Ten years after the Right to Information Act was passed
by the Rajya Sabha on May 12, 2005, its implementation remains
inefficient and transparency and accountability seem to be under threat
in India.
Experts cite poor record-keeping practices
within the bureaucracy, lack of infrastructure and staff for running
Information Commissions, and dilution of supplementary laws such as the
one for whistleblower protection as reasons for this.
Madabhushi
Sridhar, Information Commissioner at the Central Information
Commission, says: “In my office, my secretary doubles up as the
stenographer, registrar, deputy registrar and personal assistant who
must also respond to letters my office receives. Compare this with the
kind of staff support courts receive. With such poor staffing how can we
be expected to discharge our responsibilities efficiently?”
He
points to the problems posed by missing files in government offices.
“The information sought by citizens can be provided only if the records
are maintained properly. If the RTI has to succeed, then the Public
Records Act must be implemented,” he says.
Inefficient
implementation has delayed the settlement of information appeals. An
October 2014 report brought out by the RTI Assessment and Analysis Group
(RAAG) showed a waiting period of up to 60 years in Madhya Pradesh and
up to 18 years in West Bengal, calculated on the basis of current rates
of pendency in Information Commissions. “In less than 3 per cent of
cases, penalties were imposed on government departments denying
information sought,” Amrita Johri of Satark Nagarik Sangathan says.
What
the RTI Act has managed to achieve in the last decade is to unleash a
silent citizen’s movement for government accountability across the
country. The RAAG report found that on an average, 4-5 million
applications are filed under the Act every year. But this has not been
without its negative consequences. Forty activists who had demanded
crucial information, with the potential to expose corruption within the
government, had been killed. This has necessitated supplementary laws
such as whistleblower protection laws to ensure protection for
information activists.
Diluted laws
But
the Whistleblowers Protection (Amendment), Bill, 2015, passed by the
Lok Sabha on Wednesday has renewed concerns regarding the vulnerability
of information seekers making disclosures in the public interest. “The
original intention of the whistleblower protection law was to protect
citizens disclosing information regarding wrongdoing in the larger
public interest. But the proposed amendments have turned the law into a
‘Whistleblower Prevention and Victimisation Act’,” quips Venkatesh
Nayak, Access to Information programme coordinator at Commonwealth Human
Rights Initiative. The amendments do not provide immunity to
whistleblowers, making them liable for prosecution under the Official
Secrets Act, he says.
The Bill completely dilutes the
provisions of the earlier law removing everything exempted under
Section 8 (1) of the RTI Act from within the ambit of whistle-blowing.
“If the government wanted to ensure that sensitive information regarding
national security, integrity, etc., is not made public, then the law
could have been appropriately amended to ensure additional safeguards or
by making provisions for a mechanism for confidential disclosure. What
is sought to be done now is a blanket ban on disclosures containing
sensitive information,” Anjali Bharadwaj of Satark Nagarik Sangathan
says.
Empowering citizens
Despite
these developments, the culture of transparency brought about by the
RTI Act in the past decade has now made it easier for citizens to access
parliamentary proceedings online, and track proceedings of various
State legislatures. However, the legislatures in the Northeast and lower
courts are yet to put up documents regarding their proceedings
proactively, activists say.
Commenting on the rise of
an entire political movement on the basis of the movement for
transparency and accountability in the form of the Aam Aadmi Party since
2011, Shankar Singh, a founder-member of the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti
Sangathan in Rajasthan, says, “There is something about the nature of
political power that corrupts people no matter how dedicated they might
be to the cause of transparency. That is why we need to continue to
empower ordinary people with tools like the RTI so they can hold those
holding political power accountable.”
