The Right to Information Act as an Instrument Against Deviance

In one line

The Right to Information Act works against deviance because it removes the opacity that every form of official deviance depends on, and because it puts the power to obtain the document in the hands of any citizen without a lawyer, a reason or a locus.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: section 3 gives all citizens the right to information; section 4 places proactive disclosure obligations on every public authority; section 6 allows any person to make a request without giving any reason and without providing personal details except those necessary for contacting him; section 7 fixes a thirty-day period; section 8 lists the exemptions; section 19 provides two appeals; and section 20 empowers the Information Commission to impose a penalty on the Public Information Officer personally.

Why it reaches deviance where the other institutions do not

Because no permission is needed. Compare the two gates in the anti-corruption statute, the reference required for a commission of inquiry, and the reference required for the Central Vigilance Commission's inquiry function. A right to information application needs nobody's approval.

Because there is no locus requirement. Section 6 permits any person to apply, and requires no reason to be given for the request. The chapter on official deviance identified the diffusion of the victim as the central difficulty; the Act answers it by giving standing to everybody.

Because the burden is on the authority. Section 19 places the burden of proving that a refusal was justified on the Public Information Officer who refused.

Because the penalty is personal. Section 20 permits the Information Commission to impose a penalty on the Public Information Officer himself for refusing without reasonable cause, for delay, for a malafide denial, for knowingly giving incorrect or misleading information or for destroying information. A sanction that falls on the individual officer rather than on the department is rare in Indian administrative law and it is what makes the Act work.

And because the output is a document. Everything else in this module needs proof, and this is the mechanism that produces it. The chapter on curbing white collar crime identified information as the most promising line of attack, and this is the statute that supplies it.

The scheme in outline

Section 2 defines information, record, right to information and public authority, the last widely, so as to include a body owned, controlled or substantially financed by the Government and a non-governmental organisation substantially financed by it.

Section 3. Subject to the Act, all citizens shall have the right to information.

Section 4. Every public authority must maintain its records catalogued and indexed, publish stated categories of information about its organisation, functions, powers, duties, decision-making processes, norms, rules, documents held, budget and beneficiaries of subsidy programmes, and provide reasons for its administrative or quasi-judicial decisions to affected persons. Section 4 is the part of the Act that would matter most if it were complied with, because proactive disclosure removes the need for an application at all.