I was surprised to find yesterday morning, my New York Times homepage featuring an article on the rural poor of Jharkhand (where I currently live) and the government legislation, which is supposed to provide them the means to justice. The article, “Right to Information Law is Lever for India’s Poor” , reports on the legislation, Right to Information (RTI), passed by the Indian government five years ago to address some of the systemic bureaucratic corruption by allowing individual citizens to have the “right” to ask for information on government actions and decisions. The law is supposed to empower all citizens to challenge and expose a corrupt government, with the hopes that increased transparency will lead to reform. As the reporter points out this law has not led to a dramatic reformation of a corrupt system, instead benefits have been varied and come at a more individual level of successful appeals.
Grassroots anecdotes are shared of Dalit (untouchable caste) women in rural villages in Jharkhand, who were helped by social activist groups to utilize the law to obtain their rightful state welfare provisions. These individual victories are a small torch of hope for how the poor may yet be able to overcome corruption.
From my perspective* the optimism of those who hail the RTI law as a panacea is over-exuberant and premature. The RTI law sounds good in theory, but implementation and execution is really where it falls short. In order for the RTI to effect change, the individuals of the population need to exercise their right, which first requires them to be aware that they have such a right, and within here, I believe the problem lies. The success of the RTI law is heavily dependent then on the dissemination of information to the public, which in turn depends on the state in question. In the better run states, such as Kerala and Tamil Nadu, the population is generally better educated and informed. However, in states like Jharkhand, where one side effect of the government’s dysfunction is a large uneducated poor population, the existence of RTI will remain unknown to a large majority of citizens. So then, what is the benefit of RTI to the poor who actually need it to counter their corrupt governments?
After reading the article, I conducted an informal survey of the women who work at our workshop to see if they were aware of the RTI law. None of them had ever heard about it. Not even the few girls who had finished school. If even the literate, urban population isn’t aware of RTI, then what hope is there that the illiterate, rural population is? Jharkhand has one of the highest illiteracy rates in the country.** In the last national census (2002), Jharkhand had an overall literacy of 59%, but female literacy was only 39%. With 60% of women getting any information other than through word of mouth channels, how is RTI supposed to make a dent in Jharkhand’s corrupt government? While the grassroots stories of social activists helping the one off woman to achieve some public justice is heartwarming, they don’t do enough to make RTI an effective law.
When I read the New York Times article, I had an immediate reaction against the optimistic hope and praise around this “landmark” legislation. On behalf of all the poor, particularly women, who have little access to information and are illiterate, I wanted better execution of the RTI legislation to empower them and give them access to justice. If RTI is actually meant to reform the system, there needs to be more awareness campaigns outside of conventional media devices, so that the poor who really need the legislation actually learn of it. Otherwise, it’s just another piece of legislation, good in theory, but whose benefits never reach the poor.
* And I feel obliged to add a disclaimer here that my perspective is limited
** A little more context around Jharkhand – as a state, it has only existed for the last decade, after separating itself from Bihar, another impoverished and “lawless” state. As a natural resource rich state of minerals, coal, and timber (Jharkhand itself means “Jungle Land”), Jharkhand is home to two of the country’s largest steel plants and a number of other large industrials. Logic would imply that a state with such resources and industries should be one of economic growth, not one where 44% of the population lives under the poverty line (compared to 26% for India overall according to Business Standard). The public government does little to reverse the scenario. The dilapidated road infrastructure, constant power failures, high level of civil unrest (Jharkhand harbors a large percentage of naxal rebels) are other signs of government inefficacy.
