Indian Express: New Delhi: Monday, July 17, 2017.
Soon after
the GST regime was rolled out, the Hon’ble Prime Minister announced that the
Registrars of Companies (RoC) had struck 100,000 shell companies off their
rolls. Addressing chartered accountants in Delhi on July 1, 2017, Mr Narendra
Modi said this historical decision was a sterling example of how tough
decisions can be taken if “patriotism” served as the inspiration.
The
3,000-strong gathering welcomed this announcement with thunderous applause and
the media reported it as another step in the direction of curbing the influence
of black money, stemming the tide of corruption and cleaning up the economy, as
part of the demonetisation exercise that was launched on November 8, 2016.
So far, so
good. This author spent more than an hour looking for the list of companies
struck off the rolls by Delhi’s RoC, in vain. The website of the Ministry of
Corporate Affairs only displays a public notice from April this year, inviting
objections from any person on the proposal to terminate more than 26,000 registered
companies for being “defunct” and not seeking ‘dormant’ status formally under
the law.
This is not
to doubt the veracity of the Hon’ble PM‘s announcement. Instead this is one of
the indicators of how compliant public authorities are with the transparency
requirements of the Right to Information Act (RTI Act). This 12-year old law
places a duty on every public authority to place all relevant facts and figures
while announcing decisions that affect the public at large. The ‘termination’
of shell companies eminently qualifies to such treatment. Yet, there is very
little detailing of action taken by the RoCs.
Since
October, 2005 almost every government has breached its obligation of
transparency repeatedly. The bureaucracy has fought shy of graduating from
transparency on a “need to know basis” (where the government decides what
people should or should not know) to openness founded on the “people’s right to
know” as streamlined by the RTI Act.
It comes as
no surprise that the government has repeatedly refused to disclose details
about the November 2016 demonetisation exercise as well, despite attracting
enormous public support. The citizenry is required to applaud and cheer every
decision but it simply cannot be trusted with the details of the decision making
process, it seems.
Making sense
of the “method” behind the treatment meted out towards transparency by the
erstwhile UPA and the current NDA regimes is difficult to rationalise. Although
the enactment of the RTI law was hailed by many as a historic juncture, next in
importance only to India’s independence from colonial rule, and the UPA
Government showcased it as one of its biggest achievements, the then Prime
Minister certainly did not seem convinced of its value. On several occasions,
Dr. Manmohan Singh voiced his concerns about the “misuse” of the RTI law
although it turned out later that his office did not have any factual data to
back up this claim.
Even before
the RTI law could reach its first anniversary, the UPA Cabinet decided to amend
it to keep file notings or the deliberations of bureaucrats and ministers in
any decision-making process away from the public gaze. Thanks to the very vocal
opposition from those who had used the RTI law to dramatic effect to expose
corruption and wrongdoing at various levels, this proposal had to be shelved.
Nevertheless,
the UPA was instrumental in setting up a gigantic data portal that enabled any
person to track the manner of implementation of the Mahatma Gandhi Rural
Employment Guarantee Act in real time. Few initiatives taken by governments in
other developing countries could match this transparency initiative. This was
not all. Tour reports of ministers and senior bureaucrats visiting abroad were
required to be made public, MOUs with and earnings of public private
partnerships were made transparent and templates were issued to make
panchayats, government schools and hospitals in villages to volunteer
information about their working.
In complete
contrast with his predecessor, Prime Minister Modi is the most vocal advocate
of transparency that India has seen till date. Not only did the NDA make
transparent and accountable government as its springboard to capture power,
while celebrating the 10th anniversary of the RTI Act, the PM urged the public
authorities to study the trend of information requests from citizens.
Bureaucrats were advised to examine what categories of information people were
seeking again and again and if they could be disclosed voluntarily so that
people’s need to seek information through RTI applications is progressively
reduced- in fact the very purpose of the RTI Act. Till date, no such exercise
has been reported by any ministry or department at the Central level. The
bureaucracy seems to be sleeping over this commonsensical and practical idea.
Next, in
April, 2016, the Central Information Commission (CIC) issued a progressive
recommendation requiring the Government to publicise the details of work done
by every ministry and department. The Cabinet Secretariat took
uncharacteristically rapid action on this recommendation and issued a circular
to all ministries requiring them to publish reports of major achievements,
events and occurrences and decisions taken every month. More than a year has
passed since then, compliance remains extremely poor (less than 10% of the
ministries are complying with this directive). In fact, the Government
confessed that it did not have a mechanism to monitor the implementation of its
own circular, when quizzed by two members of the Lok Sabha in March, this year.
Or take the
case of the Naga framework agreement signed in August 2015 with much fanfare.
Reporting on this big breakthrough where at least one Naga faction agreed to
come to the discussion table, the Government assured that details of the
agreement would be publicly disclosed soon. Almost two years have passed, but
the Government has stubbornly refused to disclose any details of this agreement
despite the topic coming up for debate again and again, most recently, during
the recent Assembly elections held in Manipur.
The CIC also
upheld the decision to keep the entire matter under wraps in a case filed by
the author. While some Naga spokespersons are openly commenting on the content
of the negotiations, the citizen-taxpayer, it seems, has to wait for the
official will to turn in favour of transparency to ascertain the truth behind
their claims.
It is not as
if the NDA Government has paid only lip sympathy for transparency by preaching
from the pulpit without any follow-up. Soon after coming to power the NDA
Government amended the conduct rules applicable to bureaucrats of all ranks-
making transparency and accountability as core values that should inform their
working. Nevertheless, the policy level commitment to transparency has not
translated into actual practice at the cutting edge level of the administration
belying the promise of open and minimum government.
Why is the
bureaucracy fighting back against transparency instead of toeing the line? Why
is the political executive unable to get the administration to deliver on this
commitment? This contrast between the words and the actions of the UPA and NDA
Governments requires in-depth study.
In the
interim, it might help if transparency were declared a “patriotic duty” to
secure compliance from the administration. Few other values seem to be
attracting as much attention and action in these turbulent times.