the government
advising public bodies to get their proactive disclosure package pre-audited
by a third party every year and report it to CIC should help reduce the load
of unattended RTI applications.