The Right To Know :A Flawed Debate

The Right To Know :A Flawed Debate

By Dasu Krishnamoorty

The first assumption can be attributed to the myth that the state alone is guilty of withholding information and that there are no other agencies concealing crucial information. Every advocate of the right to know appears to hug this popular notion. It also suits the media to highlight state tendency to be secretive in order to divert the curiosity of the public from non-governmental cupboards in society.

Look at how one `liberal` after another exclusively points the finger at the state. Kuldip Nayyar says, "In a democracy, where faith stirs the people`s response, the government cannot afford to have an iota of doubt raised about what it says or does. It has to be transparent." Amal Dutta, a former member of Parliament, says, "The denial of information by the executive to the legislature and to the people is not a new phenomenon. While the denial did not affect the common man seriously earlier, with the increase in the functioning of the government, such denial makes impossible for him to understand whether he is getting a fair deal."

Indian judiciary too bears the cross of this `liberal` tradition. It has always been reluctant to touch the media and even acted populist by singling out the government as a body that has a stake in keeping information under wraps. In a public interest litigation involving environmental pollution, the Rajasthan High Court observed: "Every citizen has a right to know how the state is functioning and why it is withholding information." In the case of S.P.Gupta vs the Union of India, Supreme Court judge P.N.Bhagavati said: "The disclosure of information regarding the functioning of the government must be the rule, and secrecy an exception, justified only where the strictest requirement of public interest demands." The implication of these dissertations is that the government is the sole centre of power and public activity and therefore has a natural compulsion to deny information, which may affect its power status.

Pointing out this partiality, Manoj Mitta (The New Indian Express, Hyderabad, 24 August 2000) writes: "It (the bill) imposes an obligation alright on a `public authority` to provide information to any citizen. But the public authority is purely defined as a state-created or as state-funded body. The proposed legislation is entirely government-centric as though the state machinery were still the only repository of all the information that affects the people at large."

Sacred Cow

The point is not to deny that the state is secretive or to assert that its cupboards are transparent and freely accessible. The state as the dominant centre of power, has so far been the major fountain of information and has an interest in keeping it under wraps, generally for political reasons. This tendency of the state is too well known to need shouting from the housetops. It is the other centres of power, representing private economy, which too need to be brought under the proposed information glasnost. The economy-controlled media point out at the state to deftly deflect public attention from themselves. The ongoing debate about corporate governance is in reality a debate about corporate transparency. There is a plethora of laws under which companies are accountable to the state. But their accountability to the public, who are their chief constituency and the cornerstone of their survival, is woefully eager. The consumer courts demonstrate this truth eloquently.

There is a need to illuminate non-governmental areas of darkness by a new right to know regime. It is based on the simple truth that however private they are, trade and industry and other private