Sunday
Observer: Colombo: Sunday, September 30, 2018.
The
Right to Information (RTI) law has strengthened real democracy in India because
it asks for a share in everything – in decision making, in information seeking,
and in governance. It is fundamentally asking for both, transparency and
accountability at all levels of government.
This
was the core message shared by Ms Aruna Roy, the Indian social activist and a
pioneer of the RTI movement, who was in Colombo this week as a special guest at
Sri Lanka’s RTI week activities. She visited at the invitation of the Ministry
of Finance and Mass Media.
Former
civil servant turned civil society activist, Aruna Roy is a co-founder of
Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathana (MKSS), a social and grassroots organisation
for the empowerment of rural workers and farmers. As a major civil rights
movement in India, it played a crucial role in India adopting its national
level RTI law in 2005.In 2011, the TIME magazine included her among the 100
most influential people in the world.
In
Colombo, Roy spoke at three events: opening of the RTI research symposium, an
event for RTI trainers, and the government’s national observance of RTI Day
(September 28) held at the Nelum Pokuna theatre with over 1,000 public
officials and other invitees.
Tracing
the accomplishments of RTI since 2005, she said: “In India, our complexities
are such that it’s nearly impossible to make an issue universal. [Yet] the
success of RTI is that it has been uniformly accepted by the entire country.
That’s why around six million Indians use it every year by filing RTI
applications.”
RTI
users in India come from every walk of life, all social classes, and from all
states, “including places like Kashmir, Manipur, and the North-eastern states,
where the Armed Forces Special Powers Act is imposed which does not allow the
basic liberties that the Constitution has guaranteed. Even in those states, RTI
has been used. In areas of conflict where there is Maoist trouble, RTI is being
used,” she added.
The
main lesson from India is that, within a few years, “RTI has become a universal
norm that is deeply appreciated by people as a critical factor in ensuring
fair, decent and ethical governance.”
At
the same time, Roy cautioned that citizens and RTI champions need constant
vigilance to ensure that RTI law is not diluted or reduced in scope.
“There
is a persistent narrative which is underground, which is always critical of the
RTI,” she said. “Today, in India, they are busy trying to reduce the power of
the RTI law. The government is seeking amendment after amendment to reduce its
power. The latest is that they want to reduce the power of the Central
Information Commission (main appellate body),” she noted.
Encouragingly,
these moves are being resisted by civil society groups and ordinary citizens
all over India. “It is the six million citizen users of RTI who are blocking
the (Indian) government from being completely aggressive in taking away the
powers the RTI law gives us.”
At
the grassroots, meanwhile, RTI activism has also become hazardous for some
citizens using it in the public interest. “In some areas, RTI users face
threats, assaults and other kinds of harassment. We know that over 70 citizens
have been murdered for their RTI activism – some of these incidents go unreported
in the mainstream media,” Roy said.
Roy
paid a glowing tribute to these victims -- and to millions of Indians who
continue to use RTI in an increasingly polarised society where public interest
is under siege from vested interests.
Indeed,
RTI has always been a collective accomplishment – as documented in a new book,
The RTI Story: Power to the People (Lotus/Roli Books, India, 2018) that Aruna
Roy co-wrote with her MKSS colleagues. The book, which came out in April, has
done exceedingly well, she said.
“I
am one of the huge army of Indians who helped bring about RTI,” she told a
Colombo audience. “In a country like India, it can never be a lone battle. In
all the civil society battles, we play many different roles. And I would like
to play tribute to all my village friends – this book is the history of
ordinary people, who are always sidelined because they are never featured by
anybody.”
Roy
has always recognised the collective nature of the people’s movement for the
right to information. In 2000, when awarded the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay
award – known as Asia’s Nobel Prize -- she immediately dedicated it to the
‘ordinary’ people (both women and men) she works with.
In
a speech to Sri Lanka’s civil society activists, she said: “Wherever we come
from, we in civil society are one family. We share the same concerns -- which
is to live in better, ethical and just societies. To live where justice is not
elusive, but justice is the norm. Where equality is the norm.”
She
also had some advice to fellow travellers in Sri Lanka: “We in civil society
are often accused of being negative – every time we go and face persons in
authority, they ask us ‘Why do you always come in adversarial positions?’ And I
say to them the adversarial positions are a necessary starting point. It’s
like, questioning is the beginning of knowledge. It’s the beginning of a better
country. We learnt this from the Buddha -- that questioning is important, and
that rationality is critical to our way of thinking.”
In
that speech, Roy shared a quotation from the South African writer and poet
Jeremy Cronin: “Our role in a democracy is to speak truth to power. We must
make power truthful, and truth powerful.”
And
that’s the business of RTI all over the world, was Aruna Roy’s parting advice
to Sri Lanka’s activists for democracy and governance.
[Science
writer Nalaka Gunawardene moderated a discussion with Aruna Roy at the national
RTI observance in Colombo.]
.JPG)
.JPG)
