Panaji: Right to Information (RTI) is an act of the Parliament of India which sets out the rules and procedures regarding citizens’ right to information, social activist Aires Rodrigues who himself has filed multiple RTIs exposing corruption spoke about the importance of this act and the need to strengthen it during Vigilance week.
Speaking on the occassion, Rodrigues said, “This week is being observed and focusing on Vigilance awareness but it is imperative that we need to be ever so vigilant every day of the year to ensure that Good Governance is the order of the day. It has been 15 long years since the Right to Information Act came into force on October 12, 2005. But over these years however the greater challenge has been the actual implementation of the Act. Unless the RTI Act is further strengthened Good Governance, Transparency in the Administration and Zero Tolerance to Corruption will never be a reality.”
Stating that the Right to Information Act has been hailed as the hallmark of our democracy, Rodrigues said, “The Act aims at making the government transparent and more accountable. The effective use of it would, in the long run, curb corruption. Right to Information Act has become a powerful tool in exposing corruption at all levels of government. Demoracy and non-transparency in the functioning of the Government cannot co-exist. Besides freedom of speech without access to information is meaningless. For the common man, getting correct and accurate information under the Right to Information Act is today still a far cry.”
Under Section 4 of the RTI Act all public authorities are duty bound to regularly display on their website a wide range of information, including all relevant facts while formulating important policies or announcing the decisions which affect the public. This proviso in the law was enacted to reduce the need for filing individual RTI applications. But this mandatory duty has been blatantly flouted by the authorities with most government websites themselves dysfunctional or not updated.
Adding that there is a need to oppose and not allow the RTI Act to be choked by the government to a slow death, Rodrigues stated that measures need to be taken to strengthen the transparency regime that was sought to be established as envisaged by the RTI Act. “Effective implementation of the RTI Act requires political commitment from the very top. Governance by cloak of secrecy and opaqueness needs to be strongly resisted. It cannot be a hush-hush regime. We need to dismantle those walls of secrecy that continue to hound transparency and good governance,” he added.
