India has been an independent country for over fifty years now and we proudly name us as a democratic nation where the government is for the people, by the people and of the people. But with the present political conditions of the country the citizens have widely accepted that democracies die behind closed doors. The people of any country have every right to know that whether their government acts fairly, lawfully and accurately. At the Central level we already have a fairly strong legislation called the Right to Information Act (RIT) that enables every citizen to force the men at the helm of the administration to dust off their pigeonholes. Unfortunately, however, at the State level it remains a weak instrumentality. The rules issued for rendering the Act are nothing more than scrap of paper. It contains provisions like stating that the first appeals lie with the “controlling officer” of the concerned department and the second appeals with the Government. Such encourages withholding the desired information against their own colleagues. Another clause includes the officers failing to provide the information in stipulated time-frame would be liable after such inquiry as may be required under rules pertaining to disciplinary action applicable to him for imposition of such penalty as may be determined by the disciplinary authority under such rules.
It has since been modified as the Right to Information Act, 2005, and drawn wide praise for the country in responsible international forums for having strengthened its democratic attire. It noted three positive features:
1. Setting up of an information commission.
2. Role of appellate authority in identifying errant officers.
3. Statutory requirement on the State Government to educate citizens about RTI.
On the other hand, it pointed out at least a dozen shortcomings like, for instance, the High Court is not covered, definition of information is inadequate, private bodies have been left out, reasons should not be required forgiving information, too many exemptions, no public interest override, pro-government bias of the committee for selecting information commissioners, inadequate penalties and exclusion of intelligence and security agencies. The law defined the term “information” as meaning “any document or information relating to the affairs of the State or a public body.” The definition in the Central Act was much wider and covered a whole gamut of material which qualified to be called “information” records, circulars, memos, emails, log books, contracts emails, opinions, press releases, reports and models. In the absence of a comprehensive definition of the term “information”, bureaucrats are likely to deny access to many categories of information whose disclosure may be inconvenient to their vested interests.
Corruption can be contained with the help of people's participation. People have every right to know and being informed about what their ruling apparatus is doing. Access to information is basic to the democratic way of life. The tendency to withhold information from the people at large is, therefore, to be strongly checked.