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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | RTI calls for systemic reform as followthrough

RTI calls for systemic reform as followthrough

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published Published on Aug 18, 2011   modified Modified on Aug 18, 2011

-The Economic Times

 

We condemn the killing of Shehla Masood, a public-spirited woman of Bhopal who used the Right to Information (RTI) Act extensively to expose corruption and misgovernance on a range of issues. The state government must bring the culprits to book and investigate any possible links of the crime to public officials whose misconduct was under her investigation.

This brings the number of RTI activists killed across the country so far this year to nine. This fatal trend shows the extent to which vested, entrenched interests can be threatened by a law like the Right to Information as well as the absence of legal and administrative systems to offer protection to those who wield RTI to take on the system. Clearly, the RTI Act has been revolutionary in the sense that it is now much more difficult to hide some things.

Official apathy, negligence and corruption being high on that list. Equally, the inordinately high number of activists who have been murdered posits the argument that embedded, structural nepotism and corruption can't be combated by such a law alone.

That needs wider, deeper reforms, including the critical aspect of political funding. A system where political parties generate funds in an utterly non-transparent manner corrupts the whole body politic, induces patronage and other forms of wrongdoing. That makes for a situation where politicians, bureaucrats, businessmen and sundry other self-interest groups collude in the sustenance of a black economy.

The crooked power structure thus created acts with attendant impunity and criminality to silence those voices which seek to unmask it. Dismantling that structure should be at the core of the whole discourse on battling corruption. But that cannot be wholly achieved by stand-alone laws, like the RTI or even an ombudsman like the Lokpal.

These measures and bodies, while undeniably forming a layer of deterrence, cannot substitute for wider, multi-pronged reforms like on political funding and the judicial system. Political parties and not non-government organisations must spearhead the campaign for the needed change.

The Economic Times, 18 August, 2011, http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/opinion/editorial/rti-calls-for-systemic-reform-as-followthrough/articleshow/9643350.cms


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