How the media has been important in using the Right to Information in India

The great investigative journalist I.F. Stone told journalism students that there were two words they should remember: governments lie.

Throughout history it has been observed that those in power have mercilessly exploited those without it, through the twin weapons of physical violence and psychological violations, the former having been easier to notice and therefore condemn. The conquest of the public psyche by fraudulent regimes, however, has been much more discreet but far more damaging than the bloodiest coup – through misinformation and propagation of ignorance, governments have oppressed, suppressed and fooled their public for centuries. By keeping them in the dark, they have cheated them out of the truth, which is vital for a democracy, civil liberty and the individual pursuit of happiness. After all, knowledge is strength.

On January 26, 1950, the Indian Constitution was ratified and for the first time ever, Indians were granted non-negotiable, fundamental rights to preserve their dignity and well-being. The most important among these was the omnipotent Right to Freedom of Expression, very lucidly defined in Article 19(1) (a) which bestowed hitherto unprecedented tools to the Indian citizen to speak out and ensure he or she was heard. However, expression is incomplete and almost impossible without being endorsed by information, facts and data, which would generate the ideas and opinions that are the integers of educated, articulate expression. The Right to Expression is useless without the Right to Information – how can one talk about anything without knowing anything? The Official Secrets Act of 1923, the judiciary’s Contempt of Court Act and the legislation’s Parliamentary Privilege provision have all proven militant to the interests of the Indian public in this regard and, catalysed by the jan sunwais of Mazdoor Kisaan Shakti Sangathana in Rajasthan, a law was passed on June 15, 2005, overriding them – the much vaunted Right to Information Act.

And here is where the all-powerful link between people and decision makers comes in – the media. Now that India has been bequeathed the instruments to defend its democratic values, the role of the media becomes all the more significant in sustaining this neoliberal wave of individual rights and personal justice which seeks to slowly but steadily subvert out government’s subtle hold over the social, economic and cultural currency of our people. Though we have always been a flourishing democracy, there has been a certain sense of secrecy, scepticism and distance from our administration – elements that go against the spirit of people power. Through red tape, bureaucratic black holes, rampant corruption, abuse of public trust, misappropriation of our funds and a general apathy towards and from the system which is hardwired in the average Indian, our government has not been the most ideal. And the media, despite being the fourth estate, has often either succoured these violators and criminals on top or have succumbed to the pressure that their patronage, which was essential to access files and records, exerted. Instead of being a vanguard of the people’s interests, the media sold out to become an accomplice of the wrongdoers – sophist and smug, they joined hands to keep India from asserting its independence in the complete sense to serve their own interests. The proliferation of incorrect information became commonplace, as a sort of placebo for the populace – for example, it’s a little known fact that literacy figures published in the past have often been exaggerated to make the government look good in the eyes of people.

Now that the Right to Information Act is firmly and effectively in place, however, there has been a marked conversion in the stance and style of the popular media. Like the common people, it too has revitalised itself to meet the needs of the enlightened, informed masses. Karl Deutsch called the media “a nerve of polity” and attributed the collapse of good, responsible national governance to the degeneration of this nexus between those who took decisions and for whom they were taken. For the robust, functional, largest-in-the-world democracy that is India, the media is now beginning to detach itself from the maelstrom of political activity and standing as the objective, impartial critic of events and persons. The recent media facilitated closure brought to the Jessica Lal murder case is testimony to the influence of the media in the fate of justice in this country. The media’s role encompasses the various facets of public and private life in a nation this diverse and vast in its geographic and psychological landscape. When more than a billion people live together in 3,287,590 sq. km. there are lots of issues that the press and electronic media must take up. The elimination of anti-socialist propaganda and activities in a welfare state is imperative – the problems of casteism, endogamous to India, as the question of affirmative action in medical colleges brought to the fore; sectarianism, evident in sporadic riots across the country; sexism, apparent in the many cases of gender discriminatory practices and dowry deaths and terrorism, vilifying certain ethnic groups and religions, undermining our status as a secular, egalitarian republic – these are all topical problems that are being surmounted by the RTI, whether in the form of pro-poor policies, details of investigations in cases of civil unrest, incidences of infringement of Equal Opportunity acts and extrapolation of governmental representation of events and people in its official documentation.

The revelation of the disgraceful pact between the Delhi Water Board and the Delhi Government to privatise water supply (which would raise the cost to extortionate levels and involve people paying to lay their own pipelines) in order to provide PricewaterhouseCoopers with tenders as directed by the World Bank; Ritu Sarin’s groundbreaking 2006 report on Rs. 47 crores of the rail budget being unaccounted for and the embezzlement of welfare funds for child labourers in Madhya Pradesh are all examples of the media taking up an issue for the benefit of the weaker segments of the population and standing up against selfish authoritarians.

The media seeks to disseminate knowledge about citizen’s rights and their intelligent usage; publicise grievances of even one individual nationwide and draw out its relevance; promote accountability of the government to the people; mitigate the imperviousness of the powers that be; bring about economic and social equity and most importantly, diminish the monopoly of the officialdom on information and imbibing the system with the transparency so invaluable for the success of a real democracy. It seeks not, as Chomsky said, to create manufactured consent in the best interests of the monolithic bureaucracy that has till now controlled our people, but to motivate dramatic change and revolution within us, to propel us to the loftiest paradigms of justice, liberty, equality and fraternity.

In March 2001, the Press Council of India stated the RTI as being indispensable for the media in its quest for the truth – ‘The right to Information will encourage journalists and society at large to be more questioning about the state of affairs and will be powerful tool to check the unmitigated goings-on in the public realm and will also promoter accountability… The legislation when enacted will pose an antidote to vested interests which try to conceal or misinterpret information or which try to manipulate media directly or indirectly to plant misinformation. Through this legislation, transparency in public, professional, social and personal sphere can be achieved.’

And how true that is. The part that the media plays in the volatile, constantly fluctuating microcosm of dynamics between the people and the system cannot be discounted. It is medium, mediator and a metonym for the opinions of people within and without, all rolled into one. At its worst, it exploits and at its best it educates. The truth lies somewhere in between. The Right to Information Act is a boon, an answer to our lamentations and protests of dishonesty and vice, which the media must use to monitor authority and power.

In his brilliant graphic novel, V for Vendetta, Alan Moore’s prognosis of a totalitarian dystopia, his mysterious protagonist sums up my case for the media’s altered participation in a post-RTI India: People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people. The media must make that happen. After all, as Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben sagely told him in the Spider-Man comics,
“With great power comes great responsibility.” The media has the power. It’s time it also showed responsibility.