Two-day RTI Convention gets Underway
Whistle Blowers’ Protection bill to be Passed During Winter Session- Veerappa Moily
The 5th Annual Convention on RTI got underway here today. Organized by Central Information Commission (CIC), the Convention this year has a theme “RTI: Challenges & Opportunities”. Union Minister of Law & Justice, Shri Veerappa Moily inaugurated the Convention. In his address Shri Moily said that the RTI agenda of truly empowering people with information, needs to be taken forward. He said that RTI Act underlines to make the governance citizen centric and not officer-centric. The Minister said that the whistleblowers and RTI activists are instrumental in furthering the cause of transparency and need adequate protection. He asserted that the Whistleblower Bill (The Public Interest Disclosure and Protection to Persons making the Disclosure Bill) will be passed by the Parliament in the winter session. Shri Moily said that a strong monitoring mechanism needs to be in place for ensuring the success of RTI Act. Referring to Pricewater Cooper (PwC) study, he said that still a large number of our population in the rural as well as urban areas are not aware of RTI Act, reflecting peoples alienation from governance. Shri Moily also stressed the need to put in place a mechanism by preventing the abuse of RTI Act.
In his welcome address, Chief Inforamtion Commissioner Shri Wazahat Habibullah said that the RTI Act forces the bureaucracy to share information and thereby ensuring accountability. He felt that in due course, the empowerment through RTI could become the instrumental in eradicating poverty and other deep rooted problems in our society. The large number of appeals being filed with Central Information Commission reflects that CIC has been able to withstand the test. Shri Habibullah called upon the media, Non-Government Organisations and Civil Society Organisations to actively pursue the cause of RTI so that the Government acts as a facilitator for sharing information with people. He informed that so far 65 thousand cases and appeals have been filed with CIC of which around 54 thousand have been disposed of. CIC has awarded compensations amounting to Rs.25 lakhs. He stressed that there is need to extend the reach of RTI to the rural people. Shri Habibullah felt that complete operationalisation of Section 4 of RTI Act has to be ensured and it needs to be clarified as to which authority is to enforce this Section. He further said that there is need to develop a mechanism to ensure protection of RTI activists.
Information Commissioner, Smt. Deepak Sandhi proposed a vote of thanks on the inaugural session.
The two-day convention will have five technical sessions covering major aspects of Right to Information (RTI). The various sessions will deliberate on issues such as: RTI and Public Private Partnership (PPP) Projects, Responsibility of Political Leadership in promoting RTI, RTI and Judiciary, Challenges and Opportunities in RTI – Role and Responsibility of Media/Civil Society Organizations, RTI and Unique Identification Project-Possibilities.
The present convention is being attended by representatives of Transparency International, Civil Society and media both from within the country and from SAARC countries. The deliberations are expected to produce documents of contemporary as well as long term relevance to South Asia.
On the occasion of this convention a monograph released. This monograph sets out the experiences of stakeholder from all sections in regard to the implementation of the Right to Information legislation in the last five years. The “Resonance of Information” was first of its kind brought on the occasion of National Convention on RTI in 2006 and the present monograph the second in series. The monograph documents the report and recommendations of two of the conventions of this Commission.
Showing posts with label RTI. Show all posts
Showing posts with label RTI. Show all posts
Monday, September 13, 2010
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Saving the right to information miracle
by Vidya Subrahmaniam
The RTI juggernaut has begun to roll over Indian babudom. Let us not turn the clock back.
Over the past week, there have been reports that the Prime Minister's Office, responding to Sonia Gandhi's muscular intervention, is backing off on the dreaded amendments to the Right to Information Act, 2005.
On the other hand, it is worth remembering that the amendments scare has never been too far away. It resurfaced as recently as April 30, 2010 — this time in the benign form of a friendly letter to an RTI applicant. The letter, from the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), was in response to his application seeking details of the amendments under consideration, and it confirmed that far-reaching changes were in fact under way.
And yet, whatever the outcome of this see-sawing confrontation between the government and the growing band of RTI stakeholders — activists, Information Commissioners, ordinary citizens — one thing is clear. Almost against its will, official India is changing.
The DoPT's letter is an example in itself. In the past, the department, the nodal government agency for matters relating to RTI, would get into a lather if anyone so much as asked a question. RTI activists and the Central Information Commission (CIC) fought a marathon battle to get the DoPT to acknowledge that the Act allowed access to file-notings. The department stubbornly maintained the opposite on its website, providing just the excuse the other Ministries needed to stonewall demands for file-notings.
The DoPT's April 30 letter is accommodating to the point of disbelief. In reply to “point number 8,” it says: “copy of file noting is enclosed.” Was this the same government organ that possessively clutched file-notings to its bosom? Not just the DoPT. There is reason to believe that RTI glasnost is wrecking babudom's practised ways everywhere in government. If today we know for a fact that Ms Gandhi and the Prime Minister hold opposing views on amending the RTI Act, it is thanks, ironically, to RTI. The Manmohan Singh-Sonia Gandhi correspondence was accessed by Subhash Chandra Agrawal, an RTI zealot with an unmatched penchant for bombarding government offices with complicated queries — the kind that would have normally got the government bristling.
Yet today he has in his possession documents of unimaginable importance. To name only a few: The entire 2004 and 2010 Padma awards records, including a 2004 “secret” letter from A.P.J. Abdul Kalam to Atal Bihari Vajpayee on norms for deciding the awards; information on the wealth and assets of judges as well as expenditure on the travels of judges and their spouses; files relating to appointment of judges; the Naveen Chawla-N.Gopalaswami correspondence; details of RTI amendments under consideration; and most recently, a CIC ruling extending the RTI Act to correspondence between the Prime Minister and the President.
Indian Express has scooped significant stories using the RTI Act, and recently published the entire lot of letters exchanged between Ms Gandhi and Dr. Manmohan Singh over the term of the first United Progressive Alliance government. The letters confirm what many have suspected for long: that two different visions inform the offices of the Prime Minister and the Congress president.
The CIC has far surpassed expectations, pushing the envelope to uphold transparency and accountability in the public sphere, and shaking up the judicial fraternity with its daring interpretation of the RTI Act. The CIC's January 2009 ruling that the Act covers the assets of Supreme Court judges is beyond anything one could have imagined in pre-RTI India.
To understand the import of this decision one has only to look at the incredible phenomenon of the Supreme Court appealing to itself against the Delhi High Court order upholding the CIC's ruling in the judges' assets case. Significantly, the effect of all this has been to open rather than shut doors. One judge after another has come out voluntarily to declare his assets.
A little over a month ago, this writer filed two RTI applications with the Ministry of Rural Development. Twenty days later, I got a call from the Ministry. Over the following week, officials incessantly fussed over me, worrying that I was not finding the time to go over and inspect the files. Once in the hallowed corridors of Krishi Bhawan, officials eagerly obliged with mounds of files, pointing out file-notings and such, and printing out photocopies late into the evening.
In the case of the second application, the Ministry overshot the RTI deadline of one month by five days. But no harm done. A Deputy Secretary was on the phone profusely apologising for the “unwarranted” delay. The ease with which officials parted with file-notings was a knock-out surprise. Indeed, the experience was almost surreal. Did I owe the kindness to my being a journalist or was something else happening here? The former possibility is fairly ruled out because the fourth estate is not a particular favourite of the bureaucracy.
In truth, not just me, RTI applicants everywhere are possibly finding it just a bit easier to approach the giant behemoth called the government. The term “top secret” which was the bureaucracy's single biggest weapon, no longer looks that forbidding. A correspondent from The Hindu approached a member of the Padma awards committee seeking details of the controversial Padma Bhushan award to NRI hotelier Sant Singh Chatwal. The member threw a fit: “How dare you even call me? Don't you know our decisions are secret?” Yet thanks to RTI, within days we had full information, not just on the award to Mr. Chatwal but on the 1,163 names considered by the committee. The awards committee member, like so many from the “secrecy” era, had not understood that what was secret in his time was open information today. The Hindu correspondent actually held in her hand President Kalam's “secret” note to Prime Minister Vajpayee. And the letter was handed out by the Home Ministry, once the proud repository of all things secret.
Spectacular as these breakthroughs are, it is the smaller stories involving a score of poor RTI applicants that truly point to the transfer of power taking place on the ground. Central Information Commissioner Shailesh Gandhi's favourite story is of a man in rags who was treated with respect at the ration office only because he had filed an RTI application. “The same officer who used to treat him like dirt offered him a chair and tea,” says Mr. Gandhi. “The man understood the power of information, and told me what he had achieved was far more than a ration card. From being always overpowered, he actually felt powerful.”
The implications of this transformation are surely not lost on the top echelons of government. Though not fully by any means, feudal, secretive India has adapted to an open information culture sooner than anyone could have anticipated. Who could have thought that government departments would treat information seekers with deference? If this is the case with the number of RTI users still being minuscule, one can guess the scale of the havoc a fully operative RTI Act would cause.
Says RTI pioneer Aruna Roy: “What we are witnessing is a potentially massive transfer of power. This is democracy at the grassroots, and that is why it is hard to believe that the government will let go of the amendments. RTI has opened a million cans of worms. It has put the fear of God into the bureaucracy.”
And so we have a strange situation. One half of the government is ever so slowly relaxing its hold on information, while the other half is far from giving up. The conflict becomes visible every now and then. Last month, the Home Ministry released the details of the 2010 Padma awards aspirants but advised the RTI applicant who sought them not to make them public.
At a South Asia RTI workshop convened in Delhi recently, delegates from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka seemed in awe of the Indian achievement in RTI. Pakistan framed a freedom of information ordinance in 2002. However, official data from that country shows that all its federal departments and ministries put together get less than five information applications a month. Between 2003 and 2007, only 51 complaints reached the office of the Federal Ombudsman (equivalent to the Indian CIC). Of these, only eight were filed by ordinary citizens. The Indian CIC in the single year of 2009 received 21,500 appeals and complaints, of which it disposed of 19,500.
India's RTI activists and Information Officers are an unusually inspired lot. Chief Information Commissioner Wajahat Habibullah has passed landmark rulings that have changed the rules of governance. Information Commissioner Gandhi has been working with a rare dedication, spending his own money to employ staff, and disposing of 5,800 cases annually. Aruna Roy and countless other activists breathe and sleep RTI.
For all their sake, and more importantly, for the sake of the common citizens, the miracle called the Indian RTI Act must be saved
by Vidya Subrahmaniam
The RTI juggernaut has begun to roll over Indian babudom. Let us not turn the clock back.
Over the past week, there have been reports that the Prime Minister's Office, responding to Sonia Gandhi's muscular intervention, is backing off on the dreaded amendments to the Right to Information Act, 2005.
On the other hand, it is worth remembering that the amendments scare has never been too far away. It resurfaced as recently as April 30, 2010 — this time in the benign form of a friendly letter to an RTI applicant. The letter, from the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), was in response to his application seeking details of the amendments under consideration, and it confirmed that far-reaching changes were in fact under way.
And yet, whatever the outcome of this see-sawing confrontation between the government and the growing band of RTI stakeholders — activists, Information Commissioners, ordinary citizens — one thing is clear. Almost against its will, official India is changing.
The DoPT's letter is an example in itself. In the past, the department, the nodal government agency for matters relating to RTI, would get into a lather if anyone so much as asked a question. RTI activists and the Central Information Commission (CIC) fought a marathon battle to get the DoPT to acknowledge that the Act allowed access to file-notings. The department stubbornly maintained the opposite on its website, providing just the excuse the other Ministries needed to stonewall demands for file-notings.
The DoPT's April 30 letter is accommodating to the point of disbelief. In reply to “point number 8,” it says: “copy of file noting is enclosed.” Was this the same government organ that possessively clutched file-notings to its bosom? Not just the DoPT. There is reason to believe that RTI glasnost is wrecking babudom's practised ways everywhere in government. If today we know for a fact that Ms Gandhi and the Prime Minister hold opposing views on amending the RTI Act, it is thanks, ironically, to RTI. The Manmohan Singh-Sonia Gandhi correspondence was accessed by Subhash Chandra Agrawal, an RTI zealot with an unmatched penchant for bombarding government offices with complicated queries — the kind that would have normally got the government bristling.
Yet today he has in his possession documents of unimaginable importance. To name only a few: The entire 2004 and 2010 Padma awards records, including a 2004 “secret” letter from A.P.J. Abdul Kalam to Atal Bihari Vajpayee on norms for deciding the awards; information on the wealth and assets of judges as well as expenditure on the travels of judges and their spouses; files relating to appointment of judges; the Naveen Chawla-N.Gopalaswami correspondence; details of RTI amendments under consideration; and most recently, a CIC ruling extending the RTI Act to correspondence between the Prime Minister and the President.
Indian Express has scooped significant stories using the RTI Act, and recently published the entire lot of letters exchanged between Ms Gandhi and Dr. Manmohan Singh over the term of the first United Progressive Alliance government. The letters confirm what many have suspected for long: that two different visions inform the offices of the Prime Minister and the Congress president.
The CIC has far surpassed expectations, pushing the envelope to uphold transparency and accountability in the public sphere, and shaking up the judicial fraternity with its daring interpretation of the RTI Act. The CIC's January 2009 ruling that the Act covers the assets of Supreme Court judges is beyond anything one could have imagined in pre-RTI India.
To understand the import of this decision one has only to look at the incredible phenomenon of the Supreme Court appealing to itself against the Delhi High Court order upholding the CIC's ruling in the judges' assets case. Significantly, the effect of all this has been to open rather than shut doors. One judge after another has come out voluntarily to declare his assets.
A little over a month ago, this writer filed two RTI applications with the Ministry of Rural Development. Twenty days later, I got a call from the Ministry. Over the following week, officials incessantly fussed over me, worrying that I was not finding the time to go over and inspect the files. Once in the hallowed corridors of Krishi Bhawan, officials eagerly obliged with mounds of files, pointing out file-notings and such, and printing out photocopies late into the evening.
In the case of the second application, the Ministry overshot the RTI deadline of one month by five days. But no harm done. A Deputy Secretary was on the phone profusely apologising for the “unwarranted” delay. The ease with which officials parted with file-notings was a knock-out surprise. Indeed, the experience was almost surreal. Did I owe the kindness to my being a journalist or was something else happening here? The former possibility is fairly ruled out because the fourth estate is not a particular favourite of the bureaucracy.
In truth, not just me, RTI applicants everywhere are possibly finding it just a bit easier to approach the giant behemoth called the government. The term “top secret” which was the bureaucracy's single biggest weapon, no longer looks that forbidding. A correspondent from The Hindu approached a member of the Padma awards committee seeking details of the controversial Padma Bhushan award to NRI hotelier Sant Singh Chatwal. The member threw a fit: “How dare you even call me? Don't you know our decisions are secret?” Yet thanks to RTI, within days we had full information, not just on the award to Mr. Chatwal but on the 1,163 names considered by the committee. The awards committee member, like so many from the “secrecy” era, had not understood that what was secret in his time was open information today. The Hindu correspondent actually held in her hand President Kalam's “secret” note to Prime Minister Vajpayee. And the letter was handed out by the Home Ministry, once the proud repository of all things secret.
Spectacular as these breakthroughs are, it is the smaller stories involving a score of poor RTI applicants that truly point to the transfer of power taking place on the ground. Central Information Commissioner Shailesh Gandhi's favourite story is of a man in rags who was treated with respect at the ration office only because he had filed an RTI application. “The same officer who used to treat him like dirt offered him a chair and tea,” says Mr. Gandhi. “The man understood the power of information, and told me what he had achieved was far more than a ration card. From being always overpowered, he actually felt powerful.”
The implications of this transformation are surely not lost on the top echelons of government. Though not fully by any means, feudal, secretive India has adapted to an open information culture sooner than anyone could have anticipated. Who could have thought that government departments would treat information seekers with deference? If this is the case with the number of RTI users still being minuscule, one can guess the scale of the havoc a fully operative RTI Act would cause.
Says RTI pioneer Aruna Roy: “What we are witnessing is a potentially massive transfer of power. This is democracy at the grassroots, and that is why it is hard to believe that the government will let go of the amendments. RTI has opened a million cans of worms. It has put the fear of God into the bureaucracy.”
And so we have a strange situation. One half of the government is ever so slowly relaxing its hold on information, while the other half is far from giving up. The conflict becomes visible every now and then. Last month, the Home Ministry released the details of the 2010 Padma awards aspirants but advised the RTI applicant who sought them not to make them public.
At a South Asia RTI workshop convened in Delhi recently, delegates from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka seemed in awe of the Indian achievement in RTI. Pakistan framed a freedom of information ordinance in 2002. However, official data from that country shows that all its federal departments and ministries put together get less than five information applications a month. Between 2003 and 2007, only 51 complaints reached the office of the Federal Ombudsman (equivalent to the Indian CIC). Of these, only eight were filed by ordinary citizens. The Indian CIC in the single year of 2009 received 21,500 appeals and complaints, of which it disposed of 19,500.
India's RTI activists and Information Officers are an unusually inspired lot. Chief Information Commissioner Wajahat Habibullah has passed landmark rulings that have changed the rules of governance. Information Commissioner Gandhi has been working with a rare dedication, spending his own money to employ staff, and disposing of 5,800 cases annually. Aruna Roy and countless other activists breathe and sleep RTI.
For all their sake, and more importantly, for the sake of the common citizens, the miracle called the Indian RTI Act must be saved
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Saving the right to information miracle
by Vidya Subrahmaniam
Magsaysay Award winner and Right To Information activist, Aruna Roy and CPI leader D. Raja, along with others, stage a protest against amendments to the RTI Act in New Delhi. File Photo: Sushil Kumar Verma
The RTI juggernaut has begun to roll over Indian babudom. Let us not turn the clock back.
Over the past week, there have been reports that the Prime Minister's Office, responding to Sonia Gandhi's muscular intervention, is backing off on the dreaded amendments to the Right to Information Act, 2005.
On the other hand, it is worth remembering that the amendments scare has never been too far away. It resurfaced as recently as April 30, 2010 — this time in the benign form of a friendly letter to an RTI applicant. The letter, from the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), was in response to his application seeking details of the amendments under consideration, and it confirmed that far-reaching changes were in fact under way.
And yet, whatever the outcome of this see-sawing confrontation between the government and the growing band of RTI stakeholders — activists, Information Commissioners, ordinary citizens — one thing is clear. Almost against its will, official India is changing.
The DoPT's letter is an example in itself. In the past, the department, the nodal government agency for matters relating to RTI, would get into a lather if anyone so much as asked a question. RTI activists and the Central Information Commission (CIC) fought a marathon battle to get the DoPT to acknowledge that the Act allowed access to file-notings. The department stubbornly maintained the opposite on its website, providing just the excuse the other Ministries needed to stonewall demands for file-notings.
The DoPT's April 30 letter is accommodating to the point of disbelief. In reply to “point number 8,” it says: “copy of file noting is enclosed.” Was this the same government organ that possessively clutched file-notings to its bosom? Not just the DoPT. There is reason to believe that RTI glasnost is wrecking babudom's practised ways everywhere in government. If today we know for a fact that Ms Gandhi and the Prime Minister hold opposing views on amending the RTI Act, it is thanks, ironically, to RTI. The Manmohan Singh-Sonia Gandhi correspondence was accessed by Subhash Chandra Agrawal, an RTI zealot with an unmatched penchant for bombarding government offices with complicated queries — the kind that would have normally got the government bristling.
Yet today he has in his possession documents of unimaginable importance. To name only a few: The entire 2004 and 2010 Padma awards records, including a 2004 “secret” letter from A.P.J. Abdul Kalam to Atal Bihari Vajpayee on norms for deciding the awards; information on the wealth and assets of judges as well as expenditure on the travels of judges and their spouses; files relating to appointment of judges; the Naveen Chawla-N.Gopalaswami correspondence; details of RTI amendments under consideration; and most recently, a CIC ruling extending the RTI Act to correspondence between the Prime Minister and the President.
Indian Express has scooped significant stories using the RTI Act, and recently published the entire lot of letters exchanged between Ms Gandhi and Dr. Manmohan Singh over the term of the first United Progressive Alliance government. The letters confirm what many have suspected for long: that two different visions inform the offices of the Prime Minister and the Congress president.
The CIC has far surpassed expectations, pushing the envelope to uphold transparency and accountability in the public sphere, and shaking up the judicial fraternity with its daring interpretation of the RTI Act. The CIC's January 2009 ruling that the Act covers the assets of Supreme Court judges is beyond anything one could have imagined in pre-RTI India.
To understand the import of this decision one has only to look at the incredible phenomenon of the Supreme Court appealing to itself against the Delhi High Court order upholding the CIC's ruling in the judges' assets case. Significantly, the effect of all this has been to open rather than shut doors. One judge after another has come out voluntarily to declare his assets.
A little over a month ago, this writer filed two RTI applications with the Ministry of Rural Development. Twenty days later, I got a call from the Ministry. Over the following week, officials incessantly fussed over me, worrying that I was not finding the time to go over and inspect the files. Once in the hallowed corridors of Krishi Bhawan, officials eagerly obliged with mounds of files, pointing out file-notings and such, and printing out photocopies late into the evening.
In the case of the second application, the Ministry overshot the RTI deadline of one month by five days. But no harm done. A Deputy Secretary was on the phone profusely apologising for the “unwarranted” delay. The ease with which officials parted with file-notings was a knock-out surprise. Indeed, the experience was almost surreal. Did I owe the kindness to my being a journalist or was something else happening here? The former possibility is fairly ruled out because the fourth estate is not a particular favourite of the bureaucracy.
In truth, not just me, RTI applicants everywhere are possibly finding it just a bit easier to approach the giant behemoth called the government. The term “top secret” which was the bureaucracy's single biggest weapon, no longer looks that forbidding. A correspondent from The Hindu approached a member of the Padma awards committee seeking details of the controversial Padma Bhushan award to NRI hotelier Sant Singh Chatwal. The member threw a fit: “How dare you even call me? Don't you know our decisions are secret?” Yet thanks to RTI, within days we had full information, not just on the award to Mr. Chatwal but on the 1,163 names considered by the committee. The awards committee member, like so many from the “secrecy” era, had not understood that what was secret in his time was open information today. The Hindu correspondent actually held in her hand President Kalam's “secret” note to Prime Minister Vajpayee. And the letter was handed out by the Home Ministry, once the proud repository of all things secret.
Spectacular as these breakthroughs are, it is the smaller stories involving a score of poor RTI applicants that truly point to the transfer of power taking place on the ground. Central Information Commissioner Shailesh Gandhi's favourite story is of a man in rags who was treated with respect at the ration office only because he had filed an RTI application. “The same officer who used to treat him like dirt offered him a chair and tea,” says Mr. Gandhi. “The man understood the power of information, and told me what he had achieved was far more than a ration card. From being always overpowered, he actually felt powerful.”
The implications of this transformation are surely not lost on the top echelons of government. Though not fully by any means, feudal, secretive India has adapted to an open information culture sooner than anyone could have anticipated. Who could have thought that government departments would treat information seekers with deference? If this is the case with the number of RTI users still being minuscule, one can guess the scale of the havoc a fully operative RTI Act would cause.
Says RTI pioneer Aruna Roy: “What we are witnessing is a potentially massive transfer of power. This is democracy at the grassroots, and that is why it is hard to believe that the government will let go of the amendments. RTI has opened a million cans of worms. It has put the fear of God into the bureaucracy.”
And so we have a strange situation. One half of the government is ever so slowly relaxing its hold on information, while the other half is far from giving up. The conflict becomes visible every now and then. Last month, the Home Ministry released the details of the 2010 Padma awards aspirants but advised the RTI applicant who sought them not to make them public.
At a South Asia RTI workshop convened in Delhi recently, delegates from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka seemed in awe of the Indian achievement in RTI. Pakistan framed a freedom of information ordinance in 2002. However, official data from that country shows that all its federal departments and ministries put together get less than five information applications a month. Between 2003 and 2007, only 51 complaints reached the office of the Federal Ombudsman (equivalent to the Indian CIC). Of these, only eight were filed by ordinary citizens. The Indian CIC in the single year of 2009 received 21,500 appeals and complaints, of which it disposed of 19,500.
India's RTI activists and Information Officers are an unusually inspired lot. Chief Information Commissioner Wajahat Habibullah has passed landmark rulings that have changed the rules of governance. Information Commissioner Gandhi has been working with a rare dedication, spending his own money to employ staff, and disposing of 5,800 cases annually. Aruna Roy and countless other activists breathe and sleep RTI.
For all their sake, and more importantly, for the sake of the common citizens, the miracle called the Indian RTI Act must be saved
source;hindu
by Vidya Subrahmaniam
Magsaysay Award winner and Right To Information activist, Aruna Roy and CPI leader D. Raja, along with others, stage a protest against amendments to the RTI Act in New Delhi. File Photo: Sushil Kumar Verma
The RTI juggernaut has begun to roll over Indian babudom. Let us not turn the clock back.
Over the past week, there have been reports that the Prime Minister's Office, responding to Sonia Gandhi's muscular intervention, is backing off on the dreaded amendments to the Right to Information Act, 2005.
On the other hand, it is worth remembering that the amendments scare has never been too far away. It resurfaced as recently as April 30, 2010 — this time in the benign form of a friendly letter to an RTI applicant. The letter, from the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), was in response to his application seeking details of the amendments under consideration, and it confirmed that far-reaching changes were in fact under way.
And yet, whatever the outcome of this see-sawing confrontation between the government and the growing band of RTI stakeholders — activists, Information Commissioners, ordinary citizens — one thing is clear. Almost against its will, official India is changing.
The DoPT's letter is an example in itself. In the past, the department, the nodal government agency for matters relating to RTI, would get into a lather if anyone so much as asked a question. RTI activists and the Central Information Commission (CIC) fought a marathon battle to get the DoPT to acknowledge that the Act allowed access to file-notings. The department stubbornly maintained the opposite on its website, providing just the excuse the other Ministries needed to stonewall demands for file-notings.
The DoPT's April 30 letter is accommodating to the point of disbelief. In reply to “point number 8,” it says: “copy of file noting is enclosed.” Was this the same government organ that possessively clutched file-notings to its bosom? Not just the DoPT. There is reason to believe that RTI glasnost is wrecking babudom's practised ways everywhere in government. If today we know for a fact that Ms Gandhi and the Prime Minister hold opposing views on amending the RTI Act, it is thanks, ironically, to RTI. The Manmohan Singh-Sonia Gandhi correspondence was accessed by Subhash Chandra Agrawal, an RTI zealot with an unmatched penchant for bombarding government offices with complicated queries — the kind that would have normally got the government bristling.
Yet today he has in his possession documents of unimaginable importance. To name only a few: The entire 2004 and 2010 Padma awards records, including a 2004 “secret” letter from A.P.J. Abdul Kalam to Atal Bihari Vajpayee on norms for deciding the awards; information on the wealth and assets of judges as well as expenditure on the travels of judges and their spouses; files relating to appointment of judges; the Naveen Chawla-N.Gopalaswami correspondence; details of RTI amendments under consideration; and most recently, a CIC ruling extending the RTI Act to correspondence between the Prime Minister and the President.
Indian Express has scooped significant stories using the RTI Act, and recently published the entire lot of letters exchanged between Ms Gandhi and Dr. Manmohan Singh over the term of the first United Progressive Alliance government. The letters confirm what many have suspected for long: that two different visions inform the offices of the Prime Minister and the Congress president.
The CIC has far surpassed expectations, pushing the envelope to uphold transparency and accountability in the public sphere, and shaking up the judicial fraternity with its daring interpretation of the RTI Act. The CIC's January 2009 ruling that the Act covers the assets of Supreme Court judges is beyond anything one could have imagined in pre-RTI India.
To understand the import of this decision one has only to look at the incredible phenomenon of the Supreme Court appealing to itself against the Delhi High Court order upholding the CIC's ruling in the judges' assets case. Significantly, the effect of all this has been to open rather than shut doors. One judge after another has come out voluntarily to declare his assets.
A little over a month ago, this writer filed two RTI applications with the Ministry of Rural Development. Twenty days later, I got a call from the Ministry. Over the following week, officials incessantly fussed over me, worrying that I was not finding the time to go over and inspect the files. Once in the hallowed corridors of Krishi Bhawan, officials eagerly obliged with mounds of files, pointing out file-notings and such, and printing out photocopies late into the evening.
In the case of the second application, the Ministry overshot the RTI deadline of one month by five days. But no harm done. A Deputy Secretary was on the phone profusely apologising for the “unwarranted” delay. The ease with which officials parted with file-notings was a knock-out surprise. Indeed, the experience was almost surreal. Did I owe the kindness to my being a journalist or was something else happening here? The former possibility is fairly ruled out because the fourth estate is not a particular favourite of the bureaucracy.
In truth, not just me, RTI applicants everywhere are possibly finding it just a bit easier to approach the giant behemoth called the government. The term “top secret” which was the bureaucracy's single biggest weapon, no longer looks that forbidding. A correspondent from The Hindu approached a member of the Padma awards committee seeking details of the controversial Padma Bhushan award to NRI hotelier Sant Singh Chatwal. The member threw a fit: “How dare you even call me? Don't you know our decisions are secret?” Yet thanks to RTI, within days we had full information, not just on the award to Mr. Chatwal but on the 1,163 names considered by the committee. The awards committee member, like so many from the “secrecy” era, had not understood that what was secret in his time was open information today. The Hindu correspondent actually held in her hand President Kalam's “secret” note to Prime Minister Vajpayee. And the letter was handed out by the Home Ministry, once the proud repository of all things secret.
Spectacular as these breakthroughs are, it is the smaller stories involving a score of poor RTI applicants that truly point to the transfer of power taking place on the ground. Central Information Commissioner Shailesh Gandhi's favourite story is of a man in rags who was treated with respect at the ration office only because he had filed an RTI application. “The same officer who used to treat him like dirt offered him a chair and tea,” says Mr. Gandhi. “The man understood the power of information, and told me what he had achieved was far more than a ration card. From being always overpowered, he actually felt powerful.”
The implications of this transformation are surely not lost on the top echelons of government. Though not fully by any means, feudal, secretive India has adapted to an open information culture sooner than anyone could have anticipated. Who could have thought that government departments would treat information seekers with deference? If this is the case with the number of RTI users still being minuscule, one can guess the scale of the havoc a fully operative RTI Act would cause.
Says RTI pioneer Aruna Roy: “What we are witnessing is a potentially massive transfer of power. This is democracy at the grassroots, and that is why it is hard to believe that the government will let go of the amendments. RTI has opened a million cans of worms. It has put the fear of God into the bureaucracy.”
And so we have a strange situation. One half of the government is ever so slowly relaxing its hold on information, while the other half is far from giving up. The conflict becomes visible every now and then. Last month, the Home Ministry released the details of the 2010 Padma awards aspirants but advised the RTI applicant who sought them not to make them public.
At a South Asia RTI workshop convened in Delhi recently, delegates from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka seemed in awe of the Indian achievement in RTI. Pakistan framed a freedom of information ordinance in 2002. However, official data from that country shows that all its federal departments and ministries put together get less than five information applications a month. Between 2003 and 2007, only 51 complaints reached the office of the Federal Ombudsman (equivalent to the Indian CIC). Of these, only eight were filed by ordinary citizens. The Indian CIC in the single year of 2009 received 21,500 appeals and complaints, of which it disposed of 19,500.
India's RTI activists and Information Officers are an unusually inspired lot. Chief Information Commissioner Wajahat Habibullah has passed landmark rulings that have changed the rules of governance. Information Commissioner Gandhi has been working with a rare dedication, spending his own money to employ staff, and disposing of 5,800 cases annually. Aruna Roy and countless other activists breathe and sleep RTI.
For all their sake, and more importantly, for the sake of the common citizens, the miracle called the Indian RTI Act must be saved
source;hindu
Thursday, May 6, 2010
File Noting under RTI Exemption
The Government has clarified vide Department of Personnel and Training OM No. 1/20/2009-IR dated 23rd June, 2009 that file notings, except file notings containing information exempt from disclosure under section 8 of the Act, can be disclosed. No decision has been taken to amend the Act to exclude file notings from disclosure. It has been decided that amendments to the Act, if any, shall be made only after consultation with different stake-holders. No time frame can be prescribed for taking a decision in the matter.
This information was given by the Minister of State in the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances & Pensions, Shri Prithviraj Chavan in written reply to a question in Lok Sabha today.
***
The Government has clarified vide Department of Personnel and Training OM No. 1/20/2009-IR dated 23rd June, 2009 that file notings, except file notings containing information exempt from disclosure under section 8 of the Act, can be disclosed. No decision has been taken to amend the Act to exclude file notings from disclosure. It has been decided that amendments to the Act, if any, shall be made only after consultation with different stake-holders. No time frame can be prescribed for taking a decision in the matter.
This information was given by the Minister of State in the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances & Pensions, Shri Prithviraj Chavan in written reply to a question in Lok Sabha today.
***
Monday, October 12, 2009
PRESIDENT ADDRESSES ON RTI
SPEECH BY HER EXCELLENCY THE PRESIDENT OF INDIA, SHRIMATI PRATIBHA DEVISINGH PATIL, AT THE INAUGURATION OF THE ANNUAL CONVENTION OF THE CENTRAL INFORMATION COMMISSION
New Delhi, 12th October, 2009
I am pleased to inaugurate the Annual Convention of the Central Information Commission. It was on this day in 2005 that the landmark legislation of the Right to Information Act came into effect giving to the people of India a powerful instrument for their empowerment.
In a democracy it is the people who are supreme. They elect their Government and it is for them to judge the performance of their elected representatives. While the casting of the vote enables them to take the important decision on what Government they want, for assessing deliverability, they need information about how their Government is functioning. The RTI gives to each individual citizen the means to question and to get answers. The significance of this becomes evident when we recall that before 2004, it was largely the Members of Parliament and Members of State Legislatures who could question the performance and functioning of Government authorities through proceedings in their respective Legislatures. The Act has, in a manner of speaking, now created a virtual "Parliament of the People", where every citizen, through a simple method, can seek information from public authorities; and expect a response in 30 days. This has been the biggest fundamental difference that has been brought about by the RTI enactment - providing relatively easy access to information. There is no doubt that the flow of information to the citizens will help them make enlightened judgments.
Interaction between the citizens and the public authorities is important in making democracy participatory and to move forward towards the common national goals of progress and prosperity. India seeks to build an inclusive society and is committed to an inclusive growth process. Government has made available substantial amount of funds for numerous social and economic schemes. A major challenge is to ensure the effectiveness of the delivery mechanisms, so that the impact of these schemes is felt by the beneficiaries. It is of utmost importance that these funds are spent in conformity with the cannons of efficiency and productivity, as well as their wastage and pileferage avoided. The "RTI Route" can be instrumental in bringing about improvements in the public service delivery systems and mechanisms.
Public authorities are progressively becoming pro-active to the spirit behind the Act and are responding favourably. The best practices adopted by various States in response to the RTI Act should be codified and practiced. Various public authorities have simplified their procedures and transformed their citizen interface into the e-governance mode and the Commission itself is one of them. I am also told that since the Act came into being a large number of Government websites invariably have the "Right to Information button" on them. It is important that technology is used for better management of records and data, this is turn would make information sharing easier.
Institutions are increasingly coming under greater scrutiny. Information is no longer the preserve of a few and there is greater emphasis on transparency of work and accountability. However, there are many occasions where the bureaucracy, evokes an image of red-tapism and certain opaqueness. It is my hope that as the Right to Information gets further embedded into our civil society, there will be even more urgency felt to take action to negate this perception, which at times may be wrong. Good governance and corruption free systems are what people are rightfully expecting, and they can use the Act to get it in full measure.
The Right to Information Act has the potential to make Government and the people work together for the benefit of both. The occasionally noticed tendency to view public authorities as adversaries should go. There is a fine balance which needs to be maintained between applications under the Right to Information to public authorities and also ensuring that public authorities are not flooded with applications some of them of frivolous nature, which could overwhelm their ability to respond in time. Therefore, there is a need for a sense of responsibility for more openness on the part of public authorities as also within civil society to ensure that applications which reach authorities are those that genuinely need immediate attention. It is here that the role of the Central Information Commission, as a regulator, balancer and educator, is critical.
Citizens exercising the right to information have substantially grown in numbers, complexion, and stature. There are many illustrative cases - physically handicapped persons getting their entitlement, women getting old age pension, students getting correct evaluation of exams, damaged roads being repaired. This speaks of the success of the RTI Act in creating conditions for free flow of information and thereby empowering the citizen. Applications that result in public benefits, in the timely implementation of schemes; that bring relief and welfare to people; help in citizens getting what is theirs rightfully, should receive the uppermost priority. Efforts must also be made to ensure that the RTI option is known and exercised in rural areas and by the disadvantaged sections of society.
Rights given under this Act to our citizens are extensive and, therefore, it is important that there be a deep sense of responsibility while exercising them. The civil society can play an important role in creating awareness about the importance and spirit of the Act, so that collectively the people and their elected Governments can build the future of the country responsibly and constructively.
In the end, I would like to reiterate the importance of following sound principles of good governance for the welfare of our citizens, who are at the centre of all government functioning. This will further strengthen our democratic traditions and credentials. I am confident that during the Convention, the review of the functioning of the RTI and discussions under the sub-themes will identify issues that need attention whether in terms of factors that impede the flow of information, co-ordination between State Commissions, strengthening of government infrastructure for RTI and building a responsible culture of RTI. I conclude with good wishes for the Convention.
Thank you.
Jai Hind.
New Delhi, 12th October, 2009
I am pleased to inaugurate the Annual Convention of the Central Information Commission. It was on this day in 2005 that the landmark legislation of the Right to Information Act came into effect giving to the people of India a powerful instrument for their empowerment.
In a democracy it is the people who are supreme. They elect their Government and it is for them to judge the performance of their elected representatives. While the casting of the vote enables them to take the important decision on what Government they want, for assessing deliverability, they need information about how their Government is functioning. The RTI gives to each individual citizen the means to question and to get answers. The significance of this becomes evident when we recall that before 2004, it was largely the Members of Parliament and Members of State Legislatures who could question the performance and functioning of Government authorities through proceedings in their respective Legislatures. The Act has, in a manner of speaking, now created a virtual "Parliament of the People", where every citizen, through a simple method, can seek information from public authorities; and expect a response in 30 days. This has been the biggest fundamental difference that has been brought about by the RTI enactment - providing relatively easy access to information. There is no doubt that the flow of information to the citizens will help them make enlightened judgments.
Interaction between the citizens and the public authorities is important in making democracy participatory and to move forward towards the common national goals of progress and prosperity. India seeks to build an inclusive society and is committed to an inclusive growth process. Government has made available substantial amount of funds for numerous social and economic schemes. A major challenge is to ensure the effectiveness of the delivery mechanisms, so that the impact of these schemes is felt by the beneficiaries. It is of utmost importance that these funds are spent in conformity with the cannons of efficiency and productivity, as well as their wastage and pileferage avoided. The "RTI Route" can be instrumental in bringing about improvements in the public service delivery systems and mechanisms.
Public authorities are progressively becoming pro-active to the spirit behind the Act and are responding favourably. The best practices adopted by various States in response to the RTI Act should be codified and practiced. Various public authorities have simplified their procedures and transformed their citizen interface into the e-governance mode and the Commission itself is one of them. I am also told that since the Act came into being a large number of Government websites invariably have the "Right to Information button" on them. It is important that technology is used for better management of records and data, this is turn would make information sharing easier.
Institutions are increasingly coming under greater scrutiny. Information is no longer the preserve of a few and there is greater emphasis on transparency of work and accountability. However, there are many occasions where the bureaucracy, evokes an image of red-tapism and certain opaqueness. It is my hope that as the Right to Information gets further embedded into our civil society, there will be even more urgency felt to take action to negate this perception, which at times may be wrong. Good governance and corruption free systems are what people are rightfully expecting, and they can use the Act to get it in full measure.
The Right to Information Act has the potential to make Government and the people work together for the benefit of both. The occasionally noticed tendency to view public authorities as adversaries should go. There is a fine balance which needs to be maintained between applications under the Right to Information to public authorities and also ensuring that public authorities are not flooded with applications some of them of frivolous nature, which could overwhelm their ability to respond in time. Therefore, there is a need for a sense of responsibility for more openness on the part of public authorities as also within civil society to ensure that applications which reach authorities are those that genuinely need immediate attention. It is here that the role of the Central Information Commission, as a regulator, balancer and educator, is critical.
Citizens exercising the right to information have substantially grown in numbers, complexion, and stature. There are many illustrative cases - physically handicapped persons getting their entitlement, women getting old age pension, students getting correct evaluation of exams, damaged roads being repaired. This speaks of the success of the RTI Act in creating conditions for free flow of information and thereby empowering the citizen. Applications that result in public benefits, in the timely implementation of schemes; that bring relief and welfare to people; help in citizens getting what is theirs rightfully, should receive the uppermost priority. Efforts must also be made to ensure that the RTI option is known and exercised in rural areas and by the disadvantaged sections of society.
Rights given under this Act to our citizens are extensive and, therefore, it is important that there be a deep sense of responsibility while exercising them. The civil society can play an important role in creating awareness about the importance and spirit of the Act, so that collectively the people and their elected Governments can build the future of the country responsibly and constructively.
In the end, I would like to reiterate the importance of following sound principles of good governance for the welfare of our citizens, who are at the centre of all government functioning. This will further strengthen our democratic traditions and credentials. I am confident that during the Convention, the review of the functioning of the RTI and discussions under the sub-themes will identify issues that need attention whether in terms of factors that impede the flow of information, co-ordination between State Commissions, strengthening of government infrastructure for RTI and building a responsible culture of RTI. I conclude with good wishes for the Convention.
Thank you.
Jai Hind.
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