In the last one to two years time a buzz has been created over the corruption taking place in the government system. Not that corruption was alien to the country’s body politic but earlier the problem was only beginning to dawn on people’s conscience and there was no real urgency to fight it. Not anymore and right now the tolerance level to withstand corruption is sinking by the day, meaning that people have lost faith in leaders and the system that perpetuates corruption. The positive is that because a movement is building up to fight corruption, the system has started to respond. All of us are aware of the contribution of the judiciary, which in recent times, has come out with some important ruling to not only expose corruption in high places but also put a check on the political executive by setting things right. Even the political establishment is responding by taking policy initiatives to cleanse the corrupt system. The recent experience of the Lok Pal Bill goes to show that there is now a political consensus among all parties to have a strong anti-corruption regime put in place. It is also good to see that corruption is more and more becoming a visible election issue. This new found interest of political parties to fight corruption is a welcome development. But in all this, what about the larger government machinery manned by the permanent executives i.e. the bureaucracy, which is at least not accountable to the people unlike the politicians who can be voted out of power.
All of us are aware that the bureaucracy functions on the basis of the Officials Secret Act (OSA). There is no doubt that the biggest problem with the OSA is that it facilitates clandestine deals, arbitrary decisions, manipulations and embezzlements. By legalizing secrecy in administration, the OSA remains a barrier towards having an open and accountable government. A few ago the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) had circulated a “Zero Tolerance Action Plan on Corruption” to all the State governments wherein it was observed that obsolete laws and time consuming bureaucratic procedures are the breeding ground for corruption. The CVC had likewise recommended what is called ‘the principle of the sunset laws’ so that no law will be on the statute book for more than five years or ten years unless it is re-enacted and re-promulgated after careful examination. The CVC was of the view that obsolete laws should not be allowed to clutter the system. In fact the second Administrative Reforms Commission (under the present UPA regime) had recommended scrapping of the 83-year-old Official Secrets Act (OSA) saying it was out of place with the regime of transparency in a democratic society.
Once the OSA is scrapped or at least rationalized, the transparency that it will renew, with every detail being exposed to the public view, should go a long way in curtailing corruption in public life. That the right to information is the key to good governance and having, already acquired a legal framework under the Right to Information Act it therefore makes non-sense of continuing with an archaic clog such as the OSA. If one may say so, having the OSA is completely flawed and continuing with this veil of secrecy may well defeat the very purpose of giving constitutional sanction to what is undoubtedly a revolutionary piece of legislation (RTI) to have been inked. It therefore makes sense for the government to do away or at least make some correction with this old remnant of the British Colonial system. The fight against corruption certainly requires a new thinking.
