Realising the people's right to information
Saturday, 23 June 2007
RIGHT to information is a basic prerequisite for any democratic society. This article of democratic faith is recognised universally. Notwithstanding the recognition, when it comes to the question of compliance, few democracies care to produce a clean record on the matter. In many underdeveloped democracies with a colonial past in particular, the right to public information is very limited. In Bangladesh, the prevailing official secrecy act is a barrier to free flow of official information to the public. Like many other black laws in existence, the colonial masters as well as post-colonial dictators have handed down to us the official secrecy act. Strangely enough, even democratically elected governments, far from repealing such laws, have found it convenient to unabashedly make use of them and thereby deprive the public many of their fundamental democratic rights. This is undoubtedly a glaring instance of flouting the basic principles on which the modern edifice of democratic governance stands.
The other day the World Bank Institute (WBI) organised a workshop on media and information environment, where speakers highlighted the relevance of free flow of information to transparency and good governance. In a sense, the terms transparency and free flow of information connote the same thing. The more the information flows out of the government at any particular point of time, the more it becomes transparent to the audience in question. And since the role of the media is to disseminate the information so received from the government sources to the general public, the degree of the transparency of any office, whether government or otherwise, is measured by the extent to which that office can open up to the media. In a similar fashion, it hardly needs further explaining that transparency is a reflection of the fact that a government has nothing to hide from the public so far as its policies are concerned.
The above is obviously a theoretical exercise on establishing a causal link between some cardinal principles of democracy, though on a theoretical plane. In many workshops of this nature, some very abstract issues on democracy, human rights, corruption, good governance and so on are discussed where the audience constitutes the members of the civil society including the media. Now the problem is, the common people, who should be the real beneficiaries of these enlightening intellectual exercises, remain mostly in the dark about such discussions. Lack of public consciousness about these fundamental issues is largely responsible for continued existence of the anti-democratic and black laws. At the workshop, however, it was recommended that the government should be pressured to the effect that the right to information is made into a law.
True, enacting a law to this effect will certainly empower the media to have a better access to the sources of public information. The media's enhanced access to information will undeniably serve public interest better. Now the vital question is: Will mere enactment of the law ensure the growth of a better-informed public and automatically empower them to exercise their right to information? The country has already many good laws. But does this fact help the public to enjoy and exercise their rights provided by such laws? Even they are often denied many fundamental rights enshrined in the constitution. How does one explain this anomaly?
The successive democratic governments are certainly to blame for this state of affairs. But the responsibility of the civil society and other stakeholders should not be limited to just pointing out the discrepancies and making recommendations, for the simple reason that rights are not a matter of pure awareness. What is important here is sharpening the awareness about an issue among the people, for whose sake the laws are framed in the first place.
The other day the World Bank Institute (WBI) organised a workshop on media and information environment, where speakers highlighted the relevance of free flow of information to transparency and good governance. In a sense, the terms transparency and free flow of information connote the same thing. The more the information flows out of the government at any particular point of time, the more it becomes transparent to the audience in question. And since the role of the media is to disseminate the information so received from the government sources to the general public, the degree of the transparency of any office, whether government or otherwise, is measured by the extent to which that office can open up to the media. In a similar fashion, it hardly needs further explaining that transparency is a reflection of the fact that a government has nothing to hide from the public so far as its policies are concerned.
The above is obviously a theoretical exercise on establishing a causal link between some cardinal principles of democracy, though on a theoretical plane. In many workshops of this nature, some very abstract issues on democracy, human rights, corruption, good governance and so on are discussed where the audience constitutes the members of the civil society including the media. Now the problem is, the common people, who should be the real beneficiaries of these enlightening intellectual exercises, remain mostly in the dark about such discussions. Lack of public consciousness about these fundamental issues is largely responsible for continued existence of the anti-democratic and black laws. At the workshop, however, it was recommended that the government should be pressured to the effect that the right to information is made into a law.
True, enacting a law to this effect will certainly empower the media to have a better access to the sources of public information. The media's enhanced access to information will undeniably serve public interest better. Now the vital question is: Will mere enactment of the law ensure the growth of a better-informed public and automatically empower them to exercise their right to information? The country has already many good laws. But does this fact help the public to enjoy and exercise their rights provided by such laws? Even they are often denied many fundamental rights enshrined in the constitution. How does one explain this anomaly?
The successive democratic governments are certainly to blame for this state of affairs. But the responsibility of the civil society and other stakeholders should not be limited to just pointing out the discrepancies and making recommendations, for the simple reason that rights are not a matter of pure awareness. What is important here is sharpening the awareness about an issue among the people, for whose sake the laws are framed in the first place.