The RTI Act is a far reaching act, and relatively very new. Any well meaning act, if it has to start making a change, must be given time, and slowly and surely, everyday some news trickles in of how this act has enabled some disenfranchised citizen to get justice and/or get a fair hearing.
The Government had created an Information Commission too, and had given it enough teeth to justify its formation. But as you could imagine, any good thing is shortlived when it comes to the Indian government. I am sure that in 50 years of extreme incompetence and corruption, there will be a lot of skeletons hidden in any government department's closet, and sooner or later, this act will probably try to tumble them out.
The netas and babus are a strong lobby, and more often than not, they only work for themselves. The Government of India fully agrees, and that is why it has been trying to clip the wings of the RTI act for a while now. The government wants to keep all the personal notings on government files out of the purview of the act, and this act of subversion has been meeting stiff resistance from all and sundry, including the media. Now why would the government want to do that? Well, I dont know, and I can't imagine what are the things that babus and netas keep writing on these files before they send it back into the great circle of red tape. Another less reported news was the government also wants to clip the teeth of the knowledge commission. While it currently has power to act on its own and punish people, now the government wants its role to be strictly that of a consultant.
However, help for the act came in from the most unlikely of places, from Her Majesty! They say that she parlayed against any changes to the act, and the act seems safe for now.
According to a newsitem from Rediff, the government's attempt to curb the act have been on since last year, the same year the act was introduced and passed! Man, talk about short-term objectives.
However, looking at current news stories, the government has said that no such amendments will be introduced in this current monsoon session. This probably leaves the possibility, or should i say probability, of any such amendments being introduced at a later date. Only a few days ago, some MPs from a regional party asking for a Telengana state in AP withdrew support from the UPA, and I expect the government to be busy putting that fire out.
Centre backtracks on Information Act
Official sources said Congress president Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh received many representations against the proposed amendments, aimed at deleting "file notings" from the new transparency regime.
Ms. Gandhi is believed to have advised the Government that there should be wider consultations among the stakeholders before the controversy over the file noting provisions got sorted out.
In the Government's own narrative, "file notings" were never part of the Right to Information Act as passed by Parliament.
In this narrative, neither the Group of Ministers nor the Parliamentary Standing Committee had intended to include the words "file notings" in the definition of "information" given in Section 2(f).
A controversy arose because the Central Information Commission interpreted Section 2(f) to include "file notings." As the Central Information Commissioner, O.P. Kejriwal, told the media in July 2006, "Information minus the notings amounts to taking the life out of the RTI Act."
Mr. Kejriwal's dissent prompted the Prime Minister's Office to issue an elaborate explanation on July 26, 2006. In this it was clarified that even after the amendment the "file notings of all plans, schemes and programmes of the Government that relate to the development and social issues shall be disclosed."
According to officials, it would mean that only a small portion of the file notings relating to "personnel-related matters like examination, assessment and evaluation of recruitment, disciplinary proceedings, etc." was being kept out of the disclosure purview.
Nonetheless, various sections of civil society, as also the Information Commissioners, were not mollified. Social activist Anna Hazare of Maharasthra went on a fast.
The decision to defer making changes in the Right to Information Act is in response to the protests.
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The good news about this whole thing is that public pressure actually seems to be working in India. I haev said a couple of times about how Congress is prone to any kind of pressure, and that due to lack of balls, it can change any stance as long as it feels it is not pissing off the votebanks. So yes, because people are pissed, Ms. Gandhi has realized that touching it would probably be a bad idea. Now you can come up to me and ask, "Yo Vasu, the public outcry has been greater for the government's attempt to divide our economy and our educational institutions into castes, so why doesn't the government seem to be backing down?"
Well, friend, I dont know.
A writer in Business Standard, Subir Roy, says that most of the babus in the governments don't even know how this act works. Accountability never really has been a problem for any government in the country, so its going to take time for the importance and uses of this act to settle in, but maybe the babus and netas can see the writing on the wall that once this happens, their days of corruption, incompetence and lethargy, are greatly reduced, if not over.
Right to information survives
The first attempt to sabotage the Right to Information Act, principally by seeking to keep file notings out of its ambit, has hopefully been defeated. This is unlikely to be the last and huge effort is needed to make the Act work in improving governance.
Eliminating file notings would have effectively killed the Act because the advice tendered and reasons cited for a particular decision are really the substance of the decision-making process. Take away the noting and you can be left with only some correspondence. This is particularly so if an administration, as is sometimes done in Karnataka, follows the “single file” system. Under it, the file itself rather than correspondence moves from office to office and everything is in the notings. Take away the notings and you are deprived of 90 per cent of the information contained in a file.
On the other hand, the knowledge on the part of officials and ministers that what they are putting down can one day become public will likely make people think twice before pursuing a course of action that will not stand up to later scrutiny.
An informal check with several officials revealed to me that they feel the Act can strengthen them in their attempt to resist pressure to give unsound advice. On the other hand, a pernicious practice currently rife is for officials to first “consult” their seniors or ministers and then make notings which will pass muster.
The problem right now is that it is an emerging law and activists feel that the state information commissioners are too soft in the way they are interpreting the ambit of the law. Even they are the second line of appeal, the first being the department appellate authority above the designated public information officer (PIO). If an official refuses to provide the information required, a commissioner can fine him Rs 250 per day of delay and a maximum of Rs 25,000, plus ask him to compensate the aggrieved party for loss suffered due to delay.
The feeling is growing among information commissioners that they should move the high court against a recalcitrant official for being in contempt of the commission, which is a quasi-judicial body. But no one has done this yet. On the other hand, an applicant displeased with the verdict of the commission can move the high court. A few instances of this are emerging.
The law has so far been used mostly by government servants seeking information to redress their own service-related grievances. Those seeking to put service-related matters outside the ambit of the law feel that it is currently being misused at considerable public expense and if this continues it will get pretty difficult to run the administration. But this is simply because government servants know best how to work their own system.
In the entire country there have till now been few instances of applicants seeking information related to policy whereas, in the ultimate analysis, the law will be best used if it becomes an aid to improving policy and its implementation.
A big responsibility in this case rests on the shoulders of the media and NGOs, which see themselves as guardians and crusaders for sound policy. Arun Jaitley has sought to use the law to seek information on the role of the CBI over Bofors. There is also a move to obtain information on the exchanges between the then President and the Prime Minister on the Gujarat violence. There should be more such instances.
There is tremendous resistance on the part of the Indian officialdom down the line to parting with information whereas half the job can be done proactively through disclosure typically via websites. Only a fraction of government servants even knows about the Act.
But hope stems from the fact that despite all the interests working against the law, it seems to have tremendous intrinsic power and it’s clearly gaining momentum.
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