Republica; Pranav Bhattarai; Nepal; 16 April 2011,
Nepal was the first country in the South Asian region to have formal constitutional recognition of the right to information. This right was explicitly guaranteed at Article 16 of the 1990 Constitution. The incumbent Interim Constitution (2007) also guarantees right to information at Article 27. And the full-fledged Right to Information (RTI) Act enacted in 2007 is a stronger commitment towards it.
These constitutional and legal provisions have guaranteed that access to information is a fundamental right for civic empowerment. Citizens entrust their governments with power through elections, and with resources through payment of taxes. Those who are entrusted with this power bear a responsibility not only to serve but also to inform and encourage citizens to participate in decisions and actions that affect them. The right to demand information is fundamental to building trust among citizens and the state, and a key to promotion of good governance.
When citizens start demanding information and details on how their governments are spending public money and resources, public officials will have limited opportunities and chances to indulge in misappropriation and misallocation of funds. It has been proven that one of the many ways to promote good governance is to create a huge public demand for accountability and transparency. And the RTI law has this power and strength to generate demand for accountable and transparent governance at varying levels.
Civic empowerment and engagement are the two most important dimensions in improving good governance on which efforts to demand accountability and transparency largely rely on an anti-corruption movement. As right to information law has this potentiality with a guarantee of access to information, it can empower citizens and engage them as well in demanding their governments to perform better and holding them to account for their decisions. The RTI as a tool can serve both to detect and to deter irregularity-by enhancing transparency and public oversight and by exposing leakages in development aid, procurement, development works and service delivery.
Civic empowerment and engagement are the two most important dimensions in improving good governance on which efforts to demand accountability and transparency largely rely on an anti-corruption movement.
The RTI enhances people´s trust in government when they feel that they have a say in government decisions and keeps a close eye on government activities regarding how it allocates and spends public money. Therefore, RTI law plays a vital role in enhancing state effectiveness and legitimacy by adequately listening and responding to people´s grievances. All quarters of the society such as citizenry, media, private sector and civil society can fight irregularities with this simple tool. All it takes is a little courage and inspiration to witness the power of real democracy.
ENORMOUS OPPORTUNITIES:
RTI has power to transform societies radically. From the development sector to service delivery to aid effectiveness, it can promote transparency at different levels because it has guaranteed access to information. We are spending around Rs 42 billion annually in local development initiatives but due to lack of political accountability, monitoring and vacuum in the local bodies, funds are being spent without any substantive outputs. If people´s access to information regarding allocation and mobilization of development funds is strengthened and provisions of proactive disclosure mechanisms strictly complied with, opportunities for misappropriation in development funds can be substantially minimized.
Public procurement, as other areas, is also one of the most contested sectors in Nepal. As cartels and collusions among the bidders are quite common in Nepal and have led us to compromise on the quality of development works and services, people´s access to these bidding documents under the RTI law ensures transparency with detection of foul plays in the process. People can obtain copies of the entire procurement process and see how public funds are being used to procure goods and services. When people start keeping close tabs on procurement, development plans, programs and budgetary allocations by using the RTI law, public bodies will have no option left except making everything open and transparent to the people.
The purview of our RTI law is wide. It also defines political parties including Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) as public bodies. This provision has given ample space for citizens to question and demand transparency in functions and funds of the political parties and NGO sector as well. Political accountability and development sector transparency under the RTI regime require answering to the citizens on issues of public concerns. The underlying principle here is that the citizenry has the ‘right to know’ and right to receive information.
But for all this to happen, information campaigns will have to trickle down to the community levels to create huge public demand so that people will be encouraged to look for details starting from the planning process itself to implementation phase of the development works. In order to institutionalize transparency in development funds being spent at the grassroots, the VDC and DDC Grants Operation Guidelines-2010 have mandatory provisions on them to disclose estimates, program and budget details proactively through notices and hoarding boards. But compliance has never been up to the mark. Thus, the increased public oversight can improve compliance of such proactive disclosure provisions by local bodies including the line agencies.
PAINFUL SILENCE:
The NGOs are key drivers in promoting and implementing the right to information regime. But if we look at the past three years, it appears that NGOs do not seem to be promoting and making use of RTI law proactively. Reasons behind their lack of initiatives for promoting RTI may be due to transparency provision on themselves. Many leading NGOs in Nepal are led by a coterie and are weak in internal governance and transparencies because of which they do not have high "moral ground" to demand transparency and accountability from others.
If we see India, several civil society organizations have become much active in promoting RTI law. "Drive Against Bribe" was a nationwide campaign initiated jointly by 700 independent groups, including eight media houses in India. The campaign encouraged people to use RTI to demand their legitimate rights from government departments, like getting a ration card, passport, widow´s pension, or provident fund, without paying bribes. There have been several grassroots initiatives in India since 2005.
In addition to civil society campaigns, government´s pro-activeness also becomes all the more important in promoting RTI law because countries like Bangladesh, since enactment in 2009, has handled over 29,000 RTI applications just in one year. But our National Information Commission has received less than hundred appeals since 2009. This shows that the government bodies, which bear principle obligations to disclose information, are not seen much proactive in implementing the law. Until now only around 400 public bodies, out of around 6000 in Nepal, have appointed Information Officers. The government has neither designated nor formed a nodal agency to monitor RTI implementation.
In Sweden, the government itself conducted "Open Sweden Campaign" in 2002 to increase public sector transparency, raise the level of public knowledge and awareness of information disclosure policies, and encourage active citizen involvement and debate. The Swedish government then accepted that even with the long standing existence of freedom of information in the country, there were problems with both the application of the law and public knowledge of their rights.
The law provides both the access and space for civic engagement in which citizens, media and civil society can actively engage in holding those in power accountable and transparent for their actions and decisions for better social accountability. Habits and cultures on both sides of the information demand and supply relationship must also be changed. While public bodies ought to change attitudes of secrecy to a climate of openness to prevent potentially corrupt situations, citizens also need to capture the spirit of demanding information as their fundamental right.
The RTI legislation alone is not enough unless it is implemented. The silence maintained over the last three years does not augur well for reaping enormous benefits from the law hinges on vibrant implementation. Therefore, the government, civil society and the media should collectively contribute to its effective implementation and ensure that RTI remains an integral part of the governance process as it has tremendous importance for effective service delivery, transparent development process, and good governance at all levels.
(Excerpted from a paper presented at the first RTI National Convention organized by Freedom Forum & The World Bank recently in Kathmandu)
.JPG)
.JPG)
