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Fleeing the light - Political Parties and The Right to Information Act

ARUNA ROY

NIKHIL DEY in THE HINDU

  

 

Political parties have acted as judge, jury, supplicant and advocate in their move to amend the RTI Act and exempt themselves from its purview. Their rhetoric on transparency is more hollow than ever

A friend called the other day, and said: “I want to congratulate all of you in the RTI community, because you have managed to do what no one, and nothing else has managed to for a long time: bring about unity and unanimity in the political class.” His comment, laced with irony and sarcasm was not far from the truth.

The Central Information Commission (CIC) decision to classify political parties as public authorities and bring them under the RTI Act has kicked up a storm in our democratic polity.

The reaction of the parties to the Central Information Commission order that political parties will be considered public authorities under the RTI has been poor in content and abysmal in form. It is a pity that the opportunity provided for the politician to transform into a statesman is lost in the muddle of apprehension and self-interest. For a country that is unanimous in its opinion that electoral politics and democratic governance are being perverted by the undue influence of money, and vested interests, both the content and the form of reaction are important.

Let us understand the content first. Through the one line amendment, political parties in parliament are seeking to carve out an exclusive space for themselves beyond the reach and purview of the RTI Act. While all other associations or bodies constituted by law, can come under the purview of the RTI Act, an insertion “explains” that by law, this will exclude any association of persons registered under the Representation of Peoples Act.

Here are a set of implications that arise from this quick and potentially decisive amendment: The representatives of the people, have made it clear that they do not want to be answerable to the people. By removing themselves completely from the purview of the transparency law, they are preventing any obligation they might have to directly answer any query from the citizen on any issue.

This amendment dramatically exposes the extent of doublespeak. Many politicians have shared their concern with the growing influence of money, and even political parties have expressed distress that the use of unaccounted money is completely perverting the democratic political system. While parties across the spectrum have publicly reiterated their commitment to full financial transparency, the content of this “consensual” amendment has revealed the truth. By proposing a blanket exemption for themselves from the RTI Act, it is clear that they are not willing to answer questions of the citizen on anything- even financial matters.

Credibility gap

The yawning gap between ‘statements submitted’ and real expenditure during elections is no secret. Recent statements by politicians have exposed dramatically what real election spending to "secure" a seat means. This does not end with party issues but also determines key appointments in government. Is it surprising that the citizen wants to know where the money comes from and where it goes?

This amendment would negate one of the biggest opportunities we have had to identify, and fight the misuse of money in politics. Let us not have any illusions. Fighting corruption, and corporate/commercial influence in politics is only possible with the help of the ordinary citizen. The RTI has evolved into a decentralised process that allows an ordinary person to interface at her own expense and with her constitutional legitimacy as a sovereign citizen. The multiple uses of the Act to improve government functioning are so many that they defy enumeration. Accepting applicability of the RTI is therefore seen as the one stated intent of any structure to lay itself open to scrutiny and accountability. It is the many questions that citizens will pose, in a million places across the country, that will shine the torch, search, probe, expose, audit, and actually help regulatory institutions like the income tax department, and the election commission to eventually bring about real change and political reform.

Legitimate objections

This is not to say that we do not understand the complexities of political activity, and the need to keep some internal discussions out of the public domain. We do not feel that every question that is asked by every citizen needs to be answered under this, or any other law. The technical reading of the Act by the CIC brought political parties under the purview of the RTI Act as public authorities. The technical implication of being classified a ‘public authority’ has led to many legitimate objections from party leaders. Even with the current CIC decision, the concerns could have been “technically” addressed without amending the act – even through some amendments to the rules, perhaps. After all, even the defence establishment keeps strategy and internal matters out of the public domain while subjecting itself to, and benefiting from the purview of the RTI Act.

The nature of the political response has been even more disappointing and unacceptable. When a privileged class closes ranks to impose its decision, it is “technicalities” with the inevitable fallout that will determine the outcomes. Politicians know that substantive constitutional principles override technicalities of law. That is why perhaps in this case alone they were not willing to take the risk of taking the CIC decision to court.

And now the likelihood is that they will pass this amendment in their own court without even allowing the matter to go to the Standing Committee of Parliament. Can any institution be judge, jury, supplicant, and advocate, in a matter in relation to itself? Is this interpretation of privilege constitutional? Is it ethical or logical?

Eventually, none of us want to weaken the political system, or burden it with questions that will not allow it to function. But a blanket exemption can surely not be the means to make a political system strong, transparent, and accountable. This has led to the belief that freedom in internal matters and strategy like candidate selection is only a red herring to take the attention away from the real worry of financial disclosures.

If there had to be an amendment, it was incumbent upon parliamentarians to show that the political class was going to overcome technicalities to improve the scope of the law, not curtail it. People focus on substantive issues- not the technicalities. They want parties to live up to their rhetoric of transparency, and their stated desire to fight corruption in politics. This was in fact a historic opportunity lost to the exigencies of obvious and immediate self- preservation. It could have been used to enforce greater transparency not only amongst the political class, but also to expand direct coverage of the RTI to all institutions and organisations who spend public funds. In finding the substantively correct way of broadening coverage of the RTI, the political class, would not only have created a standard for themselves, but for the whole fabric of Indian society.

That would have been a huge quantum leap towards a healthy and ethical society.

No Place to Hide

Editorial in The Hindu

The tag line for India’s much-acclaimed transparency law could well be: good for others, not for me. The Supreme Court loftily decreed the right to information to be a part of the fundamental right to free expression. It nonetheless resisted the application of the Right to Information Act, 2005, to itself, and went in appeal to a lower court against a decision in this regard by the Central Information Commission. The apex court has since relented somewhat and placed the assets of its judges in the public domain. It might be a harder battle to bring political parties to account judging by early reactions to Monday’s CIC order deeming them to be public authorities under the RTI Act. Foreign Minister Salman Khurshid, for one, was clear that the law could not be allowed to “run riot,” whatever that means. In the past, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has weighed in on the side of privacy in the RTI debate, arguing that the law in practice had become too intrusive. Significantly, the Association for Democratic Reforms which petitioned the CIC on bringing political parties under the RTI Act, has made the opposite case: that lack of scrutiny had led to parties being able to accumulate unexplained wealth running into hundreds of crores of rupees.

The ADR argued that political parties must be treated as public authorities because they receive substantial government support in the form of free air time on Doordarshan and All India Radio during elections, discounted rents for party offices and large income-tax exemptions. The organisation calculated that government subsidies for the two largest parties, the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party, alone amounted to Rs. 255 crore. Despite the official largesse, political parties insisted that they were not public authorities and managed not to reveal the source for a large part of their incomes by showing them as small voluntary donations exempt from disclosure. The CIC accepted the petitioner’s contention, and went on to note that the “nature of duties performed by political parties points towards their public character.” There is a double irony here. The BJP, which has threatened to make repatriation of black money an election issue, refused to entertain ADR’s RTI application seeking details of its wealth and assets. The UPA birthed the RTI Act with much fanfare and the legislation holds pride of place in its list of achievements. Yet, thanks to the RTI being harnessed for unearthing scams, the government has found itself debunking a law that is its own creation. With the CIC’s ruling, the political class is bound to unite against a law that has been hugely empowering for the common person.

I is the most important letter in a cricket team

By Girish Menon

In a recent article in The Telegraph, Geoffrey Boycott mentioned, there is no I in a cricket team and hence implying that Kevin Pietersen should kowtow to the diktats of the team's leaders. In this piece I will argue that I believe the individual, I, is the elephant in a cricket team's dressing room and by ignoring it won't we be behaving like an ostrich burying its head in the sand?

In cricket there are three principal activities viz. batting, bowling and fielding and in each activity the individual player is the most important actor. Let me try to explain this idea by contrasting it with football. In football, a defender can ask for help from another teammate to police and control a forward from the opposite team. Other players can pass the ball, run into open spaces etc to help a team mate come out of a sticky situation. The goalkeeper appears to be the only individual in this team sport.

In cricket, while batting no team mate can help a batter combat the aggression of a Morkel or the wiles of a Murali. The individual has to face the ball delivered by a bowler. A team mate may take a single of the last ball of each over and shield his partner, but there is no way he can face the ball for his partner should he find himself at the receiving end. In contrast, defenders in football can act in pairs to ward of an  attack by an opposing forward.

It gets even more individual when it gets to bowling. The bowler has to run up and deliver the ball on his own accord. The rest of his teammates enter the game only subsequently after the batter has reacted to the delivery. In football, a forward can pass the ball to a team mate thereby beating the goalkeeper and creating an open goal situation for his teammate to score.

Similarly whilst fielding too it is the individual who is responsible for delivering the goods and any discussion of individualism in cricket will not be complete without a discussion of the role of the most important individual in a cricket team viz. the captain. The captain's individual idiosyncrasies affect not only the fortune of the team but also the careers of the other team members in the squad.

In the book, One More Over, Erapalli Prasanna talked about how under Bishen Bedi's captaincy he was brought on to bowl only after the batsmen were well established at the crease. I'm sure that cricket watchers and players will have innumerable stories about the decisions of captains that have affected a game as well as individual careers.

In a recent article Ed Smith talked about TheBresnan Effect on the English team's outcomes in recent cricket matches due to the inclusion of Tim Bresnan in the team. While admitting the difficulty of measuring Bresnan's impact on England or more famously that of Shane Battier on the Houston Rockets; Smith implicitly recognises the individual's role in the fortunes of a team. My thesis therefore is that the absence of an adequate tool to evaluate an individual's performance should not therefore lead us to conclude erroneously like Boycott that there is no 'I' in a cricket team.

After all if there is no 'I' in a cricket team; then why are some individuals from a losing team retained while the less fortunate ones dropped. If there is collective responsibility then like the voting out of a political party all members of a cricket team should be dropped in case of failure. Since that does not happen it would be  foolish for anybody, and especially Boycott, to argue against individualism in cricket.