Ask, and You Ought to be Told

Ask, and You Ought to be Told

Yogesh Snehi

The Tribune, Sunday, January 15, 2006,

Chandigarh, India

How much has been spent on repairing city roads? What are the medicines that government hospitals distribute free of cost? Now you can seek a whole lot of information of public interest from the authorities. Yogesh Snehi on the strengths of the Right to Information Act as well as the pressures it might face from the bureaucracy

A NEW chapter was added to the history of peoples’ movement in India with the coming of The Right to Information (RTI) Act on June 15 last year. The necessity for this piece of legislation was inspired by the need to enlarge democratic spaces in the Indian polity. This Act has the potential to provide immense possibilities for developing accountability and transparency in decision-making and the utilisation of public funds. Thus, it is important for every Indian to read and make use of this piece of document.

Before the enactment of the RTI in the country, Tamil Nadu, Goa and Madhya Pradesh had upheld and enacted the RTI Act in 1997, followed by Rajasthan in 2000 and Delhi in 2001. The RTI owes its inspiration to Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS), Rajasthan, which started the movement for minimum wages in rural India and exposed rampant corruption in schemes meant for rural development. The fruition of the Act in 2005 represents the aspirations of Indian people and their will to develop a new political culture in this country.

The RTI Act has given the people power to have access to all such information that was earlier inaccessible and was kept confidential. So now one can question and seek information about the absence of teachers in government schools, insufficient medicines in hospitals, policy and procedures followed in making decisions, etc. Initiatives for Democratic Rights (IFDR), Chandigarh, recently wrote a letter to Dean Students Welfare, Panjab University, demanding information about the utilisation of a fund meant for mess/canteen workers’ welfare. To make the role of public authorities meaningful, the Act lays emphasis on suo moto disclosures on the schemes initiated by any department which has access to public money and which concerns the interests of the common people.

Every department will appoint a Public Information Officer (PIO) who will be responsible for providing all such information sought by public at large, subject to the payment of a nominal fee which will be defined in the ‘fee rules’ framed by the respective state governments. Interestingly, this Act stipulates the time framework within which this information has to be provided. It should not exceed 40 days in any case. If the PIO concerned fails to provide such information within this time, he has to inform the applicant the reasons for the same. He can also be fined in case of wilful nondisclosure and the applicant has been given the right to appeal the appellate authority against the PIO. The Central Information Commission (CIC) and the State Information Commission (SIC) in the respective states will regulate the work in this regard.

The pace of implementation of the RTI is, however, abysmal. The Punjab Government has planned to digitalise the information and evolve a paper-free office for the Commission. I am not sure what will the government do with digitalising the information when the majority of the population is illiterate in information technology. Besides this, the seriousness of the government in reaching out to the people is questionable since it continues to be reluctant to translate the text of the Act into Punjabi. Something very significant came up at the workshop organised recently by the Ministry of Rural Development at Jaipur, where Aruna Roy (MKSS) pointed out that the Chief Information Commissioner did not have an office for himself and the Commission. The same is the case with the SIC, which continues to ‘hunt for an office’ for itself.

This Act continues to be under threat of pressure from public servants — our bureaucrats. Though the Prime Minister has said that ‘file notings’ relating to development plans, schemes, programmes and projects should be in the ambit of the RTI, there is immense pressure on the government and the Central Information Commission to exempt these from the ambit of this Act. The seriousness of the matter can be judged from the fact that on December 9, O P Kejariwal, one of the four Information Commissioners with the CIC, wrote an open letter to the Prime Minister expressing his concern over the eroding of the RTI by the bureaucracy and the abysmal working conditions at the apex commission.

It is a serious matter because if the exemptions under file notings related to identifiable individuals, group of individuals, organisations, appointments, matters relating to inquiries and departmental proceedings are implemented, it would amount to, as Kejariwal says, "nothing less than an effective amendment`85" It indeed raises questions on what would be the nature of the Act after file notings are exempted. Any information which may have the potential of creating trouble for the officer concerned may be classified as file noting. Further, if the officials concerned would not be named then on whom will the responsibility of the aberration be laid?

Finally, even though the central government should be given its due for the enactment of this Act, the public should continue to lay pressure on the government for its effective implementation. It is also essential to question the procedure of appointing the PIOs as till now those officers have been designated PIOs who have earlier denied information to public.