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The resignation of Chief Information Commissioner Wajahat Habibullah has once again brought implementation of the Right to Information Act in focus. A recent audit shows that the landmark legislation has achieved a success rate of only about one in four, and that there is huge scope of improvement
Right to information is back in the limelight with Chief Information Commissioner Wajahat Habibullah’s resignation and the subsequent campaign by a section of civil society that believes former police officer Kiran Bedi may bring greater transparency to the Act’s implementation. According to a recent survey report, only 27% of applicants are getting the desired information under the Act. This low percentage of utilisation of the Act should be cause for concern for both government and citizens. The main issue is still lack of awareness about right to information, according to the study carried out by the National RTI Awards Secretariat instituted by the Public Cause Research Foundation (PCRF), a Delhi-based organisation that works in the area of transparent, accountable and participatory governance. The parameters used in the study include effectiveness, deterrent impact, and the pro-disclosure factor. The study, based on orders passed in 51,128 cases by information commissioners and benches during 2008, shows that at the national level orders were passed in favour of disclosure in 70% of cases. “Despite this, there has been 61% of non-compliance of these orders, with only 39% actually receiving the information,” says Arvind Kejriwal, RTI activist and founder of the PCRF. That doesn’t take away from the RTI Act’s success in bringing transparency to a system where there used to be none, says Jagdeep Chhokar, founding member of the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), a Delhi-based non-governmental organisation. “The single biggest problem with implementation of the Act is the appointment process and criterion used to choose the information commissioners,” he says. Shailesh Gandhi, an information commissioner with the CIC, explains that the RTI Act has “actually brought out the poor governance structure in the country”. Gandhi defended the CIC’s functioning, while saying that such studies would help make RTI more effective. “There have been other studies on RTI which have given a better rating to the effectiveness of the Act,” he says. Meanwhile, the central government is working to strengthen awareness programmes for effective implementation of the RTI Act. Funds to the tune of Rs 4.76 crore have been released to the state information commissions, and Rs 4.10 crore to the administrative training institutes for awareness campaigns and development of printing material in regional languages. What is worrying is that although, in 2009-10, the government allocated Rs 14.16 crore as the budget for RTI, only a meagre amount of Rs 3.55 crore was spent till October 2009. That’s less than half the amount spent on RTI in 2008-09, for the same period. Government efforts to spread awareness about RTI do not seem to have worked; awareness levels among citizens about their right to apply under the RTI Act are low. Clearly, more still has to be done to make the filing of RTI applications more convenient. Over 26% of citizens had to pay more than three visits to submit their applications to the public authority. About 47% of applicants found no signboards at the public authority office to help them. There is also the problem of lack of updated lists of public information officers (PIOs). There are frequent complaints of inadequate help provided to applicants and the non-friendly attitude of PIOs. Seventy-five per cent of citizens are still dissatisfied with the quality of information provided and find the data either incomplete or irrelevant. Besides, government officials who ignore the mandate to disclose information under the Right to Information (RTI) Act don’t stand to lose anything. The study found that only two out of every 100 violations of the Act by officials were penalised. “The question is what is the incentive or disincentive for an officer in this country, riddled with corruption, to provide information,” asks Kejriwal, adding that the solution is to take steps to implement the law as effectively as possible. Source: http://www.merinews.com, November 2009
http://www.livemint.com, October 2009
Business Standard, October 22, 2009
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