No half-measures

The past is a different country. In 1923, when the British state8217;s interests were patently not the same as those of the Indian people, the Official Secrets Act was the perfect piece of legislation. But today, this relic of an imperial regime can still be wielded against the people, existing incongruously with the progressive Right to Information movement and the Internet, which has dramatically flung open access to previously hidden data. The Second Administrative Reforms Commission had suggested scrapping the OSA altogether, but the government8217;s inter-ministerial group wants to settle for an amendment. Among other improvements, they propose tightening and clarifying what constitutes an official secret, a 8216;prior sanction8217; from the Home Ministry for OSA accusations and greater scrutiny of such investigations.

The misuse of the OSA came up as a glaring issue when Iftikar Gilani was arrested for possession of 8216;classified8217; documents about the deployment of troops, and let off after it was revealed this data was available to anyone on the Internet. Since then, the anti-OSA chorus has grown louder, and the indiscriminate use of the Act has somewhat lessened. Recently, Major General retd V.K. Singh was booked under the OSA for giving away too much information about the Research and Intelligence Wing. The conflicting tugs of state secrecy and public accountability plague every country, but we need a different way to deal with it. As the Administrative Reforms Commission suggested, safeguards for security should be built into a separate consolidated National Security Act.

Unfortunately, the Official Secrets Act has left a deep imprint on the equation between the state and the citizen, and government institutions are used to operating as a closed, intimidating system. Even the right to information RTI legislation remains a half-truth as long as the system retains its right to tell only what it wants to tell. While it makes sense to withhold sensitive information related to security, foreign policy, defence, law enforcement, etc, these should be case-specific exemptions instead of being categorically placed out of the public domain. And it must be patently clear that disclosure would harm public interest, rather than merely embarrass the authority concerned.