Misusing RTI

One of the most revolutionary steps taken by the government, on the prodding of the National Advisory Council, has been the Right to Information (RTI) Act. Though the usage of the Act has been limited so far, the potential is enormous, as users can get almost any kind of information on government expenditure and see how justified this is. The range of information sought could be from the spending on the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) to that on the National Highways Development Programme (NHDP). And, despite the government's reluctance, the Central Information Commission (CIC) has ruled that file notings too have to be made public, though not those on active government files. But if the government is to continue with the RTI, the users of the Act also need to exercise some restraint. Indeed, in cases where individuals don't do this, it is incumbent upon various information commissioners to do this on their behalf.

In the case of IFS officer Veena Sikri, who was superseded by Shiv Shankar Menon to the job of foreign secretary, it is obvious neither Sikri nor the CIC, Mr Habibullah, has exercised this basic caution. While Ms Sikri wants to know why she was superseded, newspapers report Mr Habibullah has in turn issued notices to the Prime Minister's Office, the department of personnel and training and the cabinet secretariat. While there is no doubt that there is always scope for favouritism in appointments and an RTI application forces this out in the open, there is a very fine line between a judgement call and favouritism. No organisation in the world can justify, with facts so strong that can be defended in a court of law, why one person was chosen over the other. At times, an organisation can decide it wants someone with the most unconventional ideas to lead a team, at another it could feel a person with the best man-management skills should be the chosen one, and so on. So it's not clear why it should be any different for the government. Also, the government need not be forced to follow a roster system whereby the seniormost (in terms of number of years served in an organisation) is the one that gets promoted. The other issue that needs to be kept in mind is that if the RTI is used for such purposes right now, there is no reason why this will not get extended to commercial information regarding details of tenders or equipment or even pricing strategies of PSUs. In general, the guiding principle behind the use of RTI has to be the "public interest".

It is in the public interest to know whether the government is spending more on educating children than it should, but is it in the public interest to know if Ms Sikri was discriminated against? But since it is equally true that discrimination does take place, in appointments among others, perhaps the best way to deal with the situation is to use existing fora such as the UPSC. This allows the grievance to be heard in a proper forum while ensuring secrecy.