The Echo of India: Editorial: Sunday,
April 17, 2016.
The Centre is
drawing up a list of officials, irrespective of their ranks, who will handle
top secret files. The decision, says a The Hindu report, was taken after
several ‘leaks’ were found to have occurred. A democratic society is, by its
very nature, an open society. The functioning of the government should be open
to public scrutiny except in some select matters like defence, nuclear
research, etc. Most ‘secrets’ that governments tend to hold close to their chest
are, in fact, information that will embarrass the ruling party of the day. The
Netaji files are an instance. The people were being told for decades that
declassification of these files would have serious repercussions on India’s
relations with some foreign countries. A large number of these files have since
been declassified – both by the Bengal Government and the Centre. But nothing
earth-shaking has come out, except that successive Congress Governments at the
centre had kept members of Netaji’s family under surveillance.
The current
India-US strategic dialogue has raised concern about the scope and extent of
defence ‘cooperation’ between the two countries: whether what is being
contemplated will compromise India’s foreign and defence policies and push
India into a cold-war with China. China is certainly not acting like a good
friend and neighbour of India. The threat from China is real. This requires
that India attain the capability to defend itself on its own against any
military misadventure by any of its neighbours, not just China. But that does
not necessarily mean that India should abandon her independent foreign and
defence policies and dovetail these to the policies of a big Power and become
subservient to it. Keeping such sensitive matters under the blanket in the name
of secrecy will not be in national interest. These should be brought into the
public domain and debated nationally.
Secrecy and
openness stand in inverse ratio to each other. Excessive secrecy tends to make
the government less and less accountable to the people. In the United States
there is the practice of top officials appearing before concerned committees of
the Congress from time to time for briefing and giving its members a full
report. Many unsavoury facts came out that way. India’s legacy, since the
colonial period, has been to treat everything as top secret. Even the RTI Act
has largely failed to break this tradition. It is time the government started
taking the people into confidence. There should be a mechanism to share
information regarding really sensitive and confidential matters with Members of
Parliament.
.JPG)
.JPG)
