The fight to suppress truth

I woke up this morning to the news that a young woman had been murdered by her village’s Sarpanch for invoking a query against him and his accomplices in siphoning off money from a pension scheme under the Right to Information Act. Her father-in-law, an RTI activist according to some news sources, who initiated the query with her, is also severely injured. According to the media, the Sarpanch mowed them down with his vehicle. He and several of his associates have been arrested, but this incident is yet another example of citizens losing their lives for daring to take on political and bureaucratic figures who are misusing their office.
Added Later: It would be very disrespectful if I do not even mention their names in my post. Mr. Jagdish Sharma from the Chandrawal village in Fatehabad district in Haryana lost his daughter-in-law Sonu. She had two children.

That news channel then talked to a noted RTI Activist, Mr. Arvind Kejriwal, who said that in the past one year, this is the 11^th victim who has been killed for using the RTI Act. The media has been raising the issue of protection for activists and whistle-blowers, but Mr. Kejriwal pointed out that protection does not mean providing them with physical security or anything of that sort, but taking stern action against the people who have been named in the RTI plea.

Action against the wrong-doers takes a long while, which gives enough time to the wrong-doer to try to change the course of the case against them by intimidating the person filing the plea, or in the worst case, killing them. Unfortunately, the lack of action against the perpetrators has resulted in more murders than ever. According to Mr. Kejriwal, of the 11 murders in the past one year, more than half of the perpetrators have still not been brought to book. This is another example of gross mis-governance and an extremely tepid and flawed justice system that is prevalent in this country today.

It seems to me that only when the media reports the crime, does the government take any action. While the media does report on crimes committed against RTI activists and other whistle-blowers, there are thousands of cases out there which go unreported. 

While the act is indeed suffering from inordinate delays, absolute lack of coordination among departments, and the greatest impediment of all - the unwillingness of questioned officials to provide details and desire to hide information - I feel we must stay the course. 

The Government has been trying to water down the act because certain officials in high positions feel it is an effrontery to their office to be questioned. The Delhi High Court actually upheld the decision last year that the office of the Chief Justice of India is under the purview of the RTI Act as well. I suppose it is not entirely a coincidence that the then CJI, Justice KG Balakrishnan, a stooge put in that position by the CONgress, is under investigation for corruption.

Again, the RTI Act has been able to make a dent in the iron curtain of government unaccountability and graft, and the correct action for the Government of India should be to strengthen the laws that protect whistle blowers, speed up the disposal of cases and not water down the act. The fact that the Government is threatened by the Act shows that it might be working. According to this old editorial in The Hindu from March 2010: 

The RTI Act has empowered the ordinary citizen in a way its architects did not anticipate. Studies have shown its growing appeal across all social strata, which is surely why the government is set on blunting this powerful tool in the hands of the people. Such obscurantism must be seen through and defeated.

The men and women who have dared to take on the corrupt and the unaccountable and lost their lives and limbs in the process are heros who will be remembered always. Over the past few years, the Government of India has reached new lows in corruption, mis-governance  and unaccountability, and if we, as citizens of this democracy, stop fighting back, it won't take long for India to begin its decent into being a banana republic.