The Right to Information Act was passed in 2005 with unusual political unanimity and rare moral clarity. Passed by Parliament, the law embodied a simple but transformative principle: information held by the state belongs not to the government but to the public.
For decades before its enactment, official secrecy had been the default setting of governance. The colonial-era Official Secrets Act still casts a long shadow over bureaucratic culture, encouraging silence, hierarchy and discretion over openness.
The Right to Information Act (RTI) sought to invert that relationship. The law allowed disclosure unless there was a compelling reason to deny it. The state, in effect, was recast as the custodian of information rather than its owner.
Few pieces of legislation have so quickly reshaped the everyday practice of democracy. Over the past two decades, the RTI Act has provided citizens, activists and journalists with a practical instrument for scrutiny. What had once been hidden in bureaucratic files suddenly became accessible through a relatively simple application process. It exposed inflated infrastructure contracts, irregularities in welfare programmes and questionable public expenditure.
Its power lay not in spectacular revelations that occasionally made headlines but in the cumulative effect of routine questioning. A villager asking why a ration shop had no supplies, a pensioner seeking records of delayed benefits, or a student requesting recruitment data from a public body could all compel the state to respond. In this sense, the RTI Act democratised accountability. Transparency ceased to be the exclusive domain of investigative journalists or whistle-blowers; it became an everyday civic tool available to anyone willing to file an application.
That disruption was precisely what made the law uncomfortable for those in power. Transparency, when practised seriously, produces friction. Officials unused to public questioning suddenly found themselves answering queries about decisions that had once passed unexamined. Ministries accustomed to guarded press briefings faced requests for documentary evidence. The RTI regime did not always uncover illegality; often it simply illuminated poor governance or embarrassing inconsistencies. Yet in politics, embarrassment can be almost as dangerous as wrongdoing. Governments everywhere prefer to manage the narrative surrounding their decisions. A system that allows citizens to interrogate official records complicates that effort.
In recent years, the Government of India has incrementally narrowed the reach of the RTI framework. The most recent and consequential change came through amendments linked to the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act. While ostensibly designed to safeguard personal data in an increasingly digital economy, the legislation altered provisions of the RTI Act to expand the grounds on which information requests may be denied.
Public authorities can now more readily refuse disclosure by invoking the category of “personal information,” even in circumstances where the public interest might justify transparency. What appears to be a technical adjustment has significant implications for how the law functions in practice.
The government’s defence of this shift follows a familiar constitutional argument. In 2017, India’s Supreme Court recognised privacy as a fundamental right, ruling that personal data deserves robust protection from both state and private intrusion.
Aligning the RTI framework with that principle, officials argue, is merely a matter of legal consistency. Privacy and transparency, in this telling, must coexist, and the amendments ensure that the balance does not tilt too far towards disclosure.
At first glance, this reasoning seems plausible. Modern democracies struggle to reconcile two legitimate claims: the public’s right to know and the individual’s right to privacy. Yet the RTI Act had already anticipated this tension. Section 8(1)(j) of the original law permitted authorities to withhold personal information unless its disclosure served a larger public interest. That clause allowed information commissions and courts to weigh competing considerations on a case-by-case basis.
Personal details unrelated to public duties could remain confidential, while information revealing misconduct or the misuse of public resources could still be released. The framework was imperfect but workable. It recognised privacy without granting it an automatic veto over transparency.
The recent amendments alter that equilibrium. By weakening or effectively bypassing the public interest test, they make it easier for authorities to reject requests outright. In practical terms, the burden shifts away from the state. Instead of demonstrating why information should remain confidential, officials may simply classify it as personal and refuse to disclose it. Such an approach implicitly assumes that privacy generally outweighs accountability—even when the individuals concerned are public officials acting in their official capacity or when the information relates to public expenditure.
The timing of these changes invites scrutiny. Over the past decade, RTI applications have increasingly been used to probe politically sensitive areas: the financing of political parties, the distribution of government contracts, the functioning of regulatory bodies and the implementation of large welfare programmes.
Many of these inquiries have uncovered illegal activity but have also raised uncomfortable questions about governance. Requests for information about public appointments, regulatory decisions, or government spending often highlight inconsistencies or opaque procedures. Such revelations may not topple governments, but they complicate the narrative of administrative efficiency that incumbents prefer to project.
The discomfort with the RTI regime did not begin with the data protection amendments. In 2019, Parliament amended the law to grant the central government the authority to determine the tenure and service conditions of the chief information commissioner and other information commissioners.
Under the original framework, these officials enjoyed fixed terms and statutory protections designed to preserve institutional independence. The revised arrangement gives the executive greater discretion over their appointments and conditions of service. Critics argue that this change risks undermining the autonomy of the information commissions—the bodies responsible for adjudicating disputes when public authorities deny RTI requests.
Institutional fragility compounds the problem. Information commissions across the country are frequently understaffed and burdened with large backlogs of appeals. In several states, vacancies remain unfilled for extended periods, slowing the resolution of cases. Requests that once took a few months to process may now linger for years before a final decision is delivered. For ordinary citizens, the delays impose a practical barrier. Filing appeals requires time, persistence and often legal assistance. Many applicants simply abandon the process.
Administrative inertia, whether deliberate or incidental, can erode the effectiveness of a law without formally repealing it.
This gradual weakening is what distinguishes the current phase of the RTI story. The Act has not been abolished. Its provisions remain on the statute books, and governments continue to celebrate its existence as evidence of democratic commitment.
Yet the combination of legislative amendments, institutional constraints and bureaucratic reluctance steadily narrows its practical reach. Transparency, once championed as a governing principle, risks becoming a rhetorical flourish rather than a lived administrative reality.
Such developments reflect a broader tendency within contemporary governance: the impulse to centralise authority and control information flows. Modern administrations are acutely aware of how narratives shape political legitimacy. Communication strategies, social media outreach and carefully managed press interactions are deployed to craft a coherent public image.
In this environment, external scrutiny can appear disruptive. Journalists, civil society organisations and citizens using RTI requests introduce uncertainty into a carefully curated story. Questions asked from outside the government’s communication apparatus may reveal contradictions or compel inconvenient explanations. The temptation to limit those questions is therefore strong.
Supporters of restricting the RTI regime often advance a pragmatic argument. Government departments, they say, are overwhelmed by frivolous or repetitive requests that consume administrative resources. Officials tasked with delivering public services must devote time to compiling documents rather than performing their primary duties. Some requests, critics note, appear motivated by personal grievances or harassment rather than genuine public interest.
There is an element of truth in this critique. Any expansive transparency law will occasionally be misused. Yet the existence of problematic cases does not justify weakening the entire framework. Democracies routinely address administrative burdens through procedural improvements rather than by restricting fundamental rights. Clearer guidelines, better record management and proactive disclosure of commonly requested information can significantly reduce the number of RTI applications. When citizens can easily access routine data online, the incentive to file formal requests diminishes.
At its core, the Right to Information Act rests on a straightforward democratic premise: those who exercise public power must be prepared to explain how they use it. Transparency does not merely expose corruption; it cultivates trust. When citizens know how decisions are made and how funds are spent, they are more likely to view institutions as legitimate.
Conversely, secrecy breeds suspicion. Even competent administrations can appear unaccountable when their workings remain hidden from scrutiny.
India’s experience since 2005 illustrates both the promise and the fragility of transparency reforms. The RTI Act empowered ordinary people in ways few anticipated. Farmers sought details about land records, urban residents examined municipal budgets, and activists uncovered irregularities in development schemes. Each request, modest in isolation, reinforced the principle that governance is subject to public oversight. Over time, this practice helped normalise the idea that information belongs to citizens rather than to the state.
Diluting that principle carries consequences beyond the technicalities of administrative law. When transparency becomes conditional—acceptable only when it causes no discomfort—the message is unmistakable. Accountability is tolerated so long as it remains harmless. Yet genuine oversight rarely operates without inconvenience. Democracies depend precisely on the ability of citizens to ask questions that those in authority would prefer to avoid.
The debate surrounding the RTI framework, therefore, extends far beyond the mechanics of data protection or bureaucratic procedure. It concerns the relationship between the state and the citizen.
Does the public possess an inherent right to know how it is governed, or is access to information merely a privilege granted at the discretion of those in office? The answer determines whether transparency remains a living principle or fades into a ceremonial commitment.
The Right to Information Act was never perfect. Implementation varied across states, bureaucratic resistance persisted, and applicants occasionally faced intimidation. Yet despite its flaws, the law represented one of the most significant democratic experiments in independent India. It signalled a willingness to trust citizens with knowledge of their government’s functioning.
Two decades later, that experiment stands at a crossroads. Incremental amendments and institutional drift may seem minor in isolation, but together they reshape the architecture of accountability.
Whether India chooses to revitalise the spirit of the RTI Act or allow it to wither through quiet dilution will reveal much about the trajectory of its democracy. Transparency, after all, is not merely a legal provision. It is a habit of governance—and habits, once abandoned, are difficult to recover.
-30-
Copyright©Madras Courier, All Rights Reserved. You may share using our article tools. Please don't cut articles from madrascourier.com and redistribute by email, post to the web, mobile phone or social media.Please send in your feed back and comments to [email protected]
