On the 25th July 2019, the Upper House of India’s Parliament passed the RTI Amendment Bill 2019 amidst huge outcry by the opposition, civil society and even bureaucrats who once headed the RTI department. The RTI or Right to Information is an Act of the Parliament of India that replaced the erstwhile Freedom of Information Act, 2002. The RTI was passed by Parliament and came fully in force by October 2005.
Under the provisions of the RTI, any citizen of India may request information from a public authority (a body of the government or instrumentality of the State) which is required to reply expeditiously or within 30 days. The Act also mandates government authorities to digitise their records for public dissemination and to proactively make accessible certain categories of information so that the citizens need minimum efforts to request for information formally.
changes proposed by RTI Amendment
Under the RTI (2005) the Chief Information Commissioner (CIC) and the Information Commissioners (ICs) are appointed for a fixed term of office by the Central and State governments, typically 5 years. This fixed term gave the information officers a degree of stability and confidence to carry out their duty without fear or favour and put the government departments under pressure for being possibly asked to divulge information pertaining to their performance and style or process of work which might be a cause of embarrassment or lead to a loss of reputation in the eyes of the public.
The RTI Amendment Bill 2019 removes this provision of a fixed term for the CIC and ICs and gives the central and state governments to fix their terms as they deem fit. Similarly, the CIC and ICs drew salaries that were equivalent to the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) and Chief Secretary to the state government. The Amendment again dilutes this stipulated salary structure and authorises the central and state governments to decide their remuneration and perks as per their judgment which can be a significant reduction compared to what was previously envisaged. Clearly, slashing salaries is the best way to reduce the stature and aura of a department or the officers working in it. This is bound to have a ripple effect on the quality of officers who would be appointed thereto. The RTI Amendment thus dilutes the power of the original Act not directly but in a very surreptitious manner.
Why so much opposition to RTI Amendment?
The opposition is mainly crying foul over the manner in which the government “steamrolled” them by taking regional parties on board and getting it “passed” in the Rajya Sabha where it is still short of a majority. The opposition wanted the Bill to be handed over to the ‘Select Committee’ for review and greater scrutiny, but the government is no mood for such niceties given the brute majority they command in the Lower House (Lok Sabha).
But more than the procedural haste adopted the real reason for the discomfort caused is the morbid fear of the shape this government seems to be acquiring given its ideological leanings, its track record in the last term and the sharp aversion that it displays for criticism and any system of institutional checks and balances to create a level playing field between the various stakeholders of a functioning constitutional democracy. The people of India had been through the dark days of the “Emergency” and do not want history to repeat itself.
Why is the government bringing in the changes?
The government has pleaded “not guilty” to all charges of having ulterior motives for the Amendment. Minister of State in the PMO – Jitendra Singh asserted while introducing the RTI Amendment Bill 2019 that the government is merely trying to correct the anomalies in the existing RTI law (2005) passed by the Congress-led government. According to Singh, “Probably, the then government of the day, in a hurry to pass the RTI Act, 2005, overlooked a lot of things. The Central Information Commissioner has been given the status of a Supreme Court judge but his judgments can be challenged in the high courts. How can that exist? The RTI Act did not give the government rule-making powers. We are merely correcting these through the amendment.”
The soul and spirit of the RTI
According to our Constitution, all the citizens of our country are equal. We are equal partners in its sovereignty and power. We empower the state, and the government is our service provider which has been elected by us. The lawmakers are not our rulers but our servants. By this concept the people of India have the fundamental right to know how their government and the state machinery under its control are working, performing and meeting the aims and objectives as spelt out in their election manifestos before coming to power.
The RTI Act of 2005 set into motion this basic postulate of public sovereignty into practice for the first time and the manifestation of which was the nearly 5 million RTIs filed by the people of India every year, seeking information on a myriad of issues and problems confronting them on a daily basis. It also strengthened the media who could pitch powerful stories, do investigative journalism and bring the failures of the government and its flawed policies in the public domain.
The proposed Amendment will cause grievous injury to this process of public endeavour for information on governance and have a debilitating effect on the kind of information and the ease with which information will be accessed by the public. By diluting the stature and autonomy of the Information Officer, the government of the day will have as much control as they have on regular state machinery elements like the police, the bureaucracy and institutions where the government controls all appointments, transfers and salaries. It is therefore very unlikely after this RTI amendment for a CIC or ICs to expose unpalatable facts about the government, thus trampling on people’s power whilst bolstering the state’s hegemony.
Accountability and Transparency in Islam
The system that Islam adopts for governance is in consonance with its basic philosophy that all are born equal and there is only One God, Who is not only our Provider and Sustainer but also our Law-Giver and Sovereign. Thus, the governed and the government are at par in terms of the accountability and transparency that they may mutually demand of each other. Both the individual and the state are of course entitled to certain privileges and protections in terms of personal privacy and national security respectively.
There are many examples from the life of the Prophet ﷺ, the Rightly Guided Caliphs and pious predecessors that embody the system of transparency and accountability practised by the polity and system of governance promulgated by Islam. Without accepting these noble principles and moral values, we will always struggle to truly transform “mantris” (ministers) into our “sevaks” (servants).