Indian
Express: New Delhi: Friday, 12 September 2014.
For a
government that won office on the plank of fighting corruption and promising
‘‘achhe din’’ to citizens disgruntled by poor service delivery, one would have
thought putting in place an effective anti-corruption and grievance redressal
framework would be a top priority. However, after 100 days of being in power,
the Modi sarkar’s report card on transparency and accountability disappoints.
It is well
established that openness in government functioning is a prerequisite for good
governance. One of the key accomplishments of the UPA was the enactment of the
RTI Act. However, its implementation remained lackadaisical and left much to be
desired. When Team Modi promised transparent and accountable governance in its
inimitable style, through impossible-to-miss advertisements in every newspaper,
a natural expectation was that the transparency regime in the country would be
strengthened.
Unfortunately,
in the first 100 days of the Modi government, there is no perceptible
improvement in the implementation of the RTI Act. On the contrary, for the
first time since its constitution in 2005, the Central Information Commission
(CIC) is headless. The post of the chief information commissioner, which fell
vacant on August 22, has not yet been filled. This has serious ramifications,
since the RTI Act envisages a critical role for the chief information
commissioner, including superintendence, management and direction of the
affairs of the CIC. In the absence of the chief, the functioning of the CIC is
seriously impaired and the decisions given in the interim could be challenged
in court.
Currently,
close to 25,000 appeals and complaints are pending with the CIC and people have
to wait for months, sometimes even years, for their cases to be heard. Not
appointing a chief information commissioner is resulting in increasing the
backlog of cases and greater delays for those who are denied information and
are already frustrated by the long wait for justice. Information commissions
are the adjudicators under the RTI law if they do not function properly, it
results in the violation of the critical right to information of ordinary
citizens, who need it to hold their government accountable.
The 100 days
also witnessed a positive development the government revised the rules for the
appointment of the anti-corruption ombudsman, the Lokpal. The Modi government
has amended the UPA’s regressive rules and removed the problematic provision
that empowered the Central government to shortlist candidates from which the
search committee could recommend names to the selection committee. That
provision had drawn the ire of the eminent jurists, Fali Nariman and Justice
K.T. Thomas, who resigned from the search committee, stating that it had been
rendered redundant as the rules did not allow the members to independently
single out deserving persons who could be appointed to the Lokpal.
However, the
new government has failed to address the most regressive provision in the
rules, which effectively ensures that the non-judicial members of the Lokpal
will comprise almost exclusively of bureaucrats. This implies that the Lokpal
will join the long list of institutions in the country that, instead of being
led by men and women who are most competent for the job, have actually become
post-retirement slots for civil servants.
Leaders of
the BJP, including Arun Jaitley and Ravi Shankar Prasad, who are now senior
ministers in the Modi administration, had made statements on the floor of the
House, and rightly so, that the mere passage of the Lokpal law will not rid the
country of corruption and maladministration. During the debate on the Lokpal in
Parliament, they stressed the need for an effective whistleblower protection
and grievance redressal law. In fact, in February, Parliament, with active
support of BJP legislators, passed the Whistle Blowers Protection (WBP) Bill.
This gave many people reason to believe that a new dispensation under the BJP
would be serious about promptly framing proper rules to operationalise the WBP
Act and put in place an effective mechanism for redressing grievances.
However, even
after 100 days and several attacks on whistleblowers, no rules for the WBP Act
are in sight. On the contrary, in July, while responding to a question in the
Lok Sabha on the safety of whistleblowers, the concerned minister did not even
mention the WBP Act. The transfer of Sanjiv Chaturvedi, the former chief
vigilance officer of AIIMS, by the new government was also widely seen as a
move to victimise a whistleblower.
Finally, the
performance of the government, in terms of achieving its electoral promise of
delivering basic amenities to citizens, can be judged by whether it has put in
place an effective mechanism for time-bound delivery of services and grievance
redressal. Only a robust grievance redressal mechanism, which holds government
functionaries accountable for failure to deliver services in a time-bound
manner, can protect people from the menace of everyday petty corruption and
inefficiency, due to which they are denied their basic rights and entitlements
like rations, pensions, healthcare and education.
Unfortunately,
there has been no perceptible effort so far by the new government to put in
place a strong system for resolving complaints. Also, the government has not
reintroduced the 2011 grievance redressal bill in Parliament, which had lapsed
with the dissolution of the 15th Lok Sabha.
Undoubtedly,
the mission to deliver good governance cannot be expected to be achieved in 100
days, but decisive action on these critical issues would certainly show the
government’s commitment to fulfilling its pledge of ensuring transparent and
accountable governance.
The
writers are social activists working on issues of transparency and
accountability in governance
With
inputs from Amrita Johri
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