Telegraph
India: Opinion: Monday, September 02, 2019.
Ever
since the Bharatiya Janata Party government flexed its legislative muscle, and
successfully amended and diluted the Right to Information Act, many people have
asked if the RTI Act has been maimed beyond repair and if its obituary should be
written. While analysing the amendments, it is also necessary to understand the
nature of the people’s right to information not just as a law, but as an
inseparable part of basic human and democratic rights. As a part of the freedom
of expression, the RTI is an irrepressible part of free speech; as a part of
the right to life, it is as demanding as hunger, and as integral a part of the
right to equality, as basic as human dignity.
The
RTI is a movement far beyond a legislation, and while the amendments will
certainly be a hindrance for India’s citizens, a review of the RTI movement
will indicate clearly that the people’s need to ask questions and demand
answers will always find an outlet.
The
BJP has had what it has called its most successful and productive legislative
session of Parliament ever. But a dream for some can be a nightmare for others.
Law as an instrument of control and manipulation is very different from law as
a reflection of shared values. As with many other powerful rulers, a lesson the
BJP and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh think tank will be taught one day is that
they might gain legal manoeuvrability by legislating to suppress democratic
space, but there are basic human rights that no law, no police, no armed force,
and indeed no mob or propaganda can curtail.
There
is legislative cunning behind the RTI amendments. Successive governments have
realized that people can, and have used RTI like an ‘x ray’ or ‘MRI’ machine to
examine people in power, and their acts of omission and commission. This has
been deeply uncomfortable and clearly unacceptable for an autocratic regime.
The pursuers of these acts of government have been nearly 50 lakh individuals
and collectives spread across the country, not always organized. Rather than
undermining and diluting any of the individual provisions of access that the
Indian RTI law has given to citizens, and rather than trying to muffle the
applicants themselves the government decided to control the machinery and its
power centre. By amending Sections 13, 16, and 27 of the Act, the Central
government can now decide the tenure, status , and salaries of both the Central
and state information commissions. As a result, a message of subservience has
been conveyed to its most powerful body. The BJP is clearly driven by an
unspoken agenda to weaken all independent institutions. The determination with
which it bulldozed the amendments through both Houses, with blank refusals to
have consultations in parliamentary committees or outside with people, shows
that they felt that this was a step they were determined to take to free
themselves from at least those questions that have repeatedly troubled the
leadership.
Questions
such as the rational basis for taking the policy decision of demonetization and
its recorded impact, disclosure of non-performing assets, which bad loans were
being written off by the tax payer’s hard earned money, the disclosure of
mining leases to corporate conglomerates, operational details of VVPAT machines
and EVMs and the role played by them in securing independence of the election
process have been plaguing a government that sees critics as enemies and
refuses to see them as allies in nation building and maintaining ethical
standards.
As
we watch basic provisions of the Constitution being toppled one after the
other, similar questions will arise about some of the most basic freedoms being
curtailed including the right to speak; freedom of expression; the right to
association; the right to protest and dissent. All of these are connected to
the ‘people’s right to information’, but do not draw their legitimacy from an
RTI law alone.
When
villagers in Rajasthan first began the struggle for the right to information in
the early 1990s, there was no RTI law. It was a people’s assertion of their
‘birthright’ to information that drove them on. When educated elites asked why
poor people were asking for information, and not for employment, wages, food,
or medicines, it was ordinary people who pointed out that there was an
inalienable connection between the right to know and the right to live. One of
their first and defining slogans was “Hum janenge, hum jiyenge”. If you did not
know how much food was coming to the ration shop how could you demand your
rations? If you do not know stock position of the medicines in the public
health centre, how can you demand your snake bite serum? Similarly, if you did
not know what the wages were on the muster roll how could you ensure that
minimum wages were paid? These were some of the fundamental questions that
people asked in the battle to know — and to live.
Similarly
in the struggle against corruption, it was people who articulated the slogan
“Hamara paisa hamara hisab (our money, our accounts)” to point out that every
single rupee with the State belongs to the people, and it is their sovereign
right to demand accountability and fight corruption.
The
RTI law they got enacted was a paradigm shift in realizing constitutional
rights that cannot be taken back.
This
is what the judge, K.M. Joseph, wrote in his concurring Supreme Court judgment
on allowing the Rafale aircraft deal papers to be used as evidence even though
they were informally obtained: “With the passing of the Right to Information
Act, the citizens’ fundamental right of expression under Article 19(1)(a) of
the Constitution of India, which itself has been recognised as encompassing a
basket of rights, has been given fruitful meaning.”
Just
because the government has weakened the RTI law does not mean that it has
weakened the people’s resolve to use the law to fight injustice, corruption,
and the arbitrary exercise of power.
When
the RTI law was being drafted, and was facing secret opposition from people
working against it in government, it was the files and their notings that
exposed the hollow and motivated arguments against transparency. When the
government dragged its feet, and refused to appoint information commissioners,
it was the RTI that revealed their prevarication. And even during amendments in
the past, RTI helped expose the plans to weaken the law.
One
immediate response to the amendments from RTI users has been to sharpen their
RTI tools and demands. In Rajasthan, for instance, in a joint exercise of civil
society and the state government, a comprehensive proactive disclosure website
called “Jan Soochna Portal” is to be launched in early September, to implement
suo motu disclosure provisions of the RTI Act in letter and spirit. This will
to some extent prevent public information officers from hiding information from
people and applicants.
On
the day the president signed the amendment, RTI campaigners launched a powerful
new campaign called “Use RTI, demand accountability”. To be filed on the first of every month across
the country, this demand for transparency and accountability will not only
strengthen the people’s right to ask questions, it will also bring citizens
groups together to extract meaningful answers and reinforce the fast
disappearing deliberative aspects of our democracy.
The
judge, Joseph, in the same judgment, explained how far reaching this right now
is: “The RTI Act through Section 8(2) has conferred upon the citizens a
priceless right by clothing them with the right to demand information even in
respect of such matters as security of the country and matters relating to
relation with foreign state. No doubt, information is not to be given for the
mere asking. The applicant must establish that withholding of such information
produces greater harm than disclosing it. Ability to secure evidence thus forms
the most important aspect in ensuring the triumph of truth and justice.”
It
is in that unstoppable human search for truth and justice that the right to
information will continue to shine.
(The
authors are social activists working with the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan
and the National Campaign for People’s Right to Information)
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