The News Minute: Delhi: Thursday,
May 12, 2016.
The political
fraternity across party lines suffers from RTI phobia. Threatened with exposure
of their own misdemeanours, all political parties cry foul against a law that
has ushered in transparency for citizens in every part of governance in India.
The only area outside this pathbreaking law's remit are issues like national
security.
Now, without
any specific provocation, prominent politicians are raising hue and cry over
`misuse’ of the Right to Information (RTI) Act. Former Civil Aviation minister,
Praful Patel is one of them. He was thoroughly exposed through an RTI query
which established how his daughters misused Air India during his regime as
minister. Rajiv Shukla, closely associated with the BCCI, which is under
pressure to come under RTI Act, is also parroting the same. His attack is even
more ridiculous as it is the Congress Party to which he belongs that implemented
the RTI Act on 12th October, 2005.
The way
governments have tried to bring in amendments (mostly unsuccessfully) to the
RTI Act would lead Indians to believe that it was a major political blunder
which must be reversed. Against this background it is important to note that,
in a comprehensive worldwide RTI Rating Project (2012) comprising 90 countries
undertaken by the Canada based Centre for Law and Democracy and Spain based
Access Info Europe, India stands 2nd in terms of a strong transparency law. The
United Stated of America (USA) is ranked 39th and the United Kingdom (UK) comes
at the 28th spot.
Most
important is the fact that Indian citizens from all walks of life all are using
the RTI Act successfully, a trend which was not envisioned by the executive and
the legislature. They thought a few activists would read and use it and their
voices could be easily scuttled. However, thanks to Aruna Roy and Anna Hazare
who sowed the seeds of public awareness in rural and urban areas, the RTI has become
a common tool to find out what’s happening with the tax payers’ money in issues
directly affecting citizens.
It could be
as microscopic as non-functioning street lights in your neighbourhood or
pension not received. It could be for as large as the CWG and 2G scams that
flared up as national scandals and became one of the reasons for containing the
Congress Party in 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
Public
authorities (read as government offices) are now flooded with RTI applications
and they too are adding to the chorus of `misuse’ and `overburden of work’ due
to RTI. However, no one’s listening, as thanks to activists and scholars who
drafted our RTI, they intelligently changed the nomenclature from `Freedom of
Information Act’ to `Right To Information Act’, which has made a world of
difference in citizen empowerment.
The RTI Act
was first threatened just a year after its implementation. In 2006, the
Manmohan Singh Government realized to its horror, that file notings in
government documents revealed a bit too much of how decisions were taken on
projects and proposals. It promptly tried to bring in an amendment in which
`file notings’ would be out of the purview of the RTI Act. Thanks to Anna
Hazare’s tenacious campaign, the government had to withdraw their proposal. A
second attempt at curtailing the act was thwarted by Aruna Roy.
Thereafter,
the government has been adding to the list of public authorities who are being
thrown out of the purview of the RTI Act. For example, the Special Branch,
Police in Maharashtra is out of the RTI Act. This means people cannot even get
simple information on how many foreigners are residing in their city or how
many are over-staying.
Funding for
political parties is another key issue. In 2013, an order of the Central Information
Commission (CIC) deemed India’s six national political parties to be “public
authorities” under the RTI Act. The landmark judgment noted: “We have no
hesitation in concluding that the INC/AICC, the BJP, the CPI(M), the CPI, the
NCP and the BSP have been substantially financed by the Central government and
therefore, are held to be public authorities under Section 2(h) of the RTI
Act.”
Anil Bairwal,
national co-ordinator for Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR), is the main
crusader along with noted RTI activist Subhash Agrawal, campaigning for making
political party donations transparent. Interestingly, they are fighting tooth
and nail with all the documents they have gathered from different government
departments, under RTI.
Elaborating
on why they come under RTI Act since they are ‘substantially’’ financed by the
government, Bariwal states that it is common knowledge that the political
parties get many benefits and facilities from various government departments.
Political parties get substantially financed by a very large amount by getting
tax exemption on all their income. In addition, all the major political parties
have been also provided facilities for residential and official use by
Directorate of Estates (DoE).
They have
been given offices and accommodation at prime locations in New Delhi like Akbar
road, Raisina road, Chanakyapuri, etc and are charged only a token amount of
money as rent or dues. These facilities are not just provided to them at
marginal rates but their maintenance, modernisation, renovation and
construction is also done at state expense. A large amount of money is also
spent by the Election Commission of India on political parties for giving
electoral rolls.
The ADR
official further said “Doordarshan and
AIR also provide free broadcast facilities to the political parties. If closely
seen, the money spent on that basis actually runs in crores of rupees. State
funding is also given for publicity of political parties during elections. It
is indeed very surprising that the political parties who at one end claim to
work under transparent and people-centric manner have flatly refused to work in
such a fashion.’’
Despite the
CIC order, politicians are now trying to bring a bill that would put all
political parties out of purview of the RTI Act but they have not succeeded so
far and are unlikely too.
Another
threat to the RTI Act is the judiciary which sometimes overrules CIC decisions.
Many good decisions by the CIC see the doors of various Courts by vested
interests and information is frozen until then. In addition, the selection of
CICs are largely confined to retired government servants who have been
conditioned to withhold information. Interestingly, until 2005, the Official
Secrets Act, 1923 ruled the roost and therefore conditioned the bureaucracy to
hide all information and treat citizens disdainfully in case they demanded
information.
The Right to
Information Act 2005 changed all that. Quite naturally, the Official Secrets
Act should have been repealed, but it hasn’t been. There is a Goyal committee
working towards it, presently. Thankfully though, a clause in Section 8(2) of
the RTI Act says, “Notwithstanding anything in the Official Secrets Act, 1923, nor
any of the exemptions permissible in accordance with subsection 8(1) of RTI
Act, a public authority may allow access to information, if public interest in
disclosure outweighs the harm to the protected interests.”
As per a
study in 2010 by http://www.cuts-international.org/ , in the Overview of the
Impact In India, it observes, ``the Act has produced a better impact on the
quality of the life of the poor and the marginalised. During the past five
years, the Act has brought positive changes in the levels of corruption and
accountability. There are quite a number of cases, where the Commission has
ordered for providing the details of the decision making processes including
file noting, cabinet papers, records of recruitment, selection and promotion of
staff, documents pertaining to tender processes and procurement procedure,
lists of beneficiaries of government subsidised schemes, such as food grains
supplied through ration shops, water and electricity, domestic gas, educational
and health facilities, shelter for poor, muster rolls under employment
guarantee schemes, etc. The disclosure of such vital information(s) resulted in
checking corrupt practices in delivery of services and ensuring the reach of
entitlements to the poor.’’
Perhaps the
RTIs strongest part is Section 4 which empowers every citizen to conduct
inspection of files in government offices during working hours and demand
Photostat copies, CDs. Models etc of any document. Citizens should invoke
Section 4 as much as possible. However, the ultimate dream of Transparent India
would be when, every government department adheres to the suo motu disclosures
mandated in Section 4, in which most of the information of its work is put on
its website and citizens would be able to get it by a mere click of the mouse.
If that happens, the percentage of RTI applications would reduce by more than
90%. A dream, which can come true, if the present breed of politicians is
replaced by ones who have no fixed agenda of filling in their coffers vulgarly
in their five years tenure. Let us be positive.
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