Plug the gaps to bolster RTI Act

INVITED as India’s first Chief Information Commissioner to celebrations marking 20 years of the Right to Information Act (RTI) Act in Beawar (Rajasthan), the town where the first public demonstration in support of such a law was held in 1996, I began my address with lines of a song from Guru Dutt’s classic film Kaagaz Ke Phool:

“Waqt ne kiya kya haseen sitam Tum rahe na tum, hum rahe na hum…”

As the 2005 Act celebrates its coming, there has also been much heated discussion, often emotional, of the benefits that it has brought and the challenges as well. This can be said to have been among the causes for the discomfiture in the 2014 national elections of the very government that piloted the Act.

The government that has succeeded it has avowedly retained the credo of transparency and accountability and sought to distinguish governance from government. Narendra Modi’s promise in his 2014 poll campaign was a maximum of the former with a minimum of the latter — a promise of increased participation of the people in governance through the slogan “Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas”.

Yet, as former Delhi HC Chief Justice AP Shah mentioned in his address at the RTI Mela in Beawar, the independence of information commissions has been eroded by lowering the administrative stature of information commissioners through amendment of the law and with the passage of a new law for the protection of privacy. There has also been a consequent amendment to the RTI Act’s Section 8 that had allowed for disclosure of deemed private information where public interest is established. The Act has, therefore, been transformative in terms of the nature of governance.

It is universally accepted that the essence of a government in a democracy must be transparency, with every organ — the executive, the judiciary and the legislature — being answerable to the citizen. But insofar as the bureaucratic credo in India was considered, the feudal concept of “mai baap” persisted long after the birth of the Republic.

The RTI Act declares that democracy requires an informed citizenry and transparency of information which are vital to its functioning, and also to contain corruption and hold governments and their instrumentalities accountable to the governed. So, the Act seeks to make the governed in democracy prime partners in governance. Seen in this light, the legislation is an instrument intended to strengthen governance immeasurably.

In their Report of the People’s Assessment (2008), two eminent NGOs — Right to Information Assessment and Analysis Group (RaaG) and the National Campaign for People’s Right to Information — had, based on an exhaustive analysis of feedback from 11 states, found that awareness levels regarding the RTI Act were high, compared to the awareness of any other law in its infancy. Over 40% of the urban respondents knew about the Act, although the figure was fewer than 20% for the rural ones.

The sources of awareness in rural India were newspapers (35%), followed by television and radio, friends and relatives (10% each), and NGOs (5%). In urban areas, the main sources were newspapers (30%), NGOs (20%), TV (20%) friends and relatives (10%).

On the negative side was the finding that administrative problems continued to dog the filing of applications. This was exacerbated by the fact that there were 114 different sets of RTI rules to implement the Act across the country and no single place where they were all accessible. Some states even insisted on correspondence in the local language despite Section 4(4) of the Act that requires that information be disseminated in the “most effective method of communication in that local area”.

These birth pangs have been largely overcome and today every Central ministry and departments in states can boast of websites as mandated under the Act. Rajasthan and Karnataka have Jan Soochna and Mahiti Kanaja portals, respectively, giving access to all government departments, obviating the need to apply formally for information that the law deems routine but is of much everyday use to the average consumer.

In the assessment of these findings on the impact of the RTI Act on public authorities, the 2006 report found that over 20% of rural and 45% of urban PIOs (public information officers) claimed that changes had been made in the functioning of their offices because of the legislation. Over 60% of these changes pertained to improving record maintenance, which had, as I myself had found while hearing cases from a cross-section of our most efficient offices, been a grossly neglected area.

Interestingly, even by then, in 10% of the rural offices and as many as 25% of the urban public authorities, what had resulted were adaptations in procedures of functioning and decision-making to bring them in line with the RTI. This figure would have grown considerably since then. Yet, the information shared is more likely to be a blandishment of government successes rather than the public’s need, at least as far as the Union government is concerned.

There has been some progress in the Right to Information becoming real for India’s people, but a great deal remains to be done. Most importantly, citizens of India need, through this instrument, to become a part of the system of governance, the degree of which alone is the best gauge of what is democracy or, in other words, governance by the people.

Although a beginning has been made by applying transparency to governance, it is only a beginning. And accountability has been even less forthcoming. What then do we need to do?

Quite clearly, the foremost requirement of all is not only universal awareness of their right among all citizens. A law can be of little use if it is not used, and it will not be used by those who do not know of it.

The time has come to look forward. The Act has become a part of governance. To make it more effective, the people themselves must take the lead as part of the government, through panchayats, through the judiciary, through the bureaucracy and through the legislatures whose members are owners of this Act.

Wajahat Habibullah, the first Chief Information Commissioner of India, has also served as the chairperson of the National Commission for Minorities.