DRAWING THE LINE

The Right To Information (RTI) Act has been truly empowering. It is possible for ordinary people to know what is happening inside government, a legitimate right and concern in a democratic polity.

Pro-active citizens, journalists and others have used the RTI to ferret out relevant information.

There has been resistance from those who hold and wield power. The bureaucrats did not want 'file-noting' to be included in its purview, arguing that it would not allow an officer to state his or her honest opinion. Then there has been resistance from judges of the high court and Supreme Court, who wanted the statements of their assets to be excluded from the RTI domain.

The Central Information Commission (CIC) has struck a fresh blow for RTI by saying that citizens have a right to know all about the assets of bureaucrats. It is a legitimate demand because bureaucrats' salaries are paid in effect by the tax-payer. It will also be a deterrent to corruption as claimed by public interest activists.

But there are those inevitable grey areas, which cannot be avoided unless one is a moral fundamentalist and the world is a simple contrast of white and black. Since political Calvinism is not the credo of a liberal democratic state like ours, there is a need to argue for legitimate limits to the RTI.

It is legitimate to know the detailed expenditure of a bureaucrat while discharging public duty, spending public money for public purpose, but should it include the school and college fees that he or she pays for the children?

Certainly, there should not be a scrutiny of a bureaucrat's family eating out, or the silk sari that an officer's wife may buy! Even a public servant should have a right to privacy. The fundamentalist argument that once a person enters public life, he or she forfeits claims to privacy should be thrown out of the window. This is not to provide a window of escape to thecorrupt but to keep a society sane.

It is indeed the case that money that a bureaucrat defrauds from the public exchequer is generally used to acquire private assets and spend on private pursuits, including dinners and silk saris. The way to observe minimum courtesies and decencies as understood in a bourgeois world is to nail corruption in the public domain and not pry into family and private life. There are no clear demarcating lines. It is a judgment call.

That is why rules are not to be taken literally, something that bureaucrats do with a relish and create a nightmare for everyone else. There is a need to avoid that dead-end. The RTI needs to be applied and interpreted with more than a touch of common sense.