Knowing is living, right? I mean, as an inhabitant of this crowded Planet I can survive only if I am aware of what is happening around me, and can mould my actions accordingly. The same applies to every living organism on earth. But for us human beings this knowledge comes in different layers. For instance, I need to know what the temperature outside is so I can prepare myself when I go out to work. I also need to know if the law of the land allows me to take a day off in case I am not feeling well enough to step out. Wait, I need to know even more! Does the government have any policy to ensure all office authorities provide ‘paid’ leaves to the employees who report sick? Okay, you are a student, and you can choose to stay in bed one day without worrying about a pay cut. But you do need to know how you have fared in your board exams, don’t you? And you must also be told that you have the right to question the decision of your examiner if you find it hard to accept the marks that have been handed out. ‘Knowing’ all this is what makes us competent, powerful, and eventually successful. Therefore, a nation which encourages its citizens to enquire, and offers them the right to be informed, is actually building itself up to be powerful, competent and successful as well.

Just ask

Yes, India is one such country. We can demand to know how our government functions by exercising our Right To Information (RTI). The Right to Information Act which came into force on October 13, 2005, empowers every citizen to ask for information from the Government, and to get it. The scope of this Act is quite vast. Here “information” implies any material in any form that can be found in the Union ministries, in Parliament and state legislatures and in the Indian Embassies. This includes records, documents, memos, e-mails, opinions, advices, press releases, circulars, orders, logbooks, contracts, reports, papers, samples, models and data material held in any electronic form. The same rule applies to all government funded hospitals; educational institutions; and social work agencies. It also covers a private body whose records are maintained by a government agency. For example, take a private factory whose environmental impact assessment is done by a government body.The RTI can demand to know the details of its pollution load.

So, while private companies do not come within the Act’s ambit directly, in certain cases the Act does grant a public authority the right to access information from a private body and then pass it on to the RTI user who is asking for it.

Do I really need to ask?

Now you are wondering exactly how relevant this is in our everyday life. Well, let me give you some examples. By using the RTI tool you can demand to know who is responsible for fixing the pot holes in the road next to your house; or why is the garbage dumped in front of your playground; or who gave the polluting factory permission to set up shop in your backyard; or who is allowing the local mining barons to denude and split apart the neighbourhood mountain range.

These are some of the things which probably you speculated, observed, and knew were wrong. Now you can use the RTI handle to dig up answers to these and fix responsibilities. And sometimes stumble on shocking facts like the following:

• The Ministry of Environment and Forests (the authority which gives the go ahead signal to mining projects) had almost zero rejection rates for the mining sector till some time ago. It was later revealed that the Minister—then in charge—was a stakeholder in one of the companies himself!.
• Out of the 120 water bodies that once existed in Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh, 82 have been destroyed and concrete structures have come up in these sites. Who built them? The Ghaziabad Development Authority, a wing of the state government which was responsible for protecting these structures in the first place!

No more secrets please!

Democracy simply does not permit secrecy on public platform. The Official Secrets Act of 1889, which declared all files and works of government as a guarded secret, was relevant when it was enacted, because India was under colonial rule, and the Indians had no rights as free citizens. But even after Independence no step was taken to amend the Act.

In fact, there was no progress on this front for many, many years. So when the outraged Indian citizens demanded action against the infamous Union Carbide after the catastrophic Bhopal Gas tragedy in 1985, when leakage of a poisonous gas from the production plant left thousands dead and many others maimed for life, the government refused to make any details about the compensations provided by the company public.

And when some participants were found taking notes during a workshop on medical assessment of victims, they were arrested under the Official Secrets Act!

Towards transparancy

The objective of the RTI Act is to make the system more transparent. It did take a long time to evolve, though. The first salvo was fired in 1975, when the Supreme Court, in the Uttar Pradesh vs Raj Narain case, ruled that ‘the people of this country have a right to know every public act’.

Raj Narain accused Indira Gandhi, the then Prime Minister of India, of using government employees as election agents, and of other corrupt practices and filed an election petition against her. As the case proceeded, a need for re-checking official documents arose. When the bureaucracy withheld disclosure citing national interest as the reason, Justice K K Mathew replied, “those arguments give no sanction to giving the executive exclusive power to determine what matters may prejudice the public interest.”

He further added, “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. Secrecy can seldom be legitimately desired. The responsibility of officials to explain or to justify their acts is the chief safeguard against oppression and corruption”.

Getting the Act together

The RTI struggle resurfaced in the early 1990s, and can be traced back to the deserts of Rajasthan, where a public interest group, Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS), was working with villagers, most of who were daily wage labourers.

The group set out to solve the problem of discrepancies in their wages. Official records revealed that people who were dead or who had migrated elsewhere, were still listed as employees. The money that was supposedly being paid to the missing labourers was, of course, filling the coffers of the local officials, corrupt to the core. MKSS began demanding photocopies of all official documents, in a bid to identify more such cases. In 1995, the then Chief Minister of Rajasthan assured that the government was willing to cough up the data, even though nothing moved after that. But now the idea of transparency in the government arena was gaining ground. RTI was being discussed and debated in every forum.

In 1996, the Press Council of India prepared and circulated one of the first drafts of the RTI Bill.. Interestingly, it followed a pattern that was set by a group of social activists, lawyers and civil servants at an Institute that trained bureaucrats – the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration. This draft clearly said that any information that can be shared in the Parliament or in the state legislatures is fit to be shared with the public. It also set down penalties for those officials who failed to respond to such demands for information.

Next, the consumer activist, H.D. Shourie, was appointed by the government to chair a committee that would prepare a draft legislation on freedom of information. The draft law was published in 1997, but failed to satisfy the protagonists.

It toned down the standards of disclosure, claimed its critics. It diluted the legislation by stating that the public authorities can withhold ‘information, the disclosure of which would not sub serve any public interest’.

However, the civil society was not ready to accept defeat. Driven by public pressure, state legislatures were now adapting the PCI draft legislation and coming up with bills modelled on this version. In 1997, Tamil Nadu became the first state to have its own RTI Act. Goa followed in the same year, while Madhya Pradesh joined the league in 1998.

In Karnataka the state irrigation department led the way by disbursing official information on certain occassions, and a state legislation came in 2000. Delhi followed suit in 2001 and Maharashtra and Assam got their state level RTIs in 2002. Jammu and Kashmir enacted it in 2004.

At the Centre, things were moving at a much slower pace. A Freedom of Information Act was passed in 2002, but died silently even before the final step of notifying it was taken. However, pressure of public opinion, mobilized very powerfully by activist groups, refused to allow the government to opt out of this one. Eventually, a spruced up version of the 2002 Act, now renamed as Right to Information Act, came into force in 2005.

A Little know how

By this time, all of you must be impatient to know just
how the RTI Act works, right?

Here’s a sample of the letter you have write.
Public Information Officers
(Name of the Department)
(Office)
(Place)

Sub: Application under the RTI Act, 2005

Sir,
Kindly provide the following information related to
Q 1 _ _ _
Q 2 _ _ _
Q 3 _ _ _
I am depositing the application fee (Rs 10/-) separately/ I am a
BPL card Holder, So, I am exempt from payment of fees. My BPL card no. is:…/ If you feel that the above requested information does not pertain to your department then please follow the provisions of Section 6 (3) of the RTI Act, 2005/Also as per the provisions of the RTI Act, 2005 please provide the details (Name and Designation) of the first appellate authority w.r.t to your department with the reply to the above request., where I may if required file my first appeal.

Thank you

You should receive a reply to your query within a period of 30 days. And if the information is of special urgency, then the law provides a provision for response within 48 hours. If you are not satisfied with the performance of your Public Information Officer, you can appeal to a higher authority, the Information commissioners. The top most service provider in the RTI hierarchy is the Chief Information Commissioner.

In any case, the burden of providing information and a penalty if unable to do so, is on the public authority. You can ask any number of questions in one RTI. One person can file any number of RTIs, there is no limit for this either. However, corporations or institutions cannot file RTIs, they have to be represented by an employee or worker.

The RTI Act is like a new born baby yet.. It can grow strong and powerful if it is given attention and nourishment (it feeds on applications for information, of course!), by the Indian citizens. Or remain neglected and weak. So it is upto us really. Are we mature enough to hold its hand and lead the way?

A whole world of information

Here are some of the front-runners:
Sweden: It grasped the importance of openness in governance as early as 18th century. It has evolved four laws like four pillars. Oldest among these is the Freedom of Press Act, 1766.

This includes the Principle for Publicity, which mandates that the people be given access to any government document they ask for. Information can be requested for and released orally. Amendments are underway now to provide information digitally too.

Australia: In 1982, the Freedom of Information Act was passed at the federal level of governance. It applied to all “ministers, departments and public authorities” of the Commonwealth. Also, each state drafted its own legislation. The neighbouring island nation of New Zealand had its Official Information Act in1982.

Denmark: It had in place its Access to Public Administration Files Act by 1985, which applied to all the public agencies. What is unique about Denmark, is that it extends its coverage to those who are in business of energy supply, whether public or private.
The United States: It got its act together in 1966. But its influence is somewhat restricted by the presence of a Privacy Act that came into force in 1974.

The European Union: It is the only inter-governmental organisation, till date, which has provided access to all its Parliament, Council and Commission documents to citizens of its member countries.