The Fight Against RTI
Just when you think Manmohan Singh can’t drag the UPA any lower, he does. Like his recent suggestion to relook the Right to Information Act (RTI). One can see why he feels that way: after all, it was one of the RTI responses that brought to the fore Pranab Mukherjee’s allegation that Chidambaram was (also) responsible for the 2G scam. Another RTI reply cast doubts on the CAG’s assessment of the extent of losses in the 2G scam. For a government that claims it likes and does things for the aam aadmi , it’s surprising that they want to focus their energies on muzzling RTI instead of providing protection to the aam aadmi who asks inconvenient questions. Both politicians and bureaucrats claim that too much transparency hampers government functioning. Of course, it does. Never used to any kind of accountability, one can see how transparency can hamper corruption, incompetence and inefficiencies (or what they call “governance”). Manmohan Singh can be educated in the West and the guy who brou...