Towards building an
“Informatics Society”
Hari Jaisingh
T
he most critical area of
good governance is the
flow of information, and
that too right information
and not tailored to facesaving devices of the
powers-that-be. Though the right to
information for citizens is not
enshrined in the Constitution, the
Right to Information Act of 2005 is a
vital instrument to bring about
transparency and accountability in
the system.
Looking at the slow moving
economy under the Narendra Modi
regime, it is a pity that most
politicians, particularly belonging to
the ruling class, do not have proper
appreciation of national economic
goals.
As for bureaucrats, they either
play safe or tend to be status-quoist.
In any case, the bureaucracy is
mostly politicised and hence its role
tends to be partisan. Once a civil
servant gets into the clutches of an
undesirable politician, he becomes
vulnerable. Good governance suffers,
in the process, to the advantage of
unscrupulous persons.
Those better informed, know what
is what and what goes on behind the
ruling coterie. The average citizen has
probably no idea about who is
behind whom! The problem in
today’s governance is that there is no
element of fear of law.
As it is, decent persons dare not
question the operations of the ruling
clique, howsoever undesirable.
Intolerance of the voices of dissent
and muzzling of all those who refuse
to toe the line set by the ruling
dispensation seem to be becoming
the order of the day. The writing on
the wall is clear. We must reverse the
drift in good governance and the
people’s right to truthful information
flow which alone can strengthen the
spirit of democracy.
Of course, the power of citizens
got a big boost from the 2005 Right to
Information Act. It helped ordinary
citizens feel empowered and
equipped with some means to take
on corruption and corrupt persons.
However, what has of late been
disquieting is the chipping away of
certain provisions of the RTI Act
through amendments.
For example, new rules have
downgraded the office of the chief
and other information commissioners at the Centre and in
the states through July 2019
amendments to the 2005 RTI Act.
These rules have reduced their
tenure from five years to three. They
have also cut down salary and perks
of the CICs and ICs at both Centre
and the States. Their objective
apparently is to weaken the Act and
undermine the citizens’ powers vis-àvis governmental authorities.
Amit Shah
Union Home Minister Amit Shah
has reportedly said that the
government wants to put out as
much information in the public
domain as possible in order to
reduce the need for RTI applications.
The question may be asked: why? We
know well enough the government
loves to conduct itself secretly. It
hardly cares to match citizens’ wish
to know about the process of
decision-making of a specific matter.
Be that as it may. One heartening
development has been bringing the
Chief Justice of India’s office under
the RTI Act. On November 13, the
Supreme Court ruled that the CJI’s
office is “a public authority” under
the RTI Act. The five-judge
Constitution Bench then upheld a
Delhi High Court ruling of 2010 and
dismissed three appeals by the
Secretary General and the Central
Public Information Officers (CPIO) of
the apex court. It may be recalled
that the Supreme Court in 2010
petitioned itself challenging the Delhi
High Court order.
While ruling that the office of the
CJI is a public authority, the Supreme
Court held that RTI cannot be used as
“a tool of surveillance” and that
judicial independence has to be kept
in mind while dealing with
transparency. The CBI, however, is
still out of the RTI’s ambit. The CBI
case is pending before the apex
court. However, my moot point is:
how about “public authority” of
various democratic institutions. They
have to be brought in the RTI Act
network.
Looking on a larger canvas of
citizens’ right to know, I wish to recall
the observation of Justice Ranjan
Gogoi a day before his retirement on
November 17. He said “Ordinary
freedoms are finely balanced in our
institutional functioning — while you
have the bar whose members can
exercise their freedom of speech to
the extent even pushing boundaries
of such freedom, the bench
requires its judges to maintain
silence while exercising their
freedoms.
He further observed, “this is not to
say that judges do not speak. They do
speak, but do so only out of
functional necessity and not more.”
Bitter truths must remain in memory,
he declared.
Justice Ranjan Gogoi
I find this remark of Justice Ranjan
Gogoi somewhat intriguing. If “bitter
truths”, sooner or later, do not come
out of the judge’s memory, how shall
we be able to fill the gaps in fair and
transparent functioning of the
judiciary?
Notwithstanding good intentions
of judges, they need to constantly
keep in mind the desirability of
transparency and accountability of
both judicial and non-judicial powers of our institutions.
Broadly speaking, we know what is
wrong where. It is also true that we
are heading towards building
“informatics society”. Still, the harsh
reality is that right information is
controlled and twisted out of shape
by the vested interests having the
sole aim of spreading
misinformation for their ends. Thus,
in reality, people do not get right
information as well as the requisite awareness about the advantages that
power-wielders derive from the
faulty system.
Broadly speaking, we know
what is wrong where. It is
also true that we are
heading towards building
“informatics society”. Still,
the harsh reality is that
right information is
controlled and twisted out
of shape by the vested
interests having the sole
aim of spreading
misinformation for their
ends. Thus, in reality,
people do not get right
information as well as the
requisite awareness about
the advantages that powerwielders derive from the
faulty system.
Take, for example, the Official
Secrets Act of 1923 is used
indiscriminately by the authorities to keep the level of information at its
lowest, while providing a shield for
culpable powerful persons to hide
behind it. In fact, power is often used
by them “to criminally and legally”
victimize those who are basically
powerless.
A civilized order, however, would
expect a harmonious approach to life
and society. For this, we have to find
proper answers to strengthen the
areas of transparency, accountability
and fair play in the system against all
the odds. All that I can say: justice has
to be done and seen to be done.
Similarly, an exemplary punishment
has to be given and seen to be given
to those who play with the system to
their advantage.
This should be possible. All that is
required is building a viable
governance system of checks and
balances to ensure accountability of
power-wielders. The challenge
before us is one of evolving the right
“form” for the desired “function”. For
this purpose, the battle of ideas and
communication as well as the urge
for sharing experience must
continue. Indeed, the right of
information is too precious to be
messed up, wittingly or unwittingly,
by making shady characters
custodians of a sort!