RTI and the 30-year rule

Right to information activists (RTI) may be exercised over transparency in recent government decision-making, but the irony is that the government is far more intransigent when it comes to the past. For instance, scholars of post-Independence Indian history complain that they might be able to gain access to, say, decision-making around the Indo-US nuclear deal but access to Nehru’s papers or Emergency documents are still closed to the public. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s 2006 suggestion that a 30- or 40-year rule to declassify official documents has come to nothing.