Economic Times: New Delhi: Thursday,
September 29, 2016.
India has
ranked fourth in a worldwide comparative assessment of national legal
frameworks for right to information, slipping a rank as Mexico replaced Serbia
to head the list of 112 countries this year and pushed each of last year’s top
five countries a notch lower. Sri Lanka, at ninth spot, is the only other South
Asian country to figure among top ten nations in the ratings released on
Wednesday to mark International Day for Universal Access to Information.
Developed by
the Centre for Law and Democracy and Access Info Europe, the ratings are done
on the basis of 61 indicators totalling up to 150 points to gauge a country’s
legal framework.
Mexico scored
136 points, edging past Serbia, which ended up with 135 points. RTI experts
said India slipped one rank this year not because of its own performance but
because of Mexico’s surge. “Mexico has recently revamped General Act of
Transparency and Access to Public Information and has outranked Serbia. This is
why India has slipped a rank,” said Venkatesh Nayak, prog ramme coord i n at o
r at Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative.
All countries
in South Asia, barring Pakistan, scored more than 100 points. Pakistan remains
at 89th spot. As per the ratings, Arab countries are among the world’s weakest
on this important human rights indicator, with only four of the 22 member
states of the Arab League Jordan, Sudan, Tunisia, Yemen having RTI laws. “The
popular myth ‘RTI is meant for developed countries while developing countries
have other urgent issues of poverty, hunger, poor levels of basic services like
education and health’ stands disproved once again,” said Nayak.
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