Fulfilling its purpose

(MainsGS2:Government policies and interventions for development in various sectors and issues arising out of their design and implementation.)

Context:

• The Right to Information (RTI) Act was passed by Parliament in 2005, aiming to give people access to the records of the Central and State governments. 
• It was a vital reform to help activists and individuals ensure transparency and accountability in governance.

Empowering citizens:

• It has been one of the most empowering legislations for people because this is the one law that puts an obligation on the government to respond to them in a time-bound manner, to get them information to hold the government accountable. 
• The law has, in many ways, tilted the balance of power in favour of those governed which is something that people in the country at large have understood. 
• So when there is denial of their rights and entitlements such as their rations, pensions, medicines in hospitals or education in schools, they reach out to government departments to file an RTI application, and very often they do get information.
• The majority of the RTI applications are filed by people who are asking about their basic rights and entitlements. 
• To hold high offices to account, people have used the RTI law to know what is happening with taxpayers’ money which has enabled them to expose big-ticket scams such as the Adarsh, Commonwealth Games and Vyapam scams. 
• Citizens also were able to expose human rights violations, and then force accountability in those cases as well.

Accessible for commoners:

• Remarkable about the RTI Act is that it came as a result of a very strong grassroots movement, where people from all walks of life came together to say that there was a need for legislation to ensure that they were empowered to seek information from the government. 
• The law basically ensures that there is no set format in which an RTI application has to be filed and it’s a fairly straightforward, simple process. 
• Research has shown that a very large percentage of RTI applications are filed by the poorest and the most marginalised, usually asking for information that relates to their very basic rights and entitlements.

Ensuring transparency:

• Very cleverly, the public information officers these days use words like this division does not have the information. 
• So now they are putting, in a way, the liability on the applicant to find out which officer and which office will hold that information. 
• This is not in consonance with the RTI Act because the liability is on the officer to find out who is holding the information and transfer the RTI application.
• However, successive governments have tried to whittle down this law, but the two biggest and successful attempts have been made or are being made, once in 2019, and the second now, by way of the Data Protection Bill.

Impact of Data Protection Bill:

• The Data Protection Bill will set up a system of amending the RTI law in a manner that all personal information will be exempted. 
• In a community where people are not being given their entitlements or rights under the public distribution system, for example, there is granular information that is put up saying this is the name of the person, [these are] the rations that they are being given, their address, so as to enable a social audit in order to put pressure on the government and hold them accountable. 
• Thus, the entire proactive disclosure scheme, which was provided for under the RTI Act, is going to be completely undermined.