Soyenthung Khuvung
Sainik School Punglwa, Peren
Right to Information, explaining its power in the name itself. Yes, RTI a real democratic act passed by the government in July and implemented in the October of the same year of passing i.e. 2005, is actually presents one of characteristic picture of one of the largest democratic country INDIA. RTI, carrying huge potential to empower a ordinary citizen of India to know about various functionality and proceedings of government authorities and public firms and organisation ,and thus leading to great accountability and transparency- in such a big neon-liberal economy of INDIA.
Though, having such a huge empowering potential country hasn’t fully released its important till now even since from its implementation. Over the years, many government and public authorities, civil societies, NGOs and social activists are relentlessly in the way to fully realism its important and benefit to country to make it free from various antisocial sin like corruption. Moving on to statics that have been collected through various survey organised by number of small ,big agencies so far reveals real stand of RTI in country and also tells actual success and failure stories in various fields. Data collected by one of the government agencies tells that within the very first year of implementation of RTI, more than 14,000 applications were filed against various public authorities to utilize the RTI, and what was more surprising about it is that only around 800 were accepted as valid applications and rest were discarded. Reason behind discarding such large number of application was that the information they seek, were not under RTI and since, those were confidential to authorities that can not be disclosed and another was some of applications ,that were filed ,were seeking information from private firms, so those were also ignored. Thus, these dates not merely reveals ignoring of applications but signifies that there is lack of information and specially quality information among the masses about act ,and that is required for implementing this strong tool in best possible manner.
So far, till year of 2011, 70486 applications have been found to file seeking information, and out of which around 18,500 are still in queue of response. So, major issue again raises here, that is hampering to RTI is mismanagement of dates, files and information in various public authorities firms and institutes. Since, its well known fact that still today, when world is witnessing a great advancement in the technology in all sort of fields, there still lies so much of loop holes in government offices of India. Still, world of government-information hasn't witness much of technology use in terms of work, data and information storage. Our government offices are neither digitalis nor they are prepared enough to distribute information on time when seeker by any other authority or by individual through RTI. One of the another aspect that will handicaps our government from its normal functioning if number of cases and files through RTI by citizens rise to large number (as it is expected in coming years by analyzing current government scams) then it will vanish whole functionality of system and government ,since as per the RTI it is mandatory to suppliers side to provide relevant information to seeker with in the 30 days of application filed. And since government work is not so much sophistic-ally well managed and organised to handle this much of cases. So, there are many more such issues underlying weakness of implementation of act.
Lets look at crucial aspect of this act.
Section 4 is the cornerstone of the Act. It stipulates that “it shall be the constant endeavor of every public authority to provide as much information sou-moto to the public at regular intervals through means of communication, including internet so that the public have minimum resort to the use of this Act to obtain information.” So, here right itself signifies indirectly that there is great need of digitization of government documents, files , information , so as bring them in more public domain and to enhance communication between public authorities and ordinary citizen. Law also emphasizes that there should always be constant declination of RTI applications and that to be achieved by making more and more information about various functionalists of office and authorities work by providing on world wide web so that seekers can directly approach to their desirable information without causing hurdle in normal functionality of government work.
Another major aspect that is backing this act to achieve its mysticism success is lack of mass awareness among ordinary people. Though many more agencies, civil societies and NGO's are in their way to bring a common awareness through the country, but their efforts ,though appreciable, buts seems to be little when compared to population of India(1.23 billion). And that too(Bareness) among the masses cannot be fully realized until unless a significant corporation and willingness do not come from state authorities and central government. Thus, making a conclusion, a appreciable move by government by introducing RTI in largest democracy of India to realize the its citizen that they are living in democratic country where government is there for the people, by the people and from the people , so they have right to seek information from government authorities to bring more accountability and transparency-in work. But still there is lot of scope of work that is to be done in this field to make it most worthiest law in the field of corruption free India.
