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