Under Article 78 of the constitution of India the prime minister is bound to furnish information to the president about all decision of the council of minister relating to administration of the affairs of the union and proposal for legislation. The Right to Information Act of 2005 provides for the citizens right to information from concerned public authorities. The RTI act however, came into force much later in year of 2006.
Article 19(1) (a) of the constitution guarantees the fundamental rights to freedom of speech and expression. The pre requisite for enjoying this right is knowledge and information. The absence of authentic information on matters of public interest only encourages wild rumors and speculators, avoidable allegations against individuals and institutions. Therefore, the Right to Information becomes a constitutional right, being an aspect of the right to freedom of speech and expression, which includes the right to receive and collect information.
The Right to Information Act provides the citizens to perform their fundamental duties as set out in the Article 51A of the constitution because a fully informed citizen could certainly be better equipped for the performance of theses duties. Right to Information Act 2005 was brought in to promote transparency and accountability in the working of every public authority. Transparency leads to information and through information accountability can be fixed. But we seldom pay attention or frightened on the failing account 2005 ability of the political and permanent executive. It’s been 64th year of independence; still we are fighting with never ending problems like poverty, illiteracy and deteriorating state of health care. With the advent of the RTI act citizens of the country are much happy that this legislation will bring revolution the political system. However, when it comes to exercise of this right mostly it’s been seen that either people are reluctant or didn’t bother to question the Government. However, no one lacks to complain about the system. With ever increasing levels of poverty, illiteracy and dismal condition of healthcare, one more chief problem has been added in the never ending list i.e. corruption.
Corruption is eating the tax payers money, in terms of swirling paramount amount of funds to Swiss banks,(a condition absent in the British era),illegal amounts of money in national banks, scams, fund embezzlement, paralyzing the economy, however the citizen doesn’t even care to question the government, although the Constitution of India through the RTI gives them fundamental right to do. Since independence cores of rupees have been spent to alleviate poverty. But poverty has increased manifold as if to give perennial ‘fodder’ for the consumption of the executive. Day in and day out novel schemes in the name of social welfare are dished out for misappropriating large chunks of allocated funds. Thus the unfortunate poor are eternally deprived of their legitimate due. It seems corruption has become a way of life in India. People don’t mind to pay bribe if it gets their work done on time. The big business houses for which they are most respected for also inculcate in corrupt practices. A strong nexus exists between the bureaucracies, politicians the corporate sector. The recent Coalgate scam is a very vivid example of how the tip of the ice berg is revealed in the ocean of corruption. The 2g spectrum scam where A.Raja, M.K.Kanimozhi, Siddhart behura(bureaucrat),former telecom secretary and R.K.Chandolia are glaring example of the existing corrupt nexus in India. Huge amounts of money is also illegally collected and channelized to fund election. The recent carnival of Money and power in election at Uttar Pradesh is another glaring example of how blind the politicians can be when comes the question of chair. Even the Election commission has kept mum on overflow of maximum limit of funds allowed for contesting elections.
The East India Company at pre independence did sweep money form India but not at such level which in the post independence era our politicians are doing. The black money in Swiss banks represents how almost every power and influential person is indulged in corruption. The recent government is also reluctant to initiate any actions. Such is the level of corruption after independence. However even with the RTI we are almost impotent to create any difference in the quality of governance in the country. Corruption is increasing day by day, indirectly shoving the mass in never ending tunnel of poverty. The system is very quick taking on the small mortals to task. If a bank clerk misuses a few places, immediately CBI comes into scene, and the clerk is arrested, prosecuted and sent to jail without any hiccups. When the top executive misuses the bank funds the system is slow and dormant. Investigation into the infamous Fodder scam took 17 years to fix Lulu Prasad Yadav. All these years he enjoyed power, perks of office and reckless freedom. If the same scam was confined to ordinary lower staff without any involvement of the bigwigs, the investigation would have been mercurial. After Independence, if every rupee of the exchequer was well spent, without overt and covert scams, every village in India would have been electrified by now. Every village would have potable drinking water available. Every village would have schools with full infrastructure. All the primary health centers would have been equipped with latest medical equipment and qualified doctors. The government also doesn’t want the people to get educated, other it would not be able to exploit them. That’s a reason why we have glaring speakers barking the faux election manifesto of the political parties in Election, and not about RTI and other citizen empowering appeals. Alas, taking the present situation into account we cannot dream of such effective state in the near future.
RTI is almost irrelevant if it is not used by any means. However, not everything is murky. and still India has to move forward a long way. Mens like Anna Hazare, Arvind Kejiriwal are contributing a lot to fight corruption, a significant use of RTI since its inception. Now is the time, every citizen should take up the cudgels called RTI, to get rid of the inertia from the system, misgovernance, Looting the nation with impunity and usher in a new dawn. Through RTI we can evolve a system where in a minor deviation or misuse of power ignites a loud thud, stopping the damage at the initial stage.
By : Ritesh Prasad
