Why RTI activists should die?

Why a citizen should risk his life to do public service? To merely collect information, if one seeks to use the RTI, so long as it is well sanitised, the government releases the same. You do not know what you did not get.Really sensitive information will be hidden. If too much pressure arises, then life itself is taken.

There are cases when really damaging information comes out under two sets of circumstances:

1. When a group of persons or an organisation operates through some court process and some one in the government is willing to cooperate

2. When the government itself in a planned pre-meditated manner, create such document duly marked secret, but release at the right time under RTI to achieve own internal agenda of setting right a rogue political colleague, whom they are otherwise unable to handle.

So RTI is either misused or abused.

The basic lacuna in the ACT is you do not what to ask for , and do not know how much more the government is hiding while giving some information. It could be a misleading information carefully worded, as normally done for answers to questions in parliament.

Solution actually is simple. The government should publish the full file along with the order.

While the file is in the process, it has to remain within the domain of the government. But once the order is made public, the entire file with noting has to be made public. There is absolutely no reason to hold the file as exclusive preserve of the government. It should become public property. We are paying for it with our taxes! We appointed these public servants, not Queen of England.

During British days we were subjects. We were ruled. But now we rule ourselves. What is the meaning of this, if citizens must fight with lives for information leading to a particular order being issued?

The government may find it inconvenient and come up with possible two excuses:

1.Millions of pages of files are created and hence it is not feasible to publish or make available the papers. Even for RTI they some times say you pay for xerox costs or say not possible to collect information.

2. The government servants should have full freedom to write whatever they feel, without fear of public pressure or fear of getting targeted by vested interests. SO if the file is fully in public domain, the government servant may not act true to the oath taken by him to act fearlessly in favour of truth.

The answers are simple again.

Millions of pages they produce but the the final order file will contain the most critical documents and noting related to the order issued on the noting side, which when web-posted as compressed image files on central servers will suffice our purpose. Modern technology makes this simple to scan and post compressed images. Assange demonstrated this.

Then for the free and fearless opinions: The honest obviously will not have problems. He will be able to write true to his oath taken to stick to truth. The problem is with the dishonest who want to manipulate the system to serve not public but some other vested interest. In fact the current method of keeping the file secret, helps the vested interests to threaten the honest and force them to comply because, the honest have no place to go and have to depend on the job.

The truth is keeping the file away from the public domain is the one thing the government will do everything in its power. Yes they will give you RTI knowing well that they can play with time and quality of information.

You may get a Lok Pal but again the same problem of time taking investigations just to get information. Files go missing or sudden fire destroys the critical ones.

Innocently citizens are getting misled by the government.

But then what happened to the civil society activists? I had been writing to Kiran Bedi, Kejriwal, and Anna too.. why are you not demanding this one single Executive Order, if the Government claims to be honest, to be issued. This is more powerful than the complicated acts and again an elaborate bureaucracy to run the same. RTI produced lot of commissioners and offices, for sure.

But unfortunately just like the government, they too are not responding to mails!!!

What is the advantage of this step-publish-file-with-order?

Suddenly being in public domain, you save months and years of slogging to know what is the file, which after all belongs to you as the citizen of Democratic Republic of India.

Now if the order is not found sound or serving vested interests, it is so easy to move a court of law, with all the down laded documents for relief. May be even before damage is done, we can stop it.

Adarsh , 2G scams would never have occured with this system in place. Just think over.

The government encouraging playing the standard cop-thief-chase game is understandable, I am not able to understand the reluctance of Anna, Kejriwal and Kiran bedi too encouraging the same cop-thief-chase systems. Why do they refuse even to demand from the government our right to have our files with us?

We are masters. We are not slaves. We delegated power to do a job and after doing thei bit, we do like to have the file and the order available in public domain for us to take any action deemed necessary.

Secret orders of the government which are not made public , obviously will not come in public domain. But every other decision and order of the government made public should follow the dictum: order with file to be made public. Then honest prevail & dishonest fear.

We should stop this nonsense of sacrificing our lives for our servants who misbehave with us. RTI activists who died , did so in vain, if we don't wake up even now.