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2016 | OriginalPaper | Buchkapitel

7. Turbid Transparency: Retelling the Story of the Right to Information Act in India

verfasst von : Prashant Sharma

Erschienen in: Social Movements and the State in India

Verlag: Palgrave Macmillan UK

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Abstract

The enactment of the national Right to Information (RTI) Act in 2005 has been produced, consumed, and celebrated as an important event of democratic deepening in India both in terms of the process that led to its enactment (arising from a grassroots movement) and its outcome (fundamentally altering the citizen-state relationship). This chapter proposes that the explanatory factors underlying this event may be more complex than imagined thus far. The chapter discusses how the leadership of the grassroots movement was embedded within the ruling elite and possessed the necessary resources as well as unparalleled access to spaces of power for the movement to be successful. It shows how the democratisation of the higher bureaucracy along with the launch of the economic liberalisation project meant that the urban, educated, high-caste, upper-middle class elite that provided critical support to the demand for an RTI Act was no longer vested in the state and had moved to the private sector. Mirroring this shift, the framing of the RTI Act during the 1990s saw its ambit reduced to the government, even as there was a concomitant push to privatise public goods and services. It goes on to investigate the Indian RTI Act within the global explosion of freedom of information laws over the last two decades, and shows how international pressures had a direct and causal impact both on its content and the timing of its enactment. Taking the production of the RTI Act as a lens, the chapter argues that while there is much to celebrate in the consolidation of procedural democracy in India over the last six decades, existing social and political structures may limit the extent and forms of democratic deepening occurring in the near future.

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Fußnoten
1
Figure generated by the author. The names in the figure have been ordered alphabetically within each section, and include the founding members of the MKSS and the NCPRI, as well as collaborators/advocates who find pride of place in the dominant narrative. While Daruwala, Habibullah and Rodrigues cannot be considered to be “upper caste” within the Hindu tradition, they belong to a similar social milieu as the figure suggests.
 
2
Data by year in which law came into force. India enacted the RTI Act in 2005. Prior to 1950, only two countries, viz. Sweden and Colombia, had such a law. While the history of the Swedish law is relatively well documented, the Colombian case remains a bit of a mystery, at least in the literature and resources available in English.
 
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Metadaten
Titel
Turbid Transparency: Retelling the Story of the Right to Information Act in India
verfasst von
Prashant Sharma
Copyright-Jahr
2016
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59133-3_7