Question

Views on Right to Information as an Empowerment​

Answer 1

Some entities manage to turn this around into perception management victories, enabling them to carry the world with them; an example is the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation which has demi-God status with users and other stakeholders alike despite its many failings. All is forgiven, and one big reason is the top-down transparency, projected as an asset rather than a point of friction.

An example of the other extreme would be the Indian Olympics Association, which fought the whole concept of RTI all the way, and thereafter managed to reach a point where people would not believe it if the management there tried to re-confirm even the date and time. And there is nothing that continues to have higher loyalty as well as brand value than the Olympic Games in sports.  But, despite putting up a grand series of opening and closing ceremonies, nothing the organisers in India did could prevent the voice of the people - beneficiaries included - from rendering a series of “boos” in South Delhi so loud that they could be heard as far as Tihar Jail in West Delhi.

It is currently somewhere in the middle with the UIDAI. For example, there are some simple questions this writer puts across in an application under the RTI Act to the CPIO at UIDAI in September 2010:
1) Kindly provide me with information including full name, address and website of the foreign companies and/or entities entrusted with work for UIDAI which are of US origin or control.

2) Kindly provide me with information including full name, address and website of the foreign companies and/or entities entrusted with work for UIDAI which are non-US origin or control.

3) Kindly provide me with information on which of the foreign companies and/or entities entrusted with work for UIDAI are redirecting the work to subcontractors or subsidiaries or other entities in India.

4) Kindly provide me with information on what precautions have been taken by UIDAI to prevent any adverse impact on Indian interests in case of unilateral sanctions of any sort by US Government or other foreign Government. 

UIDAI could have variously said we don’t want to give you this information, we don’t have it with us, or it is none of your business. Instead, till today, all I have received are evasive responses of the “we have not got your application” sort; in one case by e-mail with the application itself appended in the trail mails.

Yes, a positive article depends not only on information that is provided by an organisation about what it has done, or observations on the same, but also by placing some searching queries, which need to be answered truthfully. It is easy to get stuck in the quicksand of numbers; statistics and babu-speak otherwise - which is what seems to be emanating from the towers of the UIDAI lately.

 In the absence of much credible data, and not willing to go only by media reports or website inputs, a middle line has to be drawn somehow. And that is drawn in context with questions of larger public interest lying unanswered.