The Right to Information Act (RTI Act) sets out a practical regime for the realisation of the right to information by ensuring that citizens secure access to information that is under the control of public authorities. It paves the way to transparency and accountability in governance. The Constitution of India guarantees its citizens freedom of speech and expression, wherein is implicit the right to information. In 1929, William T. Evjue, the courageous liberal editor and founder of the newspaper Capital Times of Madison, Wisconsin, said, “Let the people have the truth and the freedom to discuss it and all will go well.” Information is the oxygen of democracy, ensuring the informed participation of the people in the affairs of society and, thereby, ensuring good governance. In India, that is where the faith in the democratic form of government rests.

The right to know the facts about how the government administers is an important aspect of the proper functioning of a democratic country. The RTI Act, signed by the President of India on 20 June 2005, is thus an important piece of legislation because it empowers the people of India to have access to information about and related to decisions and actions taken by the government.

The RTI Act was passed as a result of the sustained efforts of civil society organisations, especially the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan, a grassroots organisation working in rural Rajasthan. It is axiomatic that the RTI provides the citizens with the power to know what their government is doing. It also allows for access to information relating to private entities to which any public authority has access as a result of its powers as per any law then in force (section 2), (f), after identifying the concerned government regulator or the department with which the private entity is registered, or by whom it is controlled or monitored, we can identify the Public Information Officer (PIO) for that authority and gain access to the information by filing an application, abiding by the RTI rules about the format and by paying the required fee.

There remain, however, two crucial questions. Is our administration equipped to deal with queries through the RTI? And are they able to provide satisfactory answers?

The `information seeker survey` conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers for its study, Final Understanding: The `Key Issues and Constraints` in Implementing the RTI Act, states that more than 75 per cent of the citizens are dissatisfied with the quality of information being provided, with the OBC/SC/ST category of citizens showing 86 per cent dissatisfaction. The percentage of people, who said that incomplete information was provided to them, was alarmingly high in Andhra Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh — 91 and 96 per cent, respectively. Recent media highlights on how TS Bhairdav (Secretary to the court CGIT cum LC-1, Chandigarh, a subordinate office of the Ministry of Labour) had to run from pillar to post to get a reply under the RTI from the Labour ministry establishes the findings of the study further. Bhairdav, who was suspended under certain allegations, had asked for a copy of the letter the Ministry of Labour used as a reference when filing as a respondent to the case with the Central Administrative Tribunal. After a four-month delay and repeated exchanges of communications, the ministry had sent him a reply, which was not related to his query. In fact, it sent him a letter that was addressed to someone else!

At the same time, success stories do appear in the media describing how information procured through the RTI Act has helped people to better their lives, employment and working conditions. An interesting ruling of the State Information Commissioner (SIC) of Maharashtra makes the local civic bodies responsible for the employees of the private contractors executing the work of the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC). Though the issue of contractors complying with labour laws and giving all financial benefits to its employees does not come under the RTI Act specifically, the SIC said, “It is the responsibility of the PMC, as a principal employer, to keep all records pertaining to employees of the private contractors, executing its development project; and non-availability of information sought under RTI amounts to refusal of information.”

It is worth asking how far the Ministry of Labour is prepared and equipped to deal with the RTI Act. A characteristic of the Ministry of Labour is that it is among the few ministries with limited interaction with civil society in general. The Ministry of Labour works within a tri-partite framework in which the government, the employers and the trade unions are key actors. The success of the RTI in this situation will largely depend, on the one hand, to what extent the trade unions become aware of the potential of the RTI in accessing crucial information about government policies, enterprises, payment of wages and implementation of social security (among other issues) in their struggle for self-empowerment through the collective bargaining processes and the protection of labour rights. On the other hand, it is important that the Ministry of Labour becomes more accessible and willing to engage with multiple forms of civil society organisations.