Transparency in Govt. still a mirage?

By C.V. Gopalakrishnan

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, AUG. 8. The controversy being raised over the leak of Cabinet notes and the decision of the Chief Minister, Mr. A. K. Antony, to order a probe into it could raise questions about the still prevailing attitudes that the Cabinet, budget and official secrets should be zealously guarded and "leaks" of the same should be viewed seriously at a time when there is an increasing emphasis on a switch-over to transparency.

The questions hinge upon democratically elected Governments having the right to screen away from the public issues and decisions which are of vital importance to it. The importance which such questions hinging upon the people's right to know could claim for themselves could be seen from the fact that the Official Secrets Act of 1911 which the Government of India had virtually copied is of British origin. Far from its having no such legislation, the U.S. has the Freedom of Information Act.

While the Governments in India have kept their budgets well guarded until the presentation of the same, the Economic Survey which is presented a few days before the presentation of the Union Budget does give some idea of the revenue and expenditure trends of the previous year and the outlook for the forthcoming financial year. There is an instance of a Union Finance Minister hurriedly walking away in panic after a chance meeting with the Finance Editor of a leading national daily as the latter who had a full grasp of the contents of the Economic Survey asked him a few pointed questions about the forthcoming taxation proposals. It later turned out that the Finance Editor had guessed the forthcoming taxation proposals with a near hundred per cent accuracy just after a penetrating analysis of the Economic Survey.

The earliest and possibly the only instance of a Finance Minister who had to pay a heavy price and resign his job for his budgetary indiscretion is that of Hugh Dalton, the U.K.Chancellor of Exchequer. He admitted to his having been guilty of a "grave indiscretion" after giving indications -- which actually were much too insignificant to have made it obligatory for him to resign -- while telling a newsman that the cigar he was smoking would cost him more from that evening. The tedious exertions which newspersons go through while having to prise the decisions taken at Cabinet meetings in Delhi and the very unsatisfying fare dished out to them at official briefings did actually seem uncalled for and even ridiculous for Lal Bahadur Shastri when he succeeded Nehru as Prime Minister in 1964. He had gone on record as having said that almost all the contents of Cabinet papers and decisions except the highly sensitive ones could be made known to the media as there was no likelihood about such a step affecting national security. But he could not change the ways of bureaucracy which was going its own way.

An instance of a furious uproar resulting from an angry and indiscreet pronouncement by a Minister of the composite Madras Government in the mid-fifties that the media should seek information only from "authorised" official sources instead of its ferreting it out by itself is that there was the instantaneous and unanimous ridicule of what he had said.

Questioning his claims to decide what was in the public interest and what was not, the editorials which were written bluntly told the Minister that he had no right to sit in judgment over the media's right to inform the public about the goings-on.

A stinging editorial even went to the extent of pointing out that the earlier disclosures by the media had always without exception served the public interest though they might have embarrassed the Government. It was virtually a declaration that the media was under no obligation to accept decisions officially made known to it since it had a responsibility for a thorough investigation.

It is, of course, another matter that the late Mrs. Indira Gandhi who had clamped Emergency and press censorship in 1975 had very different ideas on the subject. Even in Britain where the media is supposed to have had unfettered freedom, there have been instances of the Government not having taken kindly to the reports of newsmen like Ian Aitken of the Guardian. If the British Government had imagined that there would be an uncritical belief in its record of respect to human rights, its nefarious Crichel Down affair in the mid-fifties of the last century in resorting to compulsory purchases of land and a series of errors in the process of reselling it was a shocking eye-opener. The disclosures by the media of what it had been up to led to the resignation of the concerned minister, Sir Thomas Dugdale and the civil servants were subject to scathing criticism.

These and other cases of political and official excesses and

misdemeanour throw up questions about the rights of the Government to wrap its Cabinet and other decisions in secrecy and the "leaks" about the same.

It should be mentioned here that the Government itself often resorts to such leaks about its proposed decisions for gauging public reactions to media reports. If the reactions are very critical and hostile, it could refrain or give up the controversial decisions and deny the media reports.

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