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Right to Information — path to Swaraj

Shailesh Gandhi

The Right to Information Act comes into force all over the country on October 12. Citizens should make use of it to ensure transparency and good governance triumph.

A SIMPLE yet very powerful example of the use of the Right to Information (RTI) is of a slum dweller who applied for a new ration card. He was told he would have to give a bribe of Rs.2000 to obtain it. Our friend — an RTI-empowered citizen — smiled, and just went ahead and applied for the ration card without offering any bribes. His neighbours warned him he would never get his ration card. They also told him how he would now have to keep visiting the rationing office. Some well meaning friends praised him for being courageous. They suggested he should approach some non-governmental organisation to take up his case, so that ultimately he would get his ration card.

Our citizen had decided to become an enforcer of good governance. He found out in how many weeks everyone who paid bribes got their ration cards. He waited for an extra four weeks after applying for his card, and then applied for information under the RTI. Using the simple format with an application fee of Rs.10, he delivered it to the Public Information Officer of the Food and Supply office. He had asked up to which date applications for ration cards had been cleared and the daily progress report of his application. This shook up the officials, since they would have to acknowledge in writing that they had given ration cards to others who had applied after him, which would be conclusive evidence that they had no justification for delaying his card. Happy ending: the ration card was given to him immediately.

No bribes, no endless visits. Our citizen was able to use the might of the Right to Information. This story has been repeated a thousand times to get a road repaired, an electricity connection, admissions to educational institutions.

The Right to Information is derived from our fundamental right of expression under Article 19. If we do not have information on how our Government and public institutions function, we cannot express any informed opinion on it. This has been accepted by various Supreme Court judgments, since 1977. All of us accept that the freedom of the press is an essential element for a democracy to function. It is worthwhile to understand the underlying assumption in this well entrenched belief.

Why is the freedom of the media considered one of the essential features of a democracy? Democracy revolves round the basic idea of citizens being at the centre of governance — rule of the people. We need to define the importance of the concept of freedom of the press from this fundamental premise. It is obvious that the main reason for a free press is to ensure that citizens are informed. If this is one of the main reasons for the primacy given to the freedom of the press, it clearly flows from this that the citizens' right to know is paramount. Also, since the government is run on behalf of the people, they are the owners who have a right to be informed directly.

Justice Mathew ruled in the Raj Narain case, "In a government of responsibility like ours, where all the agents of the public must be responsible for their conduct, there can be but few secrets. The people of this country have a right to know every public act, everything that is done in a public way by their public functionaries. They are entitled to know the particulars of every public transaction in all its bearing. Their right to know, which is derived from the concept of freedom of speech, though not absolute, is a factor which should make one wary when secrecy is claimed for transactions which can at any rate have no repercussion on public security."

Nine States in India have an operational Right To Information Act. Parliament passed this as Act no.22 of 2005 in May this year. It will become operational across the country on October 12. It promises to be a single piece of legislation that can result in the victory of participatory democracy. There are some signs of the various power-wielders of government seeking to regress on the provisions of the Act, but citizens will not permit this. It is a right that has belonged to us for the last 55 years, and now we shall not allow it to be diluted.

The Right To Information Act is a codification of this important right of citizens. The right has existed since the time India became a republic, but was difficult to enforce without going to court. The Act and its rules define a format for requisitioning information, a time period within which information must be provided (30 days), method of giving the information, some charges for applying, and some exemptions. The principle is that charges should be minimum — more as a token. They are not at all representative of the costs that may be incurred. Citizens can ask for information by getting Xerox copies of documents, permissions, policies, and decisions. Inspection of files can also be done and samples can be asked for. All administrative offices of public authorities have to appoint `Public Information Officers (PIO).' Citizens can apply for information to the PIO of the office concerned. If it is not provided or is refused, the citizen can go to an Appellate Authority who would be an official in the same department, senior to the PIO. If this too does not produce a satisfactory result, one can appeal to the State or Central Information Commissioner, an independent Constitutional Authority being established under the Act.

Penalty provision

One of the major reasons for the success of the Maharashtra and Delhi Acts is that there is a provision for penalising the PIO in case he does not give the information within the mandated period. The National Act, which has drawn a lot of inspiration from the Maharashtra Act, also provides for a penalty for delay on the PIO at a rate of Rs.250 a day. There is also provision for disciplinary action against recalcitrant PIOs in some cases. Thus the Right to Information provides for a time bound and defined process for citizens to access information about all actions taken by public authorities. The penal provisions are the real teeth of the Act, which ensure that the PIO does not treat citizens' demands for information in a cavalier manner.

I have myself used the Right to Information in a variety of ways. It has been possible to get a Commission report to be made public using the RTI. In another case, a police inspector had raped a minor and was reinstated in service within five months! Using RTI as a pressure device resulted in the inspector being dismissed from service. In another instance, proof has been obtained about political interference in police transfers. The major fraud of looting money meant for providing livelihood under the employment guarantee scheme (EGS) has been going on for years. Presently, a campaign has been initiated in Maharashtra to get citizens across the State to ask for EGS muster rolls using RTI and then auditing them with people's participation. The primary power of RTI is the fact it empowers individual citizens to requisition information. Hence without necessarily forming pressure groups or associations, it puts power directly into the hands of the foundation of democracy — the citizens. There will certainly be an attempt to subvert this revolutionary right by the ruling coterie, since it strikes at the basics of their power. This can easily be countered if enough citizens use the Act. Citizens can use the right from their own houses — and usually it does not take more than about two hours to make an RTI application.

A few million applications across the country by concerned citizens on issues that interest them will bring a major change in India and be a determined move towards the Swaraj we desire. There is a great need to spread the usage of this countrywide, so that transparency and good governance triumph. We now have the power; we only need to use it. It is simple to use, and the benefits are immense.

(The writer works closely with the National Campaign for People's Right To Information.)

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