Good riddance

Home Minister L.K. Advani has said that the Official Secrets Act will be scrapped as India is entering an age of transparency and freedom ...

Home Minister L.K. Advani has said that the Official Secrets Act will be scrapped as India is entering an age of 8220;transparency and freedom of information8221;. Three cheers to that. It could be wished that the remark had been made in a more focused and detailed way rather than as an off-the-cuff remark while referring to the raids on Reliance premises.

But a statement of intent has been made and so long as the government can be held down to it, this is wonderful news. The long survival of this anachronistic law in a much-vaunted democracy is an anomaly which has shrouded many a misdemeanour in the veneer of legality. If the BJP government wanted to establish its credentials as an open and democratic government, there is nothing better it could do. Not that it would be easy.

The logic of its survival is the same as was that of the licence-permit raj: power. Whether it is the right to decide who does what and how much or to decide who knows what and how much, it boils down to power bureaucratic power andunaccountability accompanied by a greater freedom for babus and netas to be corrupt in the the broadest sense of the term. This country has learned at profound cost to itself that such power helps no one but the bureaucrats and politicians.

Let an interest be disclosed at once. As withholding information is in the interest of the bureaucrat, the right to having it is in the interest, above all, of the media. It is hard to imagine a species that would be happier not only if this paranoid law met its end but also if a sensible law on the right to information took its place. Yet there is a world of difference between the two kinds of vested interest, the one being to the detriment of democracy and transparency, the other being in the interest of all of the people.

Of course governments must have some right to secrecy if they are to function at all. International negotiations are a peculiarly apt example. If the government is obliged to disclose bargaining and negotiating positions every step of the way,there is no doubt which way such negotiations would end. There is the other argument that if bureaucrats were forced to reveal their every action and decision they would be even more timid. This is nonsense.

The only actions they would be deterred from would be questionable ones, and that is no bad thing. Most importantly, they would realise that they are beholden to the people of this country, not to their political 8220;masters8221;. That would make them a bulwark against political abuse, not collaborators in it. A healthier development is hard to imagine. Which is why, when a politician puts forward this idea, he deserves to be cheered. No one is arguing for an unlimited obligation to part with information.

The point about the Official Secrets Act is that it is too all-encompassing, an open pretext for withholding all manner of information. Surely there is some sensible mean between a free-for-all and near-absolute theoretical denial of information though of course information leaks out by the bucketful ina society as porous as ours. The point is to legalise de jure what already is a de facto situation, and to impose sensible, specific and minimal restrictions on the flow of information.