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By Anu Kumar Maharashtra's Right to Information Bill, which has just been passed, is the most progressive legislation of its kind. Now, it's upto people to use it
A Jan Sunwai, or public hearing on the right to information, in progress |
Exactly three years after it was first tabled, the Maharashtra assembly passed the Maharashtra Right to Information (RTI) Bill. In March 2000, under sustained pressure from social activist and anti-corruption crusader Anna Hazare, the Congress-led DF government had first put forward the bill in the assembly. Following Hazare's protests that it was a weak legislation, and that more public officers needed to be brought under its purview, a committee was set up to make the bill more comprehensive and transparent. Though right to information Acts exist in other states as well -- Rajasthan, Delhi, Goa and Tamil Nadu -- the Maharashtra Right to Information Bill as well as the ordinance that existed before it have been labelled the most progressive of its kind. It was after the ordinance lapsed in January 2003 and only after Hazare once again threatened to resume his agitation under the banner of the Bhrastachar Virodhi Jan Andolan that the Bill was pushed through the assembly. As a consequence, gaps first pointed out in the ordinance still remain, while certain other areas are left deliberately unspecified. For instance, the ordinance had proved a non-starter, as public information officers were not appointed in all government departments and agencies. Also it put information out of the reach of the poor as a court fee stamp of Rs 10 had to be affixed to the application. In case of an appeal if the request was not complied with, another court stamp of Rs 20 had to be submitted to the appellate authorities -- which in almost all cases have still not been constituted. Those seeking redress had little option but to seek recourse with the Lok Ayukta who formed the second tier of appeal. In its present shape, the bill still does not specify the basic fees to be charged, and most people may be deterred from seeking information. Moreover, the Official Secrets Act of 1923 can still be cited to withhold any information that the government department might use its discretion to define as confidential. In other states where the bill has been enacted, it has foundered because of all that remains unstated. The bills at the Centre as well as the Tamil Nadu and the Rajasthan Acts have widely drawn exceptions, which would make it easy for governments to deny information on various grounds. None, with the exception of the Maharashtra bill, have penalties for officials who have defied the provisions of the law and refused to part with information. And in several cases, the appellate authority is constituted from within the governmental set-up. Political apathy and lack of awareness on the part of citizens, coupled with bureaucratic reluctance to part with information, has seen to it that RTI Acts remains non-starters. But the effectiveness or otherwise of such acts as the Right to Information Acts also depends on how they are used over time by the people they are supposed to assist and by officials and government who are bound by it. In the final analysis, whether the right to information bill will be a success depends on how the right is exercised. In Rajasthan, where after five years of government dithering the right to information act was passed in 2000, the movement for the right to information was initiated at the grassroot level. Village-based public hearings called Jan Sunwai organised by the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS) gave space and opportunity to the rural poor to articulate their priorities and suggest changes. The four formal demands that emerged from these Jan Sunwais -- transparency of panchayat functioning, accountability of officials, social audit, and redressal of grievances -- became the fundamental demands on which the campaign for the right to information was built. In Maharashtra too, the right to information campaign as waged by activists including Hazare forms part of a wider plank of issues that include greater devolution of powers to the gram sabha, transparency in government departments and agitation against corruption. In Rajasthan, the MKSS and National Council of People's Right to Information (NCPRI) contributed substantially to the formulation of the initial draft bill. Yet the bill as passed by the state government looked completely different from the one initiated as part of the people's campaign. The government put at least 19 restrictions on the right; there were some draconian restriction clauses that gave bureaucrats substantial discretionary powers to refuse access. Besides having weak penalty provisions, in its appeal mechanism, bureaucrats again formed the appellate authorities. Moreover, barely a year after the bill was enacted, the Gehlot government issued a circular that gave officers still more discretionary powers in providing information to the common man. Despite this, at the grassroot level in Rajasthan, following systematic campaigns waged by concerned groups and growing people's awareness of their own role in participatory governance, the right to information movement thrives. It was the Jan Sunwais that exposed the corruption that pervaded several panchayats and also campaigned extensively for the 'right to food' after the revelation of several hunger and starvation deaths in the drought-ravaged districts of Rajasthan. More important than the government's role in disseminating the provisions of the act, is the need for citizens groups to assert their right to information as guaranteed by law and also to make specific efforts to use that right. This opens the doors for democratic debate, when the right to information ceases to be just a measure of reform and is transformed into a tool for the dissemination and transfer of power. (Anu Kumar is a Mumbai-based journalist.) InfoChange News & Features, March 2003
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