Times of India: Article: Sunday, 13 August 2023.
Several parliamentarians and civil society activists have raised concerns that the Digital Personal Data Protection Act (DPDP) 2023 passed by Parliament this week may be the final nail in the coffin for the Right To Information (RTI) Act. When it came into force in 2005, it was hailed as a ‘sunshine law’ that would make governments transparent and accountable. But even before the data Act, RTI had suffered a thousand cuts.
Just ask Reena (uses only one name), a resident of Delhi’s Dakshinpuri resettlement colony and a divorcee who makes ends meet by cooking in people’s homes. Struggling with rising living expenses as a single mother, she tried to apply for scheduled caste certificates for her three children in 2012 in order to access government schemes and much-needed financial aid. After several months of petitions and pleadings, she hit a wall. The Delhi government required proof of her ex-husband’s SC status to move ahead.
“I went from one office to another but there was no one who would listen. They just said that there is no policy for single divorced women like me.” Frustrated, Reena filed an RTI in 2016, with the help of a social worker, asking for information on the government policy for single SC mothers who required certificates for their children. There was no response, but Reena persevered. It took two years for the Central Information Commission (CIC) to take up her case, and in August 2018, it ordered the government to take action. “Even though the order said that I should be given information and some way devised by which I can be given a caste certificate, nothing happened.” The six-year struggle appeared to be for nothing.
Reena’s story is not the exception but rather the rule. The initial promise of the RTI law of moving towards a rights-based culture where citizens could access information has been belied. Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS)’s Nikhil Dey, who was instrumental in conceptualising the RTI Bill, says, “It was a movement to overthrow the colonial legacy and move to a culture of transparency.” Yet 18 years later, lack of proactive disclosure by the government, long delays, lack of punitive action when information is not given in time have contributed to its slow death. Shailesh Gandhi, former information commissioner in the CIC, sarcastically describes RTI as “the right to deny information.”
RELUCTANCE TO SHARE
The RTI Act was based on the premise that all information which was in public interest should be made public unless it impacted the nation’s security or impinged on someone’s privacy. However, it seems that public authorities did not get the memo. Information on spending taxpayers’ money, voter lists, criminal antecedents of elected representatives have only been made public after years of advocacy and court cases. Even then there is no consistency. In 2011, Gandhi as an information commissioner had ordered RBI to make the list of loan defaulters public. Four years later, he sought the same information from a public sector bank. “I attached my order and sought the same details from them which they denied,” he says.
The first instinct of public authorities continues to be to deny information, says Venkatesh Nayak, director Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI). “The promise of providing proactive information is not being fulfilled under section 4 of the Act. It is now request-based information but even that demand is not met because the system sees RTI applications as a headache rather than a taxpayer asking for information,” he says.
Under the data Act, the personal information of public officials will not be disclosed under the RTI Act. The provision that such information could be disclosed provided it serves a larger public interest has been done away with.
A CHRI analysis showed that rejecting RTIs on the basis that it was personal information under section 8 (1) (j) of the Act was already becoming increasingly common. Of the applications rejected, 38% cited this section, Nayak says, with the ministries of finance and railways the most frequent users. With no political will or commitment towards transparency, applicants have to approach multiple levels of authority eventually ending up at the doorstep of the state information commissions and CIC.
BACKLOG OF CASES
A study by Satark Nagrik Sangathan (SNS) found that there were over three lakh appeals and complaints pending in 26 information commissions as on June 2022 across the country, up from about two lakh in 2019. Maharashtra state information commission has the highest backlog of applications at 1 lakh cases, followed by Uttar Pradesh with nearly 45,000 cases. Delays can make seeking information a redundant exercise. For instance, it would take the West Bengal information commission 24 years and three months to dispose of a case. The assessment by SNS shows that 12 commissions, including the Central Information Commission, would take one year or more to dispose of a matter. In some cases like Jharkhand the information commission is defunct as there are no officials to preside on cases. Anjali Bhardwaj from the National Campaign for People’s Right to Information (NCPRI) says the backlash has been growing. “People have used the law to expose corruption, question human rights violations and show truth to power. This is perhaps the reason why there has been a strong backlash and consistent attempts have been made to weaken this right,” she says.
DATA ACCESS CURBED
Rajsamand resident Chattar Singh, who works in an e-suvidha kendra in his village, helps people access government schemes, open bank accounts, create identity documents and get information about other digital services. Singh says that he often gets seniors complaining that their pension of Rs 1,000 a month has stopped abruptly. “Through RTI, I was able to check that they hadn’t submitted their annual verification and help restore their pension. If this information is stopped, there will be no method to check for ghost names on the list,” he says. The DPDP Act does not allow for collection or processing of third party data without consent like a NGO verifying names on an electoral list or NREGA muster roll and imposes a prohibitive penalty for those found using third party data. NCPRI’s Bhardwaj says, “This will restrict access to granular personal data that is necessary to hold the powerful to account in a democracy.” MKSS’s Dey says, “The data Act extends the cloak of secrecy under the Official Secrets Act, that only bureaucrats were bound by so far, to every citizen of the country.”
Several parliamentarians and civil society activists have raised concerns that the Digital Personal Data Protection Act (DPDP) 2023 passed by Parliament this week may be the final nail in the coffin for the Right To Information (RTI) Act. When it came into force in 2005, it was hailed as a ‘sunshine law’ that would make governments transparent and accountable. But even before the data Act, RTI had suffered a thousand cuts.
Just ask Reena (uses only one name), a resident of Delhi’s Dakshinpuri resettlement colony and a divorcee who makes ends meet by cooking in people’s homes. Struggling with rising living expenses as a single mother, she tried to apply for scheduled caste certificates for her three children in 2012 in order to access government schemes and much-needed financial aid. After several months of petitions and pleadings, she hit a wall. The Delhi government required proof of her ex-husband’s SC status to move ahead.
“I went from one office to another but there was no one who would listen. They just said that there is no policy for single divorced women like me.” Frustrated, Reena filed an RTI in 2016, with the help of a social worker, asking for information on the government policy for single SC mothers who required certificates for their children. There was no response, but Reena persevered. It took two years for the Central Information Commission (CIC) to take up her case, and in August 2018, it ordered the government to take action. “Even though the order said that I should be given information and some way devised by which I can be given a caste certificate, nothing happened.” The six-year struggle appeared to be for nothing.
Reena’s story is not the exception but rather the rule. The initial promise of the RTI law of moving towards a rights-based culture where citizens could access information has been belied. Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS)’s Nikhil Dey, who was instrumental in conceptualising the RTI Bill, says, “It was a movement to overthrow the colonial legacy and move to a culture of transparency.” Yet 18 years later, lack of proactive disclosure by the government, long delays, lack of punitive action when information is not given in time have contributed to its slow death. Shailesh Gandhi, former information commissioner in the CIC, sarcastically describes RTI as “the right to deny information.”
RELUCTANCE TO SHARE
The RTI Act was based on the premise that all information which was in public interest should be made public unless it impacted the nation’s security or impinged on someone’s privacy. However, it seems that public authorities did not get the memo. Information on spending taxpayers’ money, voter lists, criminal antecedents of elected representatives have only been made public after years of advocacy and court cases. Even then there is no consistency. In 2011, Gandhi as an information commissioner had ordered RBI to make the list of loan defaulters public. Four years later, he sought the same information from a public sector bank. “I attached my order and sought the same details from them which they denied,” he says.
The first instinct of public authorities continues to be to deny information, says Venkatesh Nayak, director Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI). “The promise of providing proactive information is not being fulfilled under section 4 of the Act. It is now request-based information but even that demand is not met because the system sees RTI applications as a headache rather than a taxpayer asking for information,” he says.
Under the data Act, the personal information of public officials will not be disclosed under the RTI Act. The provision that such information could be disclosed provided it serves a larger public interest has been done away with.
A CHRI analysis showed that rejecting RTIs on the basis that it was personal information under section 8 (1) (j) of the Act was already becoming increasingly common. Of the applications rejected, 38% cited this section, Nayak says, with the ministries of finance and railways the most frequent users. With no political will or commitment towards transparency, applicants have to approach multiple levels of authority eventually ending up at the doorstep of the state information commissions and CIC.
BACKLOG OF CASES
A study by Satark Nagrik Sangathan (SNS) found that there were over three lakh appeals and complaints pending in 26 information commissions as on June 2022 across the country, up from about two lakh in 2019. Maharashtra state information commission has the highest backlog of applications at 1 lakh cases, followed by Uttar Pradesh with nearly 45,000 cases. Delays can make seeking information a redundant exercise. For instance, it would take the West Bengal information commission 24 years and three months to dispose of a case. The assessment by SNS shows that 12 commissions, including the Central Information Commission, would take one year or more to dispose of a matter. In some cases like Jharkhand the information commission is defunct as there are no officials to preside on cases. Anjali Bhardwaj from the National Campaign for People’s Right to Information (NCPRI) says the backlash has been growing. “People have used the law to expose corruption, question human rights violations and show truth to power. This is perhaps the reason why there has been a strong backlash and consistent attempts have been made to weaken this right,” she says.
DATA ACCESS CURBED
Rajsamand resident Chattar Singh, who works in an e-suvidha kendra in his village, helps people access government schemes, open bank accounts, create identity documents and get information about other digital services. Singh says that he often gets seniors complaining that their pension of Rs 1,000 a month has stopped abruptly. “Through RTI, I was able to check that they hadn’t submitted their annual verification and help restore their pension. If this information is stopped, there will be no method to check for ghost names on the list,” he says. The DPDP Act does not allow for collection or processing of third party data without consent like a NGO verifying names on an electoral list or NREGA muster roll and imposes a prohibitive penalty for those found using third party data. NCPRI’s Bhardwaj says, “This will restrict access to granular personal data that is necessary to hold the powerful to account in a democracy.” MKSS’s Dey says, “The data Act extends the cloak of secrecy under the Official Secrets Act, that only bureaucrats were bound by so far, to every citizen of the country.”
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