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When Samrat Ashoka wanted his edicts to be engraved on rocky outcrops and pillars across his vast empire, he did so under the full realisation that he was setting novel standards for the proactive disclosure of state policy, administrative decisions and the rights and obligations of his subjects. He expected this mechanism to survive him and even his grandsons. Indeed, the rock edicts are sterling examples of what the state can do to communicate with its people using contemporary technology, if it has the will to so do.
From the granite rocks of the past to the silicon chips of the present that can transmit zillion bytes of data at lightning speed, we have come a long way. Nevertheless, in the 21st century, seeking information under a law enacted by Parliament has proved to be injurious to the health and safety for many a requestor.
More than 40 men and women have been murdered and another 250 physically attacked or mentally harassed across the country for seeking even mundane information from panchayats, municipalities and other departments about developmental programmes or public works. On the other hand, an official can expect to survive with body and soul intact if he leaked defence or commercial secrets for a price.
This October, we celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Right to Information Act against the backdrop of this stark reality.
Many public authorities are complaining about the increasing burden of RTI applications. Indeed, the number of people seeking information over the last couple of years may be between a conservative estimate of 45-50 lakhs and a liberal one of 80 lakhs to 1 crore – calculated by civil society actors, not governments.
This is less than 1 per cent of India’s current population. Ninety-nine per cent of the citizenry has simply not used the RTI Act so far, and yet, the system is said to be groaning under the weight of information requests, so much that the Supreme Court cautioned civil servants against spending 75 per cent of their time on giving information to people.
So, what categories of information are this miniscule proportion of the citizenry seeking? According to a nation-wide sample study published last October by RTI Assessment and Advocacy Group (RaaG), more than 70 per cent of the RTI applications are submitted for information that public authorities are required to give voluntarily. A large majority of them actually are grievances about the poor quality or non-provision of services that government departments are bound to provide to the disadvantaged segments of society.
Thanks to the near total breakdown of supervisory and accountability mechanisms in most line departments, RTI has become a grievance redress tool. Yet, public authorities have refused to look upon RTI as feedback for improving the governance delivery mechanisms and have turned it into a request-driven system paying little attention to improving their own efficiency and professional integrity.
The ripple effect of this bureaucratic response is visible in the piling up of appeals and complaints before the Information Commissions from applicants dissatisfied with the lackadaisical responses of public authorities. Data collected by this author recently from about half of the 29 ICs shows a pendency of close to 2 lakh cases. The penchant of governments to pack these commissions with retired bureaucrats, most of whom religiously lived by their oaths of secrecy for more than three decades, has not helped much.
Equalising force
Rather than perform their role as the appointed champions of transparency, many Information commissioners prefer to sit on judgement over aggrieved requestors calling their chambers “courts” and in some extreme cases even denying them a chair to sit down while presenting their case. Penalties are imposed rarely. Even where penalty is imposed, adequate efforts are not made to ensure that the errant officer pays up.
Statistics collected by governments as well as civil society indicate that the RTI Act has not readily benefited those segments of society which are clearly at a disadvantage vis-à-vis their interactions with the powerful, namely, women, dalits, adivasis and the physically disabled many of whom do not have access to high quality education.
Information disclosure can be unbelievably simple. For those who could not decipher the written word, Ashoka instructed his officials to read aloud his edicts, even if the audience comprised of just one person. All that public authorities have to do today is place relevant information in the public domain through websites for internet-savvy citizens and open up their non-sensitive records for inspection to those who are not cyber-literate. Open governance can help improve trust deficit that governments are increasingly facing.
Despite all the obstacles that citizens face in accessing government information, RTI is proving itself to be a great equalising force in a society characterised by trenchant inequalities and inequities. People feel a sense of ownership vis-à-vis the RTI Act unlike other laws. Whenever efforts were made to dilute the RTI Act, the people stepped forward in its defence. It is high time governments recognised that RTI is here to stay and made honest efforts to open up and become accountable to the people.
(The writer is Programme Coordinator, Access to Information Programme, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, New Delhi)