In India, we have a powerful transparency
tool. It is called the Right To Information (RTI) Act. The Government of India
has made it compulsory for all government offices and enterprises to implement
the RTI act. With the passage of time, all government transactions, businesses
and operations have fallen under the scanner of the public view. The general
public can now raise queries and inquire about what’s going on in a particular
government office at a particular time regarding a particular task. The power
of this information is amazing. In a short span of time, a lot of RTI activists
have established themselves as active participants working to put responsibilities
back on the shoulders of the government servants for completing the referred
tasks as soon as possible. The RTI act has revolutionized the government-public
interaction. At the international level, India is now considered as a
progressive nation-state that values transparency in the public works.
The RTI act has also led to the uncovering
of several cases of corruption in the government offices. This has alerted both
the government servants and the general public. With such exposures, the
government has to come up with newer plans and policies to curb corruption at
the government offices. Overall, the RTI act has actually empowered the general
public.
Considering all these factors and aiming to
serve the general public better, especially the voters of India, the Election
Commission (EC) of India has proposed that all political parties should be
brought under the scanner of the RTI act. Almost all RTI activists, politically
intelligent and conscious Indians and media have endorsed the EC’s viewpoint. The
collective vision about the implementation of RTI act in the internal affairs
of all political parties is that it will bring in more clarity in the
operations of political leadership of the country, and as a consequence, the
general public would be able to select the most transparent person as their
leader. However, the political parties have shown an equally collective and
powerful opposition to this viewpoint.
The political parties consider themselves
as private entities. They think that RTI act will be a hindrance in proper and
fast functioning of the political activities at the organizational level. They
think that instead of focusing on making strategies for winning elections, and
governing the country after winning the elections, the political leadership
will have to invest considerable time and energy in answering the queries asked
through the RTI act. In addition, some of the political parties consider
themselves to be ‘already reasonably open’ as far as their political affairs
are concerned.
However, the key debate between the EC and
the political parties is with regard to the financial matters. Where the
political parties don’t want to put the details of their income and expenditure
into limelight, the EC considers it to be a big step towards bringing
transparency in the country’s political system. In this regard, we have seen an
exception very recently. A respectable example was set by the Aam Aadmi Party,
when it disclosed the details of donations received from overseas on the
party’s official website. However, several politicians of opposition parties raised
their eyebrows on this act of the AAP.
With
this act by the AAP, we can feel the glimpses of light coming from the other
end of the cave. However, the nature and history of the Indian political
system, especially the way in which the politicians conduct themselves these
days, the task of bringing all political parties under the scanner of the RTI
act, and hence bringing more transparency in the Indian political system, seems
a far cry for now.
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