Understanding the citizens’ right to information
-By Nishtha Singhal
Mahatma Gandhi once said, “The
real Swaraj will come not by acquisition of authority by a few, but by the
acquisition of the ‘capacity’ by
all to resist authority, when abused.”
Secrecy in governance is tantamount to
abuse of authority. But, the capacity to resist secrecy has arrived… in the
form of the Right to Information Act, 2005. The citizens of India now possess a
constitutional fundamental right to demand information from the government.
The
demand for Right To Information (RTI) was first made by a few laborers at a
famine site when they were refused their full wages. It was at this point that
the movement for RTI began. Right to Information Act, 2005
came into force on 12th October 2005. The act covers the whole of India
except Jammu and Kashmir.
The
RTI Act, 2005 overrides the provisions of the Official Secrets Act, 1923. For
the first time, citizens can seek information from security forces and
intelligence agencies in matters relating to allegations of corruption and human
rights violation. The RTI includes the right to inspect any public authority’s
works, documents, and records, take certified sample of materials and obtain
information in any electronic mode. The Act provides for Public information
officers (PIOs) to be designated in all administrative units to provide the
information requested. All the citizens need to do is submit an application to
the PIO, in person or online along with an application fee of Rs. 10. The
applicant need not specify the reason for seeking information or personal
details, except contact details. Information should be provided within 30 days
from the date of filing, failing which an appeal can be filed with the senior
ranking officer to the PIO. If the PIO fails to provide the information or issue
rejection order within the specified time, he is liable to pay Rs 250 per day,
subject to a maximum of Rs 25,000. In case of unsatisfactory redressal of first
appeal, the Information Commission (Central or State) may be approached for a
second appeal.
Although
the right to information has existed as a natural corollary to the right to life
and liberty (Article 21 of the Indian Constitution) since Independence, the RTI
Act, 2005 acts as an ‘enabling mechanism’ that will ensure that the right is
no longer denied arbitrarily by the government. It is notable that in the first
ever RTI dharna in 1996 in Rajasthan’s Beawar town, the campaigners
issued the clarion call… “The right to know is the right to live”.
Members
of the civil society, including NGOs that were involved in laying the grounds
for the RTI legislation feel that it is one of the most progressive laws ever
laid down in the country. However, there are concerns over issues of
implementation, the reluctance of the bureaucracy to open up and most
importantly, the level of citizen participation. Activists have repeatedly
voiced concerns over the appointment of retired bureaucrats at the highest
levels of the RTI hierarchy i.e. the Information Commission at the Central and
State levels. These Commissions are meant to serve as Appellate Authority,
independent of the government.
Arvind
Kejriwal of Parivartan, a Delhi based NGO that has done extensive work in
creating awareness about RTI laments, “The RTI law aims to undo the misdeeds
of the bureaucrats, who unfortunately, have taken complete control of it.”
Activists are of the opinion that the bureaucrats who have been inducted into
the RTI implementation apparatus are expectedly sympathetic towards their fellow
‘babus’, over whose wrongs the information seekers are trying to spill the
beans. However, Wajahat Habibullah, Chief Information Commissioner, himself a
former bureaucrat, disagrees. In his view, such a blanket criticism is not
justified.
The
law provides for ‘eminent citizens’ such as retired lawyers, judges and
other capable members of the civil society to be taken into the fold of the RTI
machinery, but it has been stuffed with bureaucrats. Kejriwal wonders, “The
government couldn’t find a single eminent citizen in the country.”
A
user of one of the State RTI Acts has rightly summed up the essence of this
right in these words, “The citizen’s RTI is more than just a law; it is a
fight against governance shrouded in opaqueness, against the agenda of
corruption and the arbitrary use of power.” Another user, Shivaji Raut
triumphantly exclaims, “The local administration behaves itself once it knows
people are watching.”
Manish
Sishodia of Kabir, an NGO has been actively using the Act. He says, “India’s
is the best RTI law in the world.” Unfortunately, this is not encouragement
enough for the apathetic millions in India who give up too soon saying - The
country has gone to the dogs. Another successful user of the right to
information has said, “Corruption is not only about underhand deals. It’s
about registered reality. One needs to ask for the right records.”
A
perfect example of using RTI to punch corruption in the face and achieve results
is as follows,
Anchi
applied under the RTI Act to the Food and Civil Supplies Officer, Beawar for
details of the amount of wheat sent to dealers in Lotiyana, Ajmer district over
the last six months. She did not expect each eligible ration card holder to
receive three month’s entitlement delivered at home.
This and many more success stories echo
Aruna Roy’s words – “The entitlement (of RTI) demolishes the excuse for
cynicism. If there is something that bothers us, we can and must do something
about it.”
All we now need to do is fling open the Pandora’s
Box which lies ‘unlocked’ !
As
the legislation was drafted and implemented in a hurry (over a one-year period),
there are evident teething problems in its implementation, which are expected to
be solved with time. However, over some loopholes in the act, the activists are
seeing red. For instance, no time frame has been attached to the provision of
second appeal. As dissatisfied applicants have not been given the option of
moving court against the PIOs, the buck stops at the Information Commission,
which may take its own sweet time to address appeals. When confronted on this
ground, Mr. Ratan Lal, an official in the Chief Information Commission,
categorically stated, “Every appellant will have to wait for his/her turn”.
A user of the Central RTI Act, Mr. Ravinder Balwani, himself a Delhi government
official has appealed to the Central Information Commission (CIC) on three
occasions with no success. In his words, “Jab tak penalty nahin padti,
kucchh nahin ho sakta.”.
Another glaring anomaly in the Central
RTI Act, 2005 is that there is no provision to pay the Rs.10 application fee
along with an application filed online. To this, Mr. Lal said, “You will have
to come to the concerned office to pay the fees for an online application.”
To
make the application procedure more user friendly, an experiment is being
considered in Uttar Pradesh. Anjali Bhardwaj of the citizen’s group Satark
Nagarik Sangathan (SNS) elaborates, “Requests for information can be made on
the phone and the application fee added to the telephone bill can be forwarded
to concerned public authority by the telephone service provider.”
As
more and more people are being encouraged to make use of the RTI Act, it is
being found that the necessary apparatus for providing sought information is
still not in place. In some areas, PIOs are yet to be appointed and in others,
applicants are complaining of lack of co-operation from the PIOs. The CIC
official had no qualms in saying, “There are absolutely no implementation
hurdles.” However, there are reports that a PIO in the MCD office physically
threw an applicant out claiming there’s nothing like a right to information.
Kejriwal feels, “The bureaucracy does not seem prepared for this ‘culture
shock’ of allowing citizens to ‘know it all’. Officials senior to the PIOs
are misplacing the appeal documents of applicants. The Information Commission is
in a state of coma.” Also what is worth noting is that one of the four
appointees in the CIC wrote an open letter to the Prime Minister complaining
about the abysmal working conditions at the apex appellate authority – “too
few support staff, no means to operate the modest funds, even no letterhead.”
The RTI law’s existence of a year
abounds in success stories of forcing the government to promptly complete a
long-pending job such as issuance of an individual’s passport or license.
However, we must realise that the Act has much more in store for Indians, a
people who have suffered at the hands of a government whose policies are
intentionally or unintentionally unbalanced and counter productive. By asking
the right questions of the policy makers, the citizens of democratic India can
bring about a revolution not only in governance, but in policy making too. Once
citizens acquire information about government’s various policies, plans,
schemes, orders etc. they are in a position to agree or disagree with the same
and become a part of policy formation.
It is important to highlight those cases
of use of RTI in which issues of community importance and national interest have
been taken up. Case in point is as follows:
Shivaji
Raut, a schoolteacher in Satara, Maharashtra, sought data on whether the state
government had accounted for prevalent market rates while renewing leases on 114
government-held properties in Mahabaleshwar. The information he received exposed
irregularities to the tune of Rs 1.5 crore, and forced a temporary injunction on
the process. "The documents I’d obtained revealed that land in many cases
had been leased out for a song." Asking for the list of people who had been
granted licences for firearms in the district in the past five years revealed
that many licences had been issued based on fake certificates ("Some were
being used for poaching in the Koyna Valley near Satara"). When Raut asked
for the names of those who had received liquor vending licences, it was found
that many recipients were wives of local politicians"
As
Anjali Bhardwaj informs, the right to information is an individual right and
than an application under RTI Act can be filed in the name of an individual
citizen alone. But this in no way means that the application should be filed in
individual interest alone. Infact, citizens of India have asked the government
questions related to community problems in areas such as water supply,
sanitation etc. and about the issue of rehabilitation of slum dwellers has been
dealt with through the use of RTI. Anjali’s Satark Nagarik Sangathan alone has
helped citizens file about 300-500 applications under the RTI Act and have had a
high success rate as far as receiving information is concerned. In cases in
which they had to appeal to the Information Commission for information to be
released, they have had success but in cases of second appeals, they still await
a positive response.
The example of use of RTI
to scrutinize the functioning of the Public Distribution System in India
perfectly reconciles the issue of individual interest with national interest.
While the Planning Commission allots Rs. 30,000 crores towards the funding of
the PDS but it is commonly known that the ration either reaches late or never
reaches the homes of those for whom it is intended. When an individual files an
RTI to enquire why ration has been allotted in his/her name and has not been
handed over to him/her, he/she indirectly seeks to account for the taxpayers’
i.e. our money.
Section
4 of the Right to Information Act, 2005 underlines that it is the duty of the
government to pro-actively provide key information to all citizens without their
asking for it. It includes the duty of every public authority to
publish and update every year, information about its basic functions, actions
and decisions. This information has to be disseminated widely through the media
and through public announcements in the local language. This provision, if
understood and implemented well, will leave very little information, for the
citizenry to demand separately, thus not over burdening the
information-providing agency.
The
idea behind Duty to Publish (DTP) is that it would require the government to
publish
all
information except that which is permitted to be kept secret by the law.
It
is in the interest of the government to comply with the mandate of Section 4. A
full hearted compliance will
•
Reduce the numbers of requests for the same information from different citizens
and
•
Lower financial cost to citizens by avoiding repetitive requests for the same
•
Lessen the need for public’s contact with the bureaucracy thereby reducing
scope
•
Increase convenience for the people in accessing information, which can be done
•
Expand the dissemination of the information to a much wider audience.
In
India, the struggle for people’s right to information would have achieved its
real victory
In
many developed democracies, the right to information legislation functions
productively not because of higher penalties to non-cooperative officers but
because most of the information that citizens require is generally provided suo
moto by the public authorities. There, people do not need to file right to
information requests to learn
The
Centre for Civil Society (CCS), on June 13, 2006 released The Duty to Publish
Index which examines the compliance of state education agencies with Section 4
(1)(b) of the RTI Act, which states that every department shall publish within
120 days of enactment of RTI Act, a whole set of information and shall update
the same every year.
CCS
discovered that while a few states have made a serious effort to get information
out to the public, there are many that have not taken any step at all.
While
Pondicherry (45% compliance) and Delhi(38% compliance) were ranked first and
second respectively, Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Goa, Jharkhand, Rajasthan and
Sikkim finished last with 0% compliance.
It
is notable that while the government went all out to publicize the National
Rural Employment Guarantee Act, it escaped the responsibility of spreading
awareness about the Right to Information Act. But, is it difficult to understand
why? While the former is a legislation that will provide employment to millions
in Indian villages, the latter is a tool in the hands of citizens to make sure
the government performs its job well. No wonder the government doesn’t want
the people to know all about it.
About
the state of awareness of the new right, Arvind Kejriwal states, “The
awareness is just not there. It’s unfortunate that under the Delhi State RTI
Act, 2002, from 1.5 crore residents, only 15,000 applications have been
received. There’s a long way to go before RTI can become an inherent part of
our lives and for this, we must use our right to the fullest possible extent.”
While
the government claims to have organized various seminars and workshops on RTI,
there is complete ignorance about its existence in many parts of India. To this
the government says, “Various NGOs are involved with the task of spreading
awareness.”
Indeed,
the NGOs have left no stone unturned in this regard. Villagers in Rajasthan have
used the State RTI Act to monitor development relief programmes and in Delhi; in
a Parivartan led campaign, the Act has helped expose corruption in the Public
Distribution System (PDS) and in another case, it has unearthed that the Delhi
Jal Board is under pressure from the World Bank to privatize the distribution of
water.
Satark
Nagarik Sangathan regularly organizes workshops and public meetings to educate
slum dwellers in Delhi about RTI, what to use it for and how to use it. On July
01, 2006, Hindustan Times launched a nationwide campaign against bribery -
“Drive Against Bribery with Right to Information” along with other
media houses and NGOs with the aim of discouraging citizens from paying bribes
and encouraging them to use the Right to Information to question the delay in
getting work done in government offices.
However, it is worth mentioning that the
Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) is now working on an elaborate plan
to provide publicity to the right to information (RTI) Act with the Information
and Broadcasting Ministry asked to formulate a detailed media plan for the
purpose. Press Information Bureau (PIB), All India Radio (AIR) and Doordarshan
have been asked to expedite the plan for publicity of the RTI Act. How
widespread and effective this media campaign will be in terms of educating
Indians about a right that comes in the way of a babu’s pocket is yet to be
seen.
“We
have been criticizing the government. Now, the common man has a powerful tool in his hands. With the right to know, we cannot blame anyone
but ourselves. Our responsibility lies in using the RTI Act, 2005 to its fullest
potential. When
governance improves, everything else falls in line. The RTI makes governments accountable. As more and more people become aware of their
‘right to know’, the government will think twice before indulging in any wrong
doing. Suo moto disclosure (of all information of public interest) will
be the norm and having to specially seek information will be a rarity. This is the
vision that RTI makes possible.”