Daily
Pioneer: Dhanbad: Sunday, 20 September 2015.
RTI was
enacted to ensure ethics in public service; it should not become a means for
unethical objectives.
How much
right is just right? This question bothers all democracies, mature and nascent.
It is against this that we need to evaluate laws, both existing and proposed.
Particularly, because democracies are supposed to be Governments of the people,
by the people, for the people. Naturally, laws must be framed and viewed in
this light. It is with this in mind that democracies of the world frame laws.
One such law is related to the Right to Information (RTI).
The
assumption being that the Government and its functionaries are answerable to
the people, and need to answer to the people because people have the right to
know how fair and square the functioning of the Government is. So we have
Freedom of Information mandated by law in many democracies. It is the Freedom
of Information Act of UK, Freedom of Information Act of the US and our own
Right to Information Act.
While ours is
relatively recent, the US law has a much longer history. But that is besides
the point. The issue is the objective of the enactment. Like many laws, the RTI
is also derived from the same principle of openness, transparency and fairness
leading to good governance. The important question is how far has it been
achieved. Needless to say that opinions are divided, and rightly so. But of
late, it is being realised that the law that started with a very noble
objective is gradually being subject to misuse, and debates have already
started in the UK, US and even India where the law is just a decade old. The
essence of the debate everywhere is the same. For one serious information
seeker there are many non-serious ones. Some mischievous too. In fact, the RTI
has thrown up a few new classes of people. The casual RTI seeker, the
motivated, the affected and above all, the professional.
It is meeting
the same fate as that of the Public Interest Litigation (PIL). The initiative
that started with a very noble objective was subject to severe misuse. The
judiciary now scrutinises the seriousness as well as the bonafides of the PILs
filed as it feels that a lot of valuable time is wasted. The same is happening
with RTI. The so-called RTI activists believe that they have a stake in
everything. Sometimes they seek such flimsy information which is already
available on the websites of organisations. There are cases where even PhD
students are using RTI as a means to collect data for thesis. Rather than
checking from the websites, they simply shoot an RTI with a Rs10 postal order
and all the data is there, compiled and classified for them.
Government
organisations and their functionaries are wasting reams of papers and huge man
hours to serve personal interests of such persons at great cost to the public
exchequer. This misuse of freedom is dangerous.
Gandhi felt
rights without duty will lead to confusion and chaos. In bid to inform public,
officials are getting less time to perform. RTI was enacted to ensure ethics
and morality in public service. It should not become a means for unethical
objectives. The new Law Commission can examine how to check misuse of RTI Act;
Rs10 is too small a price to make RTI seekers serious. Considering the locus
standi or even time frame may be worth examining. Infructuous, trivial and redundant
information seekers only waste time.
(The writer is a professor, Indian School of Mines,
Dhanbad (Jharkhand). He can be reached at ppathak.ism@gmail.com)
.JPG)
.JPG)
