RIGHTS-SOUTH ASIA: Time To Challenge Gov’t ‘Hold’ on Information

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

DHAKA, Jul 9 1999 (IPS) - Fifty years or more of freedom have not made South Asia’s governments more transparent or accountable. Instead they cling to a policy of confidentiality on official information inherited from British colonialists, rights activists said at a meeting here

The region’s more than one billion people are denied the basic right to know the details of government policies which affect their lives and survival.

Far from being a transparent government, there is a wall between the democratically-elected rulers and the ruled, resulting in the people’s exclusion from decision-making processes.

“The secrecy of government that we inherited during colonialism still continues, and the large section of the poor continue to suffer because of a lack of information,” declared former Bangladeshi foreign minister Kamal Hossain.

“There can be no effective accountability … unless the people have the right to information,” he asserted at a three- day workshop last week on the ‘Right to Information in South Asia’, organised by the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative.

The time has come to challenge the “culture of silence” that prevails among governments in the region, speaker after speaker from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh said.

Deepika Udagama, a lecturer in human rights at Colombo’s law faculty, said the Sri Lankan experience of democracy has been restricted to participation in elections.

But that is changing, she added. “Now there is talk of direct participation; now the people want to know what is happening in their governments.”

In the region, only two countries have responded to a grassroots demand for the conceding of the ‘right to information’ – India and Pakistan. In both cases, however, the government bills still have to be approved by their law-making bodies.

The Indian bill, for instance, titled the Freedom Of Information Bill, 1997, guarantees every citizen the right to “secure access to information under the control of public authorities, consistent with public interest, in order to promote openness, transparency and accountability.”

It was drafted following huge public pressure for openness created by non-governmental organisations led by the Rajasthan- based workers and farmers group called Mazdoor Kisaan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS).

Begun 10 years ago, villagers who form the backbone of the MKSS started campaigning for a ‘social audit’, which demanded a scrutiny on the monies spent for development by village councils.

Raising slogans like ‘Right to information; a Right to Survive’ and ‘Our Money; Our Accounts’, the villagers numbering in their thousands forced open the financial books that had been closed to them.

“We have forced the government to be accountable,” declared Madhusudan Mistry, an NGO activist who said the struggle for transparency in government programmes has been rewarding.

Previously, bureaucrats and politicians stonewalled and dawdled over programmes, the full details of which were not known to people, saying their work could not be challenged.

Interestingly the ‘right to information’ demand has been voiced by the marginalised sections of people in the region’s countries.

In South Asia, those below the poverty line, the rural poor, make up a larger slice of the population. Yet since independence in the late 1940s, the effects of development have hardly trickled in their direction. For decades they have stagnated, unaware of the money and the benefits due their way.

Said the New Delhi-based Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative’s director Maja Daruwala: “This right is vital to the poor of our region. They will be the actual beneficiaries.”

Groups like hers would like to see the government give access to records of proceedings and meeting, copies of decisions, rules and notices, copies of entries in government registers, copies of accounts, of maps, of drawings and of work sites.

If enacted into law by their governments, South Asia would be complying with Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948, which states: “Everyone has a right to freedom of opinion and expression; This right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek receive and impart

information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

In addition, the Commonwealth Law Ministers conference in Barbados in 1990 had declared: “Public participation in the democratic and governmental process was at its most meaningful when citizens had adequate access to official information.”

But the process of putting this ‘right’ in statute books looks set to be an arduous one. Activists at the meeting agreed that one stumbling block before them is the ‘Official Secrets Act’, another legacy of colonial rule.

South Asia’s belief in democracy will overcome the hurdles, participants felt. As Salma Sobhan, prominent Bangladeshi lawyer said: “The people of South Asia have stood up against the tide of authoritarianism. They will support any idea that strengthens their rights.”