Commentary/Dilip D'Souza
The Right To Know: They Know Why They Trample On It
Three years ago, a retired bureaucrat called N N
Vohra submitted a report to the government. It 'unearthed' -- so the newspapers
told us -- the 'nexus' between criminals, politicians and bureaucrats. Of course, this
nexus is something all of us have known of for years, so I don't know in
what sense Vohra 'unearthed' it. That apart, it took well over
a year for the government to make Vohra's report public. After a fashion, naturally:
Excerpts of it, names of politicians carefully excised, were placed
before Parliament.
Pressed hard, the government promised to table an
Action Taken Report on the Vohra report. For some weeks in mid-1995,
ATR was arguably the country's best loved -- or at least best known -- acronym.
That it is practically unknown today, a year and a half later,
is an indication of just how much action was really taken. It's also
a sign that no real ATR was ever produced. The government has changed since
those days, but what hasn't changed is the reluctance to tell Indians about
Vohra's report and what, if anything, has been done about his findings.
What has never changed is the government's obsessive secrecy about
its doings. Or undoings.
Today, there's a public interest petition that urges the Supreme
Court to instruct the government to make the Vohra report public. More
than that, it also asks what all of us yearn for: that the Court issue directions
for steps to free our democracy from the suffocating embrace of criminals.
All over again, we are turning to the courts to compel the government
just to do what it must, what its own studies and reports say it must.
What, in fact, is its duty to us.
Is this struggle necessary? Why must we battle every step of the
way: to cut through the secrecy and find out what's in the report, to
demand action based on it, to compel such action?
Those must seem like naive questions. Of course we face a battle
for each of these things: it's the very nexus that the report identifies
that is deciding what to do about the report! No wonder the government
is reluctant to tell us what's going on with it. No wonder everything the government
does is shrouded in secrecy.
Democracy, we like to think, is founded on transparency and openness,
on our right to know what's going on. Nobody knows that better than
the criminals who wield power. Hold that thought while I digress to
something quite different.
It was Republic Day recently, the day when we have a fabulous
parade down Rajpath in New Delhi. There are floats from each state that celebrate
our ancient culture and history (like the one from Maharashtra this
year, whose theme was 100 years of Indian film). Troupes of dancers and acrobats
perform, and there are also lots of schoolchildren who make their
way down Rajpath. As do various items from our military arsenal: tanks,
missiles, guns, aircraft and platoons of men.
So much a part of Republic Day is this display of armed might
that a lot of us grew up thinking it was the real reason we were celebrating
this day. I know I did. I understood guns and planes far more easily than
what Republic Day actually stands for: the remarkable document we put into effect
that day in 1950. That's why I beat my chest proudly about the impressive
arms, but spent years in ignorance of our Constitution.
No government we have had has been able to resist that equation,
that easy route to pride and patriotism. Why should they, when this response
to the parade is typical: the 'display [of our military might] is
very reassuring' and 'gives me a sense of security'? That's from Sonal
Mansingh, classical dancer, who also said this about watching the parade to The Times
of India: 'I feel proud as an Indian.'
I wish I shared Sonal Mansingh's sense of security. It's hard
to do, because after thumping my chest for some years, I began wondering
about that document we never hear much about. I wonder about those schoolchildren
marching along Rajpath interspersed with guns. I wonder about
the country's leaders who watch the parade pass by from their secure seats on
the podium.
I wonder: how many children do we have in this country who will
never be in a Republic Day parade simply because they don't attend school?
How much have we betrayed our Constitution by ignoring this simple directive
that's in it: the State must provide free and compulsory education for
all children below the age of 14? What do planes and security mean
when half of India -- the 400 million people unable to read and write -- cannot
so much as write those words?
Back to our right to know what's going on. If you agree that that
is vital to democracy, you agreed because you are able to read these words.
You want to know what the government is doing, you have the ability to
demand that it tell you what it is doing, because you were educated. Transparency
and openness make sense only to the educated. More than that, they
make no sense in a society where half the people are illiterate. Because
those people don't have the ability to ask for those things.
Which is precisely why the men we elect to represent us are able
to stall the Vohra report. They know that half of India will not be able
to conceive of asking that it be made public. They need not pay much attention
to the few demented voices from the other half that clamour for information
about the report. Regardless of the Vohra or any other report, and not
least because they have spent nearly half a century ignoring what the
Constitution requires them to do, the criminals can continue to
rule us.
And since they do, I wonder once again about Sonal Mansingh's
sense of security. How secure are we if we have rioters, murderers and
thieves in positions of considerable power? If they control the tanks and
missiles? The hardware will protect us from foreign enemies, but what will
protect us from our own very Indian enemies?
When we place remarkable power in the hands of politicians we
elect to form our government, there are only two effective restraints on how
that power is exercised: A free press and an enlightened body of citizens. The
only way to produce those restraints is to ensure that all Indians have a
chance at an education.
In a real sense, these notions all feed on each other: security,
education, a free press, transparency, the right to know, democracy.
Twenty-five years ago, US supreme court justice Potter Stewart
wrote this in a decision about governmental secrecy and the peoples' right
to know: 'When everything is classified, then nothing is classified,
and the system becomes one to be disregarded by the cynical or the
careless and to be manipulated by those intent on self-protection or
self-promotion. I should suppose, in short, that the hall mark
of a truly effective internal security system would be the maximum
possible disclosure.'
Sonal Mansingh might want to read that. If she did, she might
wonder, as I have been doing, just how many of the men N N Vohra named in his
report have appeared on the Republic Day podium over the years, saluting as
the military paraded past.
It might give her a new outlook on security.
|