Even a corrupt UPA regime deserves credit for introducing RTI in
the first place.
In 2003, three years after Arvind Kejriwal, now the chief
minister of Delhi, launched Parivartan to help citizens get access to services without
having to pay bribes, a spark was lit in a jhuggi of Sundar Nagri. Nannu, a
daily wage worker, had lost his ration card. Despite applying for a fresh copy
with the Food and Supplies department, there was no movement on his application
for six months. I had joined Kejriwal s organisation around that time.
After Nannu approached Parivartan for help, Kejriwal drafted an
RTI application for him (Delhi had a state-level RTI Act at that time),
demanding to know the name of the official whose job was to process the ration
card, and the time within which the official was expected to have performed his
duty. The answers to these questions would have been an admission of guilt.
Instead, the food inspector arrived at Nannu s doorstep to deliver his ration
card.
It was a eureka moment for many of us who were then working as
activists, trying to secure citizen s rights to basic services from the
government. Many years later, Kejriwal would mention Nannu in his acceptance
speech at being awarded the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 2006.
The enactment of the national RTI Act in 2005 was an important
moment in the history of our democracy, a milestone in our journey towards
building an empowered citizenry. The dilution of the Act by the present NDA
government is also an important moment, but in the opposite direction. The
opposite of democracy is authoritarianism.
All democracies evolve, and that is their strength. A
dialectical process in the early 2000s that involved a spirited social and
political campaign for the right to information, countered by the establishment
s distaste for transparency, finally led to the conclusion that India must give
its citizens access to information about the state and its functions. Even at
that point, the resistance to RTI was strong. For a system accustomed to rule
over people, the idea of citizens asking questions of the government did seem a
little bizarre.
Once a senior officer, who was speaking at an RTI orientation
programme asked, how can any Tom, Dick or Harry question the wisdom and authority
of a well-educated and qualified bureaucrat? How can an auto-rickshaw driver be
allowed to pose questions to officers? We would reply, your salaries are drawn
from the taxes people are paying. Do we exempt an auto-rickshaw driver from
paying taxes? If not, the auto driver is effectively the employer of government
officials.
A few months after the enactment of the national RTI, Kejriwal s
Parivartan led a national campaign called ghoos ko ghoosa . The spark lit by
Nannu s successful use of RTI needed a catalyst to spread the fire across the
country. Parivartan set up camps across several cities and as many as 60,000 to
70,000 people were assisted in filing RTIs to expedite their access to services
like power, water connections, and ration cards.
There are a number of such RTI success stories which led to the
citizens of this country being able to lead dignified lives, promised to them
by our Constitution. Cases of corruption in road construction around the
country suddenly started coming to the fore. Ordinary citizens became
inspectors of the government, and social audits of government works became
popular, thanks in large part to the work done by stalwarts like Aruna Roy and
others.
The wheels were turning in the direction of a deepening of
democracy. The measure of progress of any democracy is the level of empowerment
of ordinary citizens. When the state seeks to take away power from ordinary
citizens, it is at the cost of democracy itself. The RTI movement was born out
of the view that people are the masters and the government exists to serve
them. For the five-year period after elections concluded, there was no
mechanism to hold governments accountable. The RTI plugged this loophole. The
RTI has now become the backbone of our democracy.
The NDA government is seeking to control the appointment and
salaries of Information Commissioners with the amendment it passed in
Parliament. The authors of the RTI law, including Arvind Kejriwal, had chosen
to place Information Commissioners at par with Election Commissioners because
both offices are mandated to protect, preserve and promote the cause of
democracy. By bringing Information Commissioners under the control of the
executive, the government is striking a decisive blow at the independence of
the institution.
I am no longer an RTI activist, but the weakening of the law has
pained me. I have now been on the other side of this tug rope for almost five
years as Deputy Chief Minister of Delhi. I have been the subject of several RTI
queries from the Opposition over the years. Of course, they can be inconvenient
at times, misused and misrepresented by vested interests to create an adverse
narrative. But not once did it bother us because we stand by the strength of
our convictions. That it causes the political executive inconvenience is
actually the strength of RTI. In the face of an apathetic government, it gives
citizens access to justice, a commodity in short supply.
An honest government would never be scared of information being
made accessible. Even a corrupt UPA regime deserves credit for introducing RTI
in the first place. But the Bharatiya Janata Party, a party that used RTI
exposes against the Congress, and has now taken its place in the national
political landscape, is ironically, terrified of it. This speaks volumes about
the intent of this government. We are entering a disturbing phase, where the
wheels of democracy are being forced to stop in their tracks.
0 Comments