2 January 2025 : Daily Answer Writing

The Right to Information Act provides the common man, not just the right to know, but also the right to question those in power. However, the very purpose of the act stands unfulfilled without addressing some key challenges. Justify with suitable arguments.

(150 Words/10 Marks)

 

ANSWER:

“Information is the currency of democracy“ – Thomas Jefferson.

The Right to Information Act, 2005, is an effective tool for promoting transparency, accountability, and public participation in governance, providing citizens with the right to ask for information from government and public entities.

Role of RTI in empowering the common man:

1. Active Citizenry: (a) helped to create an active citizenry which can hold government agencies accountable for delivering public services; (b) brought citizens to the center of every action as now officials cannot take any random decision; strengthened participatory governance; (c) helped the public to understand genuine difficulties that the government face – built trust in the public regarding government functioning

2. Improved access to information: (a) provides for proactive disclosure and reporting mechanism; (b) led to proper maintenance of records by government departments; [made information a ‘public good’]; (c) appointment of dedicated public information officers in every government office; (d) Suo moto disclosures under Section 4 of RTI (e) time limit for providing information and grievance redressal mechanism.

3. Institutionalized transparency and accountability: (a) helped in identifying various cases of corruption and graft. [e.g., Adarsh Society Scam, 2G scam etc.]; (b) Supreme Court held that the RTI Act supersedes the Official Secrets Act, thus shifting the approach of governance towards more transparency.

However, there are some key challenges that need to be addressed:

1. Stagnation of civil society movements in the country in the past decade – seen as “old frontier of war”; RTI activists and users often face threats, harassment, and even violence for seeking information [e.g., Medha Patkar sentenced to 5 months in jail for 24-year-old defamation case];

2. Tenure, Terms of service and salary of CICs and ICs determined by the rules of GoI rather than a statute [under RTI Amendment Act, 2019], earlier was equivalent to CECs and ECs

3. Information asymmetry – the quality of information received in incomplete, poor and unrelated, this is further amplified by delayed responses.

4. Applicability of the act: (a) political parties and their funding remain outside the ambit of RTI; (b) private sector under PPP is becoming a major public service provider, but it is not adequately covered under the ambit of RTI; (c) exemptions or qualified applicability like that of judiciary; (d) Subversion of RTI by invocation of intellectual property rights. [e.g., Information denied by RBI on demonetization]

5. Implementation challenges: (a) Huge backlog of cases because of the increasing number of frivolous queries; (b) Limited authority to the Information Commissions – no remedial measures if direction given by ICs are ignored.

 

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