The
Daily Star: Bangladesh: Sunday, September 15, 2019.
With
some 130 countries around the world having adopted Right to Information (RTI)
laws, we now know a great deal about how citizens use this law in a variety of
social, political and economic contexts in as rich a variety of ways as there
are cultures and peoples on this planet.
In
the older democracies, where RTI and similar laws have been around for a while,
studies show that the focus of the law has now shifted to online availability
of most such information. In some countries, national, provincial, and local
governments have begun to usher in “open government” mechanisms, making their
information available proactively through online platforms. As a result, the
requirement of submitting formal RTI requests to concerned public authorities
is becoming redundant.
However,
where the law is of more recent vintage and formal requests for most
information are necessary, studies are focused more on understanding the
balance between a citizen’s demand for information and the ability or
willingness of public bodies to supply them. These studies try to understand
what motivates citizens to use the law and how public officials relate to them.
Some studies try to measure if any change is taking place in the traditional
secretive mind-set of public officials; others focus on whether the authorities
treat people with greater deference and whether citizens are becoming more
comfortable in applying the law.
A
recent angle examines the effect of growing authoritarianism in many countries
on the operation of RTI law. Are public authorities in such countries
disregarding or downplaying the law? Are citizens becoming more wary about
submitting sensitive RTI requests? Has the fear of retaliatory measures by the
authorities increased? In short, how important is democracy for the success of
RTI?
Knowing
how RTI laws are used worldwide helps us in Bangladesh assess our own progress
with the law. We know from the growing literature on the subject that RTI is
globally viewed as a tool for citizens to hold public authorities accountable
and keep government as transparent as feasible. It is premised upon the view
that citizens are the owners of all powers of the state in a democracy and,
therefore, public authorities must be accountable to them. Public officials
have the responsibility to disclose any information, with few exceptions, that
citizens may seek. Most research and advocacy work on RTI seek to answer two
questions: what information do citizens seek, and how does this information
link to the public interest?
The
studies show that the law is used for more reasons than accountability-seeking
purposes alone. Many information requests are focused primarily on private and,
what some scholars have described as “micro-political goals”, as distinct from
what we think of as public interest, or “macro-political” uses of the law.
Under
the “public accountability model” citizens, particularly in more stable
democratic societies, generally seek information that is useful for political
mobilisation and oversight, linked to issues of importance to the larger
public. In low-and-middle-income democracies where corruption and inefficiency
are widespread, activists, journalists, and political workers use the law
primarily to obtain evidence of government performance and decision making.
There are case studies showing successful use of information, disclosed under
RTI, in campaigns to demand better public services or denounce corruption.
The
law is also used to seek non-exempted personal information available with
public authorities on candidates seeking election, which may be used to incite
the public against them. Demand for publicly relevant information is feebler in
newer or weaker democracies, where a greater share of citizens is not used to
democratic politics.
Publicly-relevant
information has been described by some to be only the “tip of the iceberg,”
with the majority of applications being of a more mundane nature. Under this
so-called “iceberg model”, citizens seek information mainly “for private,
micro-political goals with little potential for publicity or demand-making on
behalf of collective goals and unlinked from issues of public attention.” Such
information is largely used to solve private problems, either in the business
sector, such as navigating regulations, pursuing government contracts; or for
individuals, such as accessing government benefits. While these uses are
important, they also are the type of information normally available on
government websites. A legitimate question that arises here is why should such
information be obtained through the time-consuming RTI process. RTI enthusiasts
everywhere must ponder on the question.
From
the global perspective, demand for public accountability-generating information
is the rule rather than the exception. It also seems that the main obstacle
facing many RTI regimes is not demand but supply. There are deficiencies in
most situations both in the response of public offices to people’s demand for
information and in the instruments of dispute resolution between demand and
supply sides, such as Information Commissions.
Unfortunately,
no serious academic study on the operation of RTI in Bangladesh is known to
have been undertaken yet. The law is yet to draw more in-depth attention from
academia, the socially alert educated class and civil society in general.
Whether it is general apathy towards governance issues, lack of faith in the
commitment and preparedness of public authorities towards the law, fear of
retaliatory measures by irate recipients of sensitive RTI requests, lack of
awareness of the population generally, or a combination of all, the RTI regime
in Bangladesh is yet to take off the ground in a meaningful way.
On
basis of the models discussed above, we could perhaps say that the “iceberg
model” applies to the situation of Bangladesh. Some use of the law has, of
course, taken place here over the years. In the earlier years the users were
largely from the lowest rungs of our society and rural communities who were
motivated by NGOs to use the law to obtain benefits under government programmes.
In more recent years, a small number of people from the middle class and some
RTI activists have sought to use the law for limited public interest issues. At
this rate, the law may continue to limp forward but the basic objective of the
law, which is to establish people’s oversight on the performance of public
bodies, cannot be achieved.
For
RTI to succeed truly in Bangladesh, motivated and educated social and political
advocates must pick up the baton. Equally importantly, the Information
Commission must play the shepherding role provided to it under the law. Having
gained the middle-income country status recently, Bangladesh should now be able
to prove itself to be a country where citizens feel encouraged and motivated to
use RTI to advance “public, macro-political goals”. The government has made a
formal commitment to make that happen under Goal 16 of the UN sponsored SDGs,
only citizens can provide the proof.
Shamsul
Bari is Chairman and Ruhi Naz is Project Coordinator (RTI section) of Research Initiatives,
Bangladesh (RIB).
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