Suresh Kr Pramar
The recently enacted Right to Information Bill, which has come into force on October 12, can prove to be a effective weapon to fight corruption in the administration, ensure better governance and encourage active peoples participation in governance. The Bill, passed during the Budget session of Parliament, confers on all citizens the right to access information and at the same time makes it mandatory for government officials to provide information on various aspects of government functioning. The Union government claims that the Act is revolutionary since it opens all official departments across the country to public scrutiny. It is hoped that the new legislation will help empower the weakest.
The act is the result of nine years of struggle and campaigning by various civil society groups, and the relentless efforts of the National Advisory Council It contains radical proposals to ensure unprecedented transparency in government functioning. It is an improvement over the Act brought in by the earlier NDA government and also the Bill presented to the Lok Sabha five months earlier. There will be an independent Information Commissioner to enforce the law and harsher penalties for officials who do not comply.
Right to Information is the very basis of a democratic society. It ensures that actions of the government are open to questioning. This ensures that the government is accountable to the people who put them into power. In a democracy accountability ensures every citizen the right to get answers. This in turn ensures transparency in the administration.
Accountability and transparency provide the tools essential for every citizen to ensure the fulfillment of their rights. It also provides them the means to end corruption and misadministration in the government. The Right to Information in the country has evolved mainly from the grassroots mobilization in Rajasthan where the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS) using and accessing information succeeded in checking local corruption and exploitation.
In India access to government information has been poor. This is particularly so at the local and state levels. In contrast the situation in developed countries is vastly different and governance is more transparent. In the United States and many of the EU country every citizen has access to public records and the response from government is prompt.
Access to government information in these nations is usually a hassle free affair, with Right to Information (RTI) laws seeing regular use. Therefore a better climate of public integrity has developed in these nations, and citizens and government are an equal part of it. The ‘systems’ are in place.
The key to wisdom, said Peter Abelard, a medieval philosopher, “ is constant and frequent questioning. By doubting we are led to question and by questioning we arrive at the truth.” Ms Aruna Roy, who has led the MKSS campaign in Rajasthan and is a member of the NAC, is confident that “even if one percent of the people in the country make use of the provisions of the Act it would shape democracy in the country.”
Says Aruna Roy “ central debates like corruption in public office, corruption in political parties and the corrupt deals in national governments will be set against the context of real facts.” The MKSS campaigns in Rajasthan in the area of minimum wages and other rural development works have shown that information has to move into the realm of activism to make governments accountable to the people, their masters.
Intervening in the debate in the Lok Sabha the Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh expressed confidence that the Act will ensure benefits for the growth of all sections of the people, eliminate corruption and bring the concerns of the common man to the heart of all processes of the government. The bill, he said, lays down the architecture for accessing information, which is simple, easy time-bound and inexpensive. He called upon the bureaucrats to view the Act not as a “draconian law for paralysing the government but as an instrument for improving government-citizen interfacing, resulting in a friendly, caring and effective functioning.”
One distinguishing feature of the newly enacted law is that its provisions will apply to state government as well. The amendment extending the Bill to state Governments and local bodies was made in the teeth of an adverse opinion given by the Law Ministry. It marks a victory for the National Advisory Council and NGOs who have been campaigning for the right to information to be available across the country at all levels
Another major amendment in the Bill relates to the extent to which security and intelligence agencies would be accountable under it. The Bill originally said that those agencies would only have to give information pertaining to corruption allegations. Under the new Act the security and intelligence agencies are required to give information on human rights violations as well.
Hectic give-and-take preceded the final enactment of the right to information Bill. The bureaucracy, which reportedly fought hard against amendments, has had to forfeit its monopoly over such plum posts that will be created in the information commissions at the Centre and states. In its earlier form the Bill laid down that these office holders shall be eminent persons from the field of ‘‘administration and governance.’’ The amendments have cast the net wider by including eminent persons from the fields of law, science and technology, social service, management, journalism and mass media.
Almost all those who have been part of the campaign for the enactment of the Right to Information Bill have expressed satisfaction with its provisions with some reservations. They are however confident that the Act will bring about drastic changes in the system of governance at the Centre and the states.
Mr N.C.Saxena, a former Secretary, Planning Commission, and a member of the NAC, says that the Act will promote a culture of transparency which is essential for good government. “Transparency and public monitoring of the policies of the government are important in the fight against corruption in public institutions to ensure an effective delivery mechanism.”
Saxena has expressed the need for large-scale mobilization to use the law to make sure that elected representatives become accountable to the public. In Delhi the Delhi Right To Information March has been formed to popularize the use of the Act The Right-to-Information wave is an extraordinary development. It will have enormous significance in checking government excess, and exposing corruption. Successes will not be immediate, but eventual.
In the Union capital Parivartan, an NGO, has been using the Right to Information to fight corruption in the local bodies. According to Arvind Kejriwal of Parivartan, “it has significant implications and can actually mean a severe blow to corruption. All the corruption takes place in records. For instance, the unscrupulous officials fill up in records that 200 meters of road was made whereas actually only 100 meters is made and the payment is made for 200 meters.
“If a citizen files an application before the start of any work that he would like to come and inspect the work after it has been completed, the authorities would be scared to fill up wrong measurements as they know that someone is going to come and inspect their records and the work. They would not fill up wrong entries. If every citizen were to start filing such applications for any government work that they see happening in their own areas, this would mean a deadly blow to corruption.”
(The writer is a senior freelance journalist based in New Delhi)
