Ethics in Governance and Use of Right To Information To Bring Transparency & Efficiency

Update: This Article has been circulated among 16,00,000 (16 Lakh) people so far!

This Article, Published in Employment News

“As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world -- that is the myth of the atomic age -- as in being able to remake ourselves.”

-          Mahatma Gandhi

Growing calls for upliftment of ethical standards of individuals in recent times has been fueled by a lengthy and extensive debate on the question that whether moral characteristics of an organization are largely independent of those of individuals comprising it. Going into that debate is outside the scope of this article. However, what has become clear from the debate is that systemic factors by themselves do significantly affect moral characteristics of an organization.

Ethics are important not only because it creates a more just society, but also, more importantly, from the point of view of personal contentment of the person who is ethical or unethical. Ethical proclivities create a win-win situation for the individual as well as the society. The relationship between happiness and ethics is bi-causal in the sense that personal ethics affects one’s happiness while happiness also affects ethical preferences. Research has shown that happiness increases in ethical proclivities and that greater happiness results in improved ethical judgments thus creating a synergy between ethics and self-esteem. The results from a research on American Marketing Association members indicate that management experts generally believe that ethics and social responsibility are important components of organizational effectiveness.

Loss of ethics would result in collapse of social structure and complete chaos. The role of ethics in our society is very important because it is the basic beliefs and standards that make everything run smoothly. Sense of ethics helps in creating a climate in which we trust that at least some basic level of morality is assured. For example, because we believe our doctors are ethical, we feel certain we can trust their diagnoses. The atmosphere of universal distrust that would result from collapse of ethics would bring the entire humanity to a screeching halt as no business would ever be possible.

One of the most important systemic factors that determine moral characteristics of governance is Transparency. In India, it is the Official Secrets Act, 1923 (OSA) that has been regarded in many quarters as being primarily responsible for the excessive secrecy in government.  Section 5 of this Act provides for punishment for unauthorized disclosure of Official secrets but omits to define secrets. This has invited sustained criticism and demand for its amendment.

The Report of the Working Group constituted under the Chairmanship of Shri H. D. Shourie on “Right to Information and Transparency, 1997” recommended a comprehensive amendment of Section 5(1) of OSA to make its penal provisions applicable only to violations affecting national security. The First Report of the Second Administrative Reforms Commission released in June 2006 under the chairpersonship of Shri Veerappa Moily agrees with that recommendation thus, “While recognizing the importance of keeping certain information secret in national interest, the Commission is of the view that the disclosure of information has to be the norm and keeping it secret should be an exception.  OSA, in its present form is an obstacle for creation of a regime of freedom of information, and to that extent the provisions of OSA need to be amended. The Commission, on careful consideration agrees with the amendment proposed by the Shourie Committee, as it reconciles harmoniously the need for transparency and the imperatives of national security without in anyway compromising the latter”. It further, quite appreciably, goes on to recommend complete repeal of the Official Secrets Act, 1923.

While the OSA is one of the most glaring examples of our archaic laws smelling of colonialism, there is no dearth of such laws and practices. For example, the Indian Evidence Act, 1872 prohibits the giving of evidence in a court of law derived from unpublished official records relating to affairs of State except with the permission of the Head of the Department. Furthermore, quite absurdly, Section 124 of the Act stipulates, “No public officer shall be compelled to disclose communications made to him in official confidence when he considers that the public interests would suffer by the disclosure”. While some arguments may be given for thus protecting the Head of a Department from compulsion to produce evidence which is with him/her by virtue of his official appointment, giving such a privilege to every “public officer” greatly thickens the veil of secrecy and is a gracious invitation to the proverbial Kamdev, the God of Temptation. The Law Commission in its 69^th report in 1977 and 88^th report in 1983, the Shourie Committee in 1997 and the Administrative Reforms Commission in 2006 has recommended revision of this Act.

A huge portion of Indian public is frustrated with the inability of governmental institutions to adequately resolve the wide range of difficult issues facing them. The good news is that an ever-growing number of people have been demanding to be brought into the decision-making process in a meaningful way. Citizens want to be involved from beginning to the end in governance matters. If this happens, accountability of governmental institutions would increase significantly.

However, it has been seen throughout the world that even honest Governments fail to involve citizens to a non-negligible extent. Research has shown that the primary reason for the same is that the Governments don’t trust the judgment of its citizens. Another important reason is also the widely held belief that it is the reluctance to share power that stops Governmental officers from distributing power among the citizenry. Indeed, in the current Governance landscape in India, with numerous pressure groups and nervous bureaucracy, Citizen Involvement may well be seen as adding too much delay but little value. The issue becomes graver because of the ever-increasing trend in politics of giving priority to securing the vote-bank which makes efforts to please everyone and offend no one.

The Right to Information Act, 2005 (RTI) is a landmark legislation and by far the single most empowering one in the history of India. For the first time, people have been given a framework under which they can ask questions to public servants to keep them accountable. Earlier, almost all such questions met with reprimand from public servants.

RTI has been seen as the key towards strengthening participatory democracy and ushering in people centered governance. Access to information can empower the poor and the weaker sections of society to demand and get information about public policies and actions, thereby leading to their welfare.

RTI opens up government’s records to public scrutiny, thereby arming citizens with a vital tool to inform them about what the government does and how effectively. Transparency in government organisations makes them function more objectively. Information about functioning of government also enables citizens to participate in the governance process effectively.

RTI is very comprehensive and covers almost all matters of governance and has the widest possible reach, being applicable to government at all levels – Union, State and Local as well as recipients of government grants. Access to information under RTI is extensive with relatively few exemptions. Indeed, in a comprehensive world-wide RTI Rating Project undertaken by Centre for Law and Democracy based in Canada and Spain-based Access Info Europe, India is ranked 2^nd in the world scoring an impressive 130 out of 150 points and closely following Serbia which is ranked first with 135 points. United States of America and United Kingdom scored 89 points and 97 points respectively while Germany and Greece scored 54 and 40 points respectively.

However, as may be expected in a new legislation of this kind, permanently impacting on all agencies of government, there are bound to be implementation issues and problem areas, which need to be addressed.

In a large number of cases information sought to be accessed stems from a grievance against a department/agency. Experience has shown that functionaries/departments tend to be defensive rather than proactive in redressing a grievance (or even in disclosing information) particularly when it directly pertains to their conduct (or misconduct). This proclivity underlines the need for an independent forum to hear complaints into acts of omission and commission, harassment, corruption etc. which emerge either through information collected under RTI or otherwise.

According to retired Central Information Commissioner Shailesh Gandhi, the biggest problem facing the RTI Act currently is the large pendency of cases at the Information Commissions which are responsible for enforcing the RTI Act. The current state of pendency of cases is such that almost all cases take many months to be resolved and most take years. At such rate, the common man will soon run away from this just as he/she has run away from most of judicial and quasi- judicial processes chiefly due to their extremely time-taking nature. Implementing a Citizens Charter in the Information Commissions can be one of the most important steps towards avoiding such degradation of the RTI Act.