Abstract
In early decades of the Indian Republic, suppression of data, press censorship and abuse of authority throughout the internal Emergency of 1975–1977 triggered widespread public protest. Many argued that the Emergency Era conflicted directly with the Indian government’s primary political commitment to citizens’ right to freedom. The Indian Constitution has an impressive array of basic and inalienable rights, and these include the Right to Equal Protection of the Laws and the Right to Equality before the Law (Article 14); the Right to Freedom of Speech and Article 19(1) (a); and the Right to Life and Private Liberty (Article 21). In 2005, the Right to Information (RTI) Act was passed, thereby consolidating the fundamental right toward freedom of speech.
Aruna Roy, often credited as being key to the RTI Act, has authored the book—The RTI Story: Power to the People. Along with ‘MKSS Collective’, 1 a people’s organization, which works on labour rights, Roy strengthened the social movement toward better transparency in governance. As a former civil service officer, she left the services to work with the grassroots people in Rajasthan on issues of labour rights, right to work and food and other social equity concerns. The RTI Story charts the sweat, blood and tears that went into successfully campaigning for the powerful RTI Act and documents various efforts by ordinary people determined to ensure transparency in governance. In the book, Roy provides an enriching discussion on what it takes to empower voters in the country to hold their governments accountable and provides the reader an uncensored picture of intense impoverishment and hunger that continues across India.
The book provides an in-depth account of the minor and major victories that RTI activists encountered in their journey from early demands in 1987 to the present day. It chronicles the movement’s early days when Roy and her associate social activist Nikhil Dey were campaigning on behalf of villagers to receive their daily wages for construction works commissioned by the state government and implemented through private contractors. In simple words, their argument was, hamara paisa hamara hisab (the money is ours and we must get an account of it).
Roy and Dey’s demands were hinged on the argument that the government must be held accountable to voters and public servants. This passion articulated the voice of grassroots democracy, as reflected in their slogan—yeh sarkar hamri apki, nahi kisi ke bap ki (this government belong to us and this is not anyone’s father’s property). In the book, Roy introduces us to Mot Singh, Narayan, Chunni Bai, Lal Singh and other residents of Devdungri, Rajasthan, in the initial chapter. As their stories unfold, the reader empathizes with their trials and is acquainted with the mediating role political and social processes play in everyday life. The strength of the narrative is in Roy taking a backseat and allowing the story to unfold through various, often invisible characters who played a pivotal role in the social movement. She describes the grassroots struggle that began as speaking up against the oppression of underprivileged groups and later developed into their collectively organizing to resist exploitation. Through RTI Story, we get an account of the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS) movement as it spread across Rajasthan from Dadi Rapat to Sohangarh to Bhim and various other places. The narrative also introduces the instrument of jansunwai (public hearing) that was a process to enable public participation, synthesize the demands for rights and register protests against oppression and exploitation. Several journalists and eminent individuals from Indian cities also came to those hearings, making the process gain visibility.
While spelling out the journey of the movement, Roy adds a word of caution about the real threats to the RTI law. She discusses that although it is geared toward enhancing transparency and accountability of governance, there are increasing attacks on RTI users and as a result, informal intimidation and coercion are dissuading people to use the Act. We additionally get a view of successive impacts of the RTI process: when individuals recognize that access to records can reveal and curb corruption, they act as vigilance monitors, pressurizing the government to become more responsible. However, sustained oversight of the government is often not possible because of the time and effort involved in the RTI process.
Today, the right to information is legally recognized as a crucial part of India’s democracy. The realization of the necessity for a legal framework to hold the State accountable and the process enabling this right to get recognized and codified have all originated in rural, interior Rajasthan (from the small village of Dadi Rapat in Ajmer District). Here, the movement started as a 40-day dharna (peaceful demonstration) and went onto capture the imagination of activists across urban India. The book also appreciates the roles of supporting organizations such as the National Campaign for People’s Right to Information (NCPRI) and National Advisory Council (NAC) in mounting bottom-up pressure for the RTI Act. It additionally recounts how, recognizing the power of the Act, the government sought to amend it soon after enactment, in 2006, and this was opposed across the country.
The concluding chapter of this book recounts a positive story of a villager, Lal Singh, and his pithy statement to civil servants. He said,
Mujhe teen minit nahin chaiye. Mai apni baat ek minit me rakh dunga… Hum sochte hain ki suchna ka adhikar hume nahin mile to kya hum jeeyenge… Aap sochte hain ki suchna ka adhikar mil jaye tho aapki kursi rahegi, ya nahin rahegi. Magar doston, hum subko milkar sochna chaiye, ki kya ye desh rahega ya nahi rahega. [I do not need three; I can make my point in just one minute… If we are denied the right to information, we wonder whether we will survive. You are probably worried that if the right to information becomes a law whether your centres of power will survive. But friends, what we should collectively be concerned about is whether our country will survive or not.]
In summary, the book demonstrates how the RTI Act and its journey has been a movement for ‘true’ democracy, which brings life to the tenets of the State as ‘of the people, by the people and for the people.’ This book is an indispensable resource for scholars of history, political science, sociology and development studies. In addition, given that the movement is still unfinished on its objective to curb corruption, it will be an invaluable resource for activists and scholars attempting to fight corruption and government excesses.