Right to Information — the battle for true citizenship
Dear friends, The passing of Right to Information Act 2005 was like the unfurling of a flag, heralding the coming-of-age of ‘We the People’. It was not just another mundane event in the life of our nation; it showed a shift in the national psyche. By winning Independence Struggle I, we sent the British ruler home, but we inherited the baggage they left behind: A bureaucratic structure that was, as Wajahat Habibullah noted, suited more for colonial slave India than free democratic India A legal structure biased towards maintaining the inequality between the rulers and the ruled. Upon the foundation of Official Secrets Act 1923 and other archaic and dysfunctional laws (such as Bombay Municipal Corporation Act 1888), we unthinkingly based our more recent laws. Our Constitution – painstakingly debated and written between 1947 and 1950 — is forward-looking and seeks to empower citizens Our judiciary, with its archaic privileges and untrammeled powers. And now it is like a sch...