Democracy
in India suffers from many ills of
poor governance, such as a lack of
transparency and accountability in
the working of public institutions,
poor implementation of rule of law
to guarantee individual and group
rights and security, non-participatory
method of policy making and service
delivery by government institutions
and non-existence of effective institutions
for checking corruption. A large part
of India continues to reel under poverty
and unemployment as a result. Weak
governance threatens to tear at the
very fabric of democracy and leave
the country poorer and ignorant.
Attempts
to remedy the situation by introducing
accountability mechanisms like Lok
Pal and Lok Auykta were unsuccessful
because these institutions were not
given the autonomy and power to function
to their capabilities. One drawback
they faced was the absence of any
accountability as public institutions.
It is in light of their failure to
function that the Right to Information
(RTI) Act came into being. The RTI
Act was conceived with an aim to build
strong civil society and construct
new accountability mechanisms that
make public institutions accountable
and transparent. What this means more
than anything else is bringing about
a change in mindsets. It means encouraging
people to abandon the long ingrained
psyche of treating government institutions
as their Mai-Baap and start
questioning them about their performance.
The
trend began with the Rajasthan-based
mass orgnisation Mazdoor Kisan Shakti
Sangathan. In the early 1990s it took
the lead in a very backward region
of Rajasthan to assert the right to
information by asking for copies of
bills, vouchers and muster rolls for
workers engaged in development work.
While on paper such development work
was shown to be completed, the reality
of roofless school buildings, dispensaries
without walls, incomplete dams and
community centers told a very different
tale. Following a period of struggle,
MKSS succeeded in acquiring photocopies
of the relevant documents in which
the siphoning of funds was clearly
evident. Other organisations in other
states followed suit and demanded
the enactment of a right to information
law.
In
the face of intense public pressure,
the United Progressive Alliance government
set up a National Advisory Council
(NAC) based on whose suggestions the
government enacted a new legislation,
the Right to Information Act, 2005.
According to the Act, all information
held by the government ultimately
belongs to the people it governs.
The Act authorises people to ask any
information about the functioning
of government departments or public
authorities. Making information available
to citizens is simply a part of government
functioning because the public has
a right to know what public officials
do with their money and in their name.The
Act seeks to establish that transparency
is the norm and secrecy an exception
in the working of any public authority.
The
RTI Act is one of the most significant
legislations enacted by the Parliament
of India. The Act enables the establishment
of an unprecedented regime for right
to information by citizens of India.
In PRIA's opinion, the Right to Information
Act will greatly boost the capacity
of civil society to mobilise citizens
to use the law to win better public
services. The challenge before civil
society at this stage is to make the
citizens aware of the Act, which in
turn would facilitate its utilisation
on a large scale. That is why PRIA
has launched certain initiatives to
get more and more people to learn
about the Act and take action whenever
the need to know about the real functioning
of the government arises.
In
India, the implementation of RTI Act
was quite uneven across the states.
In some states, information was being
provided to citizens on time, while
in a large number of states, implementation
was slow and tardy. PRIA took up the
initiative to assess the progress
of RTI in twelve states. The idea
was to bring out an all India picture
of RTI, so that experiences – good
as well as bad – are shared. Furthermore,
the effort was to make RTI Act simple
and understandable to all by analysing
the most important cases or landmark
orders of Central Information Commission.
Regular
interaction with the community and
PRIA's survey on Tracking Right
to Information in Twelve States clearly
revealed that the government was taken
aback by the mobilisation of citizens
on the RTI Act and began to subvert
the Act by proposing amendments to
it, charging high application fees
in some states and denying information
to citizens on one pretext or another
in other states. PRIA took the lead
in tracking the progress of the Act
by earmarking twelve states in 2006.
The states are Andhra Pradesh, Chhatisgarh,
Jharkhand, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh,
Haryana, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh,
Rajasthan, Bihar, Kerala and Uttar
Pradesh.
PRIA
designed five interventions to track
the Act's progress and make people
aware of its existence and functioning
.
Orientation
of civil Civil Society Organisations,
Community Based Organisations
and Voluntary Development Organisations
on Right to Information;
Mass awareness
generation drives
• Among citizens at
Gram Sabha and Ward Sabha level;
• Among citizen leaders,
Citizen Collectives and elected
representatives of Panchayati
Raj Institutions and Urban local
bodies.
• Publication of IEC
materials on Right to Information
• Among University
students
Building
linkages and Advocacy for effective
implementation of RTI through
state level workshops, District
level workshops, signature campaigns,
media linkage and Jan Sunwais
Enhancing
Knowledge on Right to Information
Model building
of Suo Motu disclosure of information
under RTI in Panchayati Raj Institutions
and Urban local bodies.
Structured
capacity building workshops were organised
in each of these states where nearly
450 representatives from civil society
organisations participated. Issues
raised in the workshop included the
high fee structure, complicated mode
of fee payment, unavailability of
the list of Public Information Officers
(PIO), no pro active disclosure by
public authorities, lack of training
of PIOs and reluctance of Information
Commissioners to penalise PIOs. Workshops
were conducted also to sensitise students
on the RTI Act in 2006-07 in Poorvanchal
University-Jaunpur and Mirzapur, Rohilkhand
University-Bareilly and Gramoaya Viswavidyaylaya,
and Chitrakoot in Uttar Pradesh.
