Opinion Destroyed,lost,disorganised

In independent India,a few significant strides took place in liberalising access. In 1949,records up to 1901 became available to researchers. In 1956,40 year-old records were thrown open for access; in 1967 it was changed to a 30-year rule,still in force.

Despite these strides,it took the government 45 years after Independence to come up with a Central archival law for the country; the Public Records Act of 1993 (PRA). While some of the key provisions of this act have long become redundant in the wake of the Right to Information Act (RTI) the government has yet to amend it. The 30-year rule stands unchanged and the access to archives is still a privilege of scholars and researchers who can produce documentary proof validating their stated purpose for consultation. This is against the RTI,as even an illiterate person can consult a record under that right,without having to answer why she wants to see a record.

In most Indian archives,records post-1947 are few and far between. Even when present,they are not in order,with too many gaps in the series. Historians and researchers have consistently demanded that archives actively acquire post-1947 records: as per the PRA,all records 25 years old should be transferred into the archives. However,this rule is violated more often than not.

I think it would be untenable,for example,to have a research proposal to study the Emergency or the anti-Sikh riots of 1984 because of the scarcity of the records of the time in the archives. The practice of government departments illegally keeping records older than 25 years must end. This has no justification whatsoever — as even a classified record becomes an ordinary record after 25 years,and hence should be transferred to the archives. Though public sector undertakings (PSUs) also come under the purview of the PRA,not more than 10-15 per cent of the 241 PSUs have responded to the NAI in transferring their records — or even in scientifically managing them before transfer. There have been instances in states like Uttar Pradesh where the outgoing state government destroys all the records which they do not want the next government to see. Till today,there has not been a single prosecution under the PRA for unauthorised destruction or the non-transfer of records to the archives.

The National Archives of India (NAI),attached to the ministry of culture,is the apex archival body in the country. For the last year or so the NAI has been taking up special projects to speed up the acquisition of pending records in government departments and get them ready for consultation by scholars. While these measures are laudable,a few structural issues are marring its work. First,there has been a serious shortage of labour in the archives.

Creation of reference media is the most important requirement for the consultation of records; absent such media,a person cannot even trace a record,much less consult it. Work on reference media for private archives started only in the last few years. Another area of concern has been the financial outlay: in 2010-11,only Rs 20 crore was allotted. The working group on art and culture for the 11th Five-Year Plan identified digitisation of records as a priority area and an annual target of 5 million pages was set; this compares poorly with the annual target of 33 million in Britain. It has also been reported that declassification is holding up the acquisition of lakhs of records. The archival law does not permit the transfer of classified files to the archives.

The government must manage its records scientifically and transfer them to the archives on time. The archives in turn must have the highest standards of record-keeping and a liberal access policy. We,as users of the archives,should not only be sensitive to the information a piece of paper holds — but also be sensitive to the preservation of that very piece of paper.

The writer is a Delhi-based archival scientist,express@expressindia.com