Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram   

One step ahead

Special Correspondent

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The negative characteristics which the Indian officialdom inherited from the British are the secrecy of the civil service and the third degree method resorted to by the police force.

The British had a rationale to resort to both. They were aliens who were forcing their rule on the local people much against the latter's will. The Indians were waiting for an opportunity to get rid of the foreign yoke. They were in effect enemies of the administration. So how do you handle your enemies? Make the civil service keep the process of administration hidden from the people. But when the administration becomes anti-people, the machinery of repression throws up some saviours. This is an unwritten law of mankind. In order to prevent that the British enacted the draconian Official Secrets Act which imposed deterrent penalties on those who divulged official secrets. The police was used as the machinery to repress and terrorise the people.

The ultimate purpose of the exercise was to keep the local people subjugated and exploit them to the maximum.

The independence of the country and the elevation of Governments of the local people did not make any difference to the officialdom. The civil service considered the people as enemies and continued to hide things from them. The police too continued their repression. The Union Government enacted the Right to Information Act. It might take some time for the civil service to get used to the idea even though the Government has brought the law into force and has set up an elaborate machinery to provide information to the people. Only an equally potent medicine will be able to make the police a minus third degree force. Forget people-friendliness.

It is because of the bleak scenario, that Chief Minister Oommen Chandy's decision to throw open his office for the television camera hogged the limelight. By logging onto his website, www.keralacm.gov.in, anybody could see whatever he was doing in his office. President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam was among those who sent messages congratulating him for it. Mr. Chandy has now decided to take the transparency of his Government one step ahead by making available the weekly cabinet briefing on his website live from Wednesday. Both the website and the live webcasting makes use of Free Software. The C-Dit handles the technical aspects of the show. The audio cassette of the Cabinet briefing is already available. Through his latest reform, Mr. Chandy is giving a new dimension to the citizen's right to know. One only hopes that the bureaucrats will derive some inspiration from it.

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