Sunday, July 23, 2006

No! you cannot have that knowledge...

In India, the bureaucracy is the subject of a lot of jokes. The incredible stonewalling nature of the government makes it a huge black box to our citizens which periodically spews out legislations and ordinances that seemingly make no sense. Why do they do that? What thought processes go into it and who takes the decision about which way to go? These are questions that are seldon answered and are rather important if we take accountability seriously.

The RTI act was a piece of legislature that was enacted to make the governance transparent. It was rather surprising that the government did indeed pass this act as it does put them in uncomfortable positions for the decisions they take.

Well, come july and we now hear that the cabinet wants to "would remove ambiguities in the bill and make provisions of the Act more effective and progressive." Whatever could these be?

Alternative Perspective has a detailed blog post on this subject. Go read it and learn why the government is scared of this act. The main purpose of the act is not to make the decision available to the public, which usually is but to make the decision process transparent, which the cabinet now seeks to obfuscate. Whyever so? Apparently because "progressive" countries like the USA, UK and Australia also do the same thing! Perhaps, the government of India is planning to invade Iraq as well!!!

Sign this online petition if you do not want this amendment to go through or you can alternatively write to the president.

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2 comments:

gaddeswarup said...

Some good news;
http://www.samachar.com/showurl.htm?rurl=http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1757341,0005.htm?headline=Arvind~Kejriwal~gets~Magsaysay

Madhat said...

yes, I heard about that. Great news!!

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