NRI’s and Overseas Citizens condemn the proposed amendments to the RTI Act
23 Aug, 2013In a letter to the speaker of the Lok Sabha, the NRI’s and the Overseas citizens of India talk of the proposed amendments to the Right to Information (RTI) and the Nuclear Safety Regulatory Authority (NSRA) acts.
Ms. Meira Kumar
Honorable Speaker
Lok Sabha
New Delhi 110001
India
August 20, 2013
We the undersigned are Non-Resident Indians and Overseas Citizens of India and we write to unequivocally condemn the proposed amendments to the Right to Information (RTI) and the Nuclear Safety Regulatory Authority (NSRA) acts. These amendments seek to undo state transparency and accountability, which were put in place by the RTI act. The RTI act is a historic law that undermined the secrecy and unaswerability that underwrote colonial governance. The government should do all it can to preserve the RTI law, for the sake of democracy and independence, and not kill it.
The RTI (Amendment) Bill 2013 introduced by the Central Government on 12 August, 2013 seeks to nullify the June 2013 order of the Central Information Commission and keep all political parties outside the purview RTI law. And, if that were not enough, amendments proposed to the Nuclear Safety Regulatory Authority Bill, 2011 (NSRA Bill) deal state transparency a further blow. They seek to modify Section 8 of the RTI Act and to exclude public scrutiny over commercially sensitive information relating to nuclear plants held by technology holders. The NSRA Bill also brings future regulatory authorities concerned with nuclear facilities, activities, and materials, under Section 24 of the RTI Act. They will, in other words, function like other unaccountable arms of the state, which are exempt from even sharing their postal addresses with the public, let alone any other information.
This is unacceptable. And the fact that all this has happened without any public input or transparency makes it absolutely intolerable. Any democratic state, worth its salt, has to be accountable to the public and this must include political parties that are funded and overseen by the state. Parties benefit from public monies and public assets, such as land, and there is absolutely no reason why they should be treated any differently from private and social sector organizations that receive government funding and are under the purview of the RTI Act.
When political parties argue that they are not “public authorities,” they make a mockery of the basic principles of democracy. For the Parliament to consider watering down the RTI bill to protect political parties deals a serious blow to postcolonial democratic governance in India. In the RTI act we have a law that reverses the dogma of secrecy put in place by the colonial regime and inherited by the independent Indian state. As India celebrates its 66th year of independence, it behooves those who govern or hope to govern the country to preserve accountability, transparency, and participation that the RTI law established and sought to routinize. Anything less is unacceptable.
RTI is a powerful tool against governmental corruption and the all-too-common, random abuse of power. These are also issues that, unfortunately, get ample media attention in the West. We urge you to please stop all efforts to crush one of the most significant pieces of legislation enacted in independent India.
Sincerely,
Anjali Arondekar
Associate Professor, Feminist Studies
University of California, Santa Cruz, CA
Dr. Srinivas Naga Chadaram, PhD, MBA
Healthcare Marketing Professional, Durham, North Carolina
Dr. Vijay Dhawan
Senior Investigator, Feinstein Institute for Medical Research
North Shore University Hospital
Manhasset, NY
Suresh Ediga
New Jersey
Anindita Fahad
New Jersey
Tejaswini Ganti, Associate Professor of Anthropology and the Program in Culture & Media, New York University, New York, NY
Arun Gopalan
Association for India’s Development (AID)
Gaithersburg, MD
Inderpal Grewal
Professor, Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Yale University, New Haven, CT
Vishal Kudchadkar
Association for India’s Development (AID)
Los Angeles, CA
Manmeet Kukreja
Fairfied, CT
Somu Kumar
Association for India’s Development (AID)
Washington, DC
Dr. Rupalatha Maddala, PhD
Research Scientist, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina
Anita Mannur, Director and Associate Professor, Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies Miami University, Oxford OH
Savita Nair, Associate Professor, History and Asian Studies
Furman University, Greenville SC,
Mridu Rai
Lecturer in India Studies, Department of History
Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland
Srirupa Roy
Professor, Centre for Modern Indian Studies,
University of Goettingen, Germany
Aradhana Sharma
Associate Professor of Anthropology
Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT
Gaurav Sharma
Irvine, CA