Times of
India: Chennai: Tuesday, September 10, 2019.
Citizens
in Bengaluru from the comfort of their homes or offices find out which roads
are pothole-ridden, or track various crime or traffic statistics on the government
website concerned. In , Tamil Nadu, a state with one of the highest internet
penetrations and tech-savvy people, the various government websites have shoddy
data that is either not updated regularly or has the barest of information.
Whether
it is basic statistics about a department or updates like minutes of meeting
and decisions taken, agencies of the Tamil Nadu avoid making proactive
disclosures as is mandatory under section 4 of the Right to Information (RTI)
Act.
For
instance, neither the Chennai Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board
(popular as Metroater) nor the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board (TNPCB)
published minutes of its board meetings online, despite taking decisions that
directly affects lakhs of citizens.
None
of the 17 public universities puts out minutes of meetings of the syndicate,
senate or academic council online. At University of Madras, several professors
have raised the issue of making the minutes public, but to no avail.
Citizens
of Kerala or Karnataka can login to the website of the state assembly and
access information about starred and unstarred questions during the session.
Such information is yet to be uploaded on the TN assembly website.
Such
a method of working indicates poor governance and transparency measures taken
by the bureaucrats as well as politicians in the state, activists and retired
bureaucrats said.
The
state information commission, which had reviewed the proactive disclosures of
certain govenment agencies, itself maintains a poorly updated website with the
latest data being four years old.
M
G Devasahayam, a former TN bureaucrat, said such an opaque and autocratic way
of functioning came from a mindset that looks at citizens as subjects of a
kingdom. “Our politicians think we don’t have any right to information,” he
said.
Jayaram
Venkatesan, a social activist and convenor of anti-corruption NGO Arappor
Iyakkam, said most of the data that should be made public is already available
to government officials. “They just need to make it public for citizens. It
needs no extra effort, just political will,” he said.
Jayaram
pointed out that information pertaining to beneficiaries of government schemes
like free laptops or housing should particularly be published online so that
citizens know that the system was transparent. “This is the best way to reduce
corruption,” he said.