Opinion Know it all

The current proposal has been pegged to the president’s speech to Parliament on June 4 stating the government would strengthen the RTI with amendments. Protests drew an assurance from the minister about a deliberative process before the amendments were considered. Despite these assurances,there has been no consultation or deliberation in the public domain,and the proposed amendments seem well on their way to the cabinet. RTI activists know that,like the amendments proposed in the past,if the current proposal is accepted,the people of India stand to lose a substantial part of what they have gained in terms of public accountability in the last decade. The current proposal therefore,must be rejected in its entirety.

The proposed amendments include introducing an exemption for so-called “vexatious and frivolous” applications,and by excluding from the purview of the RTI Act access to “file notings” and the decision-making process — this time by excluding “discussion/consultations that take place before arriving at a decision”. The danger in both cases lies far beyond the immediate scope of the Act. They affect all transparency of public action that this country has seen in the last decade.

The proposal to exempt “frivolous and vexatious applications”,will give sweeping powers to functionaries from the smallest gram sewak and patwari to the rungs above,to dismiss any application this way. Those set aside may range from applications related to people’s survival,to corruption and the bureaucrats’ fear of accountability being enforced. The RTI Act will stand as a mockery of itself.

At this moment we are engaged in an internal and somewhat schizophrenic struggle between realising our dreams of a truly democratic India and assessing ourselves as a democratic country,based solely on the statistics of how many go to poll in various elections. Interestingly,these democratic movements have been resisted less by the politician than the civil servant. Even so,in the last four years,many individuals who are part of the structures of power have come to realise the worth of the process of transparency and accountability.

The RTI Act has pushed every wing of government towards transparency and accountability. Parliament needs to be cheered for its cross-party summary rejection of the proposed judicial accountability bill that would have allowed high court and Supreme Court judges to keep their declaration of assets an internal secret. The chief justice of the Delhi HC dug deep into the reservoirs of institutional courage to reject a SC appeal that the office of the chief justice of India would not be covered by the RTI Act. There are innumerable bureaucrats who have used the law to usher in more transparent and accountable modes governance. At a recent meeting of the Information Commission,Sitaram Yechury of the CPM and Arun Jaitley of the BJP both echoed an earlier assessment by the Congress MP and former Chairperson of the Parliamentary Standing Committee for the DoPT,S. Natchiappan,that this is not the right time to think of amendments.

Many commissioners of information — the focus of criticism of many RTI activists — too have made a shift from being the protectors of the civil service to guardians of the RTI.

But there are some remaining bastions of official opaqueness and secrecy. Ironically,the DoPT,which is the host department,has been the most consistent adversary of this Act of Parliament. Pre-occupied as it is with what it sees as its primary mandate — civil servants’ postings,transfers,confidential records,inquiries and investigations — natural justice is denied when it is allowed to adjudicate on its own actions! It jealously protects the interests of its clientele. The track record of its own performance is dismal. This nodal ministry has failed to get governments to comply with section 4 of the Act,because it has not even tried to do so. And yet it proposes to strengthen proactive disclosure by amending the Act. It has failed to raise awareness about the law and educate citizens about its use. And it has repeatedly flouted the orders of the Information Commission and undermined its authority. Under the law the Information Commission is the supreme authority on matters of information,whose decisions are only subject to review on merits by the High Court or the Supreme Court. Even the ingrained bureaucratic subservience to hierarchy seems to have collapsed in the face of its own self interest.

Two current nation-wide studies,one done under the aegis of the Government of India and the other by people’s organizations (RaaG and NCPRI),have both concluded that the main constraints faced by the government in providing information is inadequate implementation,the lack of training of staff,and poor record management. They have also identified lack of awareness,along with harassment of the applicant,as two of the major constraints that prevent citizens from exercising their right to information. Neither study,despite interviewing thousands of public information officers and other officials,has concluded that the occurrence of frivolous or vexatious applications is frequent enough to pose either a threat to the government or to the RTI regime in general. Certainly no evidence has been forthcoming in either of these studies that access to “file notings” or other elements of the deliberative process has posed a major problem for the nation. On the contrary,many of the officers interviewed have candidly stated that the opening up of the deliberative process has strengthened the hands of the honest and sincere official.

This is a straightforward issue of democracy. We have to individually and collectively oppose this diabolical move to disenfranchise us from what is our fundamental right to know.

The writer is a prominent leader of the right to information movement

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