What rights? What information?

The key elements lacking in the Bill are evident on a cursory reading. It does not cast a strong enough duty on government to reach certain kinds of information to people who are not likely to exercise their freedom to go and ask for it, although it may have a vital bearing on their lives. Secondly, it contains no provisions for accountability on the part of officials or public bodies. Worse still, it gives a right to appeal once to some undisclosed authority and then again to the state or Central government. In short, while a person who may be severely affected by non-disclosure of information in spite of having a legal right to it would be running from pillar to post, the `babu’ who created the situation would continue to warm his seat and collect his paycheck. Besides not providing an independent forum for appealing such decisions, the Bill goes on to oust the jurisdiction of the courts on any matter connected with the Act, a provision which clearly violates established jurisprudence.

Not satisfied with containing an array of exemptions to giving information in Section 8, Section 9 contains additional grounds on which information can be refused and one of them is, that the information is available in published material available to the public. Obviously, the government’s obligation would end with `publishing’, or worse still, getting published through private publishers, any information. The invisibility of official gazettes, manuals and reports, coupled with the prohibitive pricing of private publications, indicates the extent of access available.

All this raises essential questions relating to the processes by which important measures affecting the public and the polity are arrived at. It is strange that the law on the right to information, having been under discussion for at least three years, should be so lacklustre. The Central government’s own Working Group on the right to information, which gave its report in 1997, suggested a draft which was weak in some aspects, but did have some key elements like an independent forum of appeal from refusals for information.

The government also had before it the Bill suggested by the Press Council of India which contained sensible provisions like strong provisions for suo motu disclosure, as well immediate or urgent disclosures in matters pertaining to life and liberty. This Bill also had a clause for imposing penalties where information was withheld without a legal reason. Surely the government was under a duty to examine the workings of these Bills, as well as the relevant Acts in states like Tamil Nadu, Goa and Rajasthan, before writing down in stone what would apply to the whole country.

We can also presume that the drafters had access to international standards such as the laws of Sweden, USA, and Canada, or the more modern UK bill which is pending before the House of Lords. There is also the example of South Africa’s Promotion of Access to Information Act, passed this February.

If our attitude of intellectual self-sufficiency precludes all of these exercises, then perhaps we ought to consider asking the much-touted `poor, illiterate masses’ what their requirements for information are. Legislators would be surprised at the wealth of suggestions, matching the best practices the world over, which can come from this constituency.

The writer is programme co-ordinator, Right to Information Programme, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative