RTI Bill: old wine with a new label?
ON JANUARY 1, 2005, the U.K. Freedom of Information Act finally came into force. Britons now have a lot to cheer, though it took them more than two decades to get the Act and another five years before it got operationalised.
In contrast, the new year began on a damp note for Freedom of Information advocates in India, when the Manmohan Singh government tabled in Parliament a diluted version of the draft Right To Information (RTI) Bill submitted by civil society to the National Advisory Council (NAC). The RTI Bill 2004, if passed by Parliament, would replace the old Freedom of Information Act 2002 that has been gathering dust in the Personnel Ministry for more than two years.
While hectic lobbying is under way and civil rights groups have conveyed their strong reservations to the NAC which initially decided to stand by the amendments proposed, it is evident that bureaucracy's penchant for secrecy and political wavering on the issue would remain a major stumbling block for an open regime.
Transparency and accountability are the key to good governance and one way to bring this about is by allowing people access to government held information as enshrined in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and also recognised in our Constitution.
But the way recommendations of the National Campaign on People's Right to Information (NCPRI) and civil society groups have been weakened reflects bureaucrats' scepticism over access laws. Not surprisingly they have taken recourse to either dilatory or diluting tactics or a combination of both. A cursory look at the RTI Bill reveals that what was basically aimed at was to draft a law that allows for limited information by a limited number of people for a limited number of people.
Narrow in geographical reach
For example, it is narrow in its geographical reach. It is applicable only to the Central government and the Union Territories and leaves many public bodies from the ambit of the law given the fact that only nine States in the country have access laws. The NAC draft included provisions to make the security and intelligence agencies reveal information concerning human rights violations which are quite rampant in the insurgency prone States of the Northeast and Jammu and Kashmir and naxal-infested areas of the country. The deletion of this clause from the RTI Bill would only allow these agencies to commit most heinous acts with impunity.
While the NAC draft gave all `persons' access to information, it was changed to `citizens' alone. Sweden, the first country in the world to have drafted a law in this regard more than two centuries ago, allowed foreign journalists to access documents from the Prime Minister's Office. The RTI Bill allowing for information disclosure not more than ten years old seeks to hide more skeletons than what it aims to reveal, for access to records more than 30 years old would have allowed journalists to peek into the Handerson Report on the Sino-Indian war that has never been made public. In contrast, the U.S. has revealed information more than 30 years old without any hitch.
If the above provisions were not enough to dilute the NAC draft, the RTI Bill allowing the government to intimate the relevant fee to the applicant would leave room for arbitrariness. If an official wants to deny information, then one of the ways is to charge an exorbitant fee. Countries like India where millions live below the poverty line cannot afford to have such an ambiguous clause. In countries with well-crafted laws such as Australia and Canada the fee could be reduced or waived while in South Africa it could be waived by notice in gazette by the Minister. South Africa has drafted one of the best laws in the world allowing citizens to file information request even from private bodies.
Despite loopholes and the apparent culture of secrecy that we inherited from our colonial masters, nothing can stop a good Act from being enacted if there is political will. It took years for India to pass a Central Act on FOI. The then government showed its flawed commitment, first by passing a poorly crafted FOI law and later by keeping it in abeyance.
The United Progressive Alliance appeared to be different. It showed its sincerity by agreeing to replace the old FOI Act with a new Bill and also consenting to all the amendments suggested by the NCPRI. But what actually transpired before it was tabled in Parliament leaves room for speculation and doubts about the UPA's commitment of providing a transparent and accountable government.
But these hurdles do not stand the test of time as committed leadership both in the Executive and the Legislature can make a fundamental difference to the final law despite the usual bureaucratic bottlenecks.
The fate of this law now hangs precariously. Are we going to pass a law that is worse than the old FOI Act as interpreted in some quarters? Or are we advocating a law that appears to be old wine with a new label since even the RTI Bill does not seem to give citizens broader access rights?
ADITI DATTA
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