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Who would argue that the Right to Information (RTI) Act has problems, and we should either go slow on it, or review it? Politicians, bureaucrats and the babus, who now have to part with public information free, for which they charged hefty amounts earlier, are already doing the best they can do to dissuade people from using the RTI Act. It is a combination of intimidation and mindless application of the letter of the law that threatens to dissuade citizens from putting this Act to use. And politicians are only happy to offer solutions that only dilute the law's purpose.

It was very recently that a babu in a Chhattisgarh village handed over a bill of Rs 1,82,000 to a farmer who had asked for information on paddy purchases. This was photocopying charges because the information he wanted covered thousands of pages. In another incident in Bilaspur town, a person was told to pay Rs 75,000 for information he had requested on the positions available for school teachers. In many cases officials claim they have no problem in giving information, but need money to buy equipment and paper to provide that information. One state chief minister has said that the rich are exploiting the RTI Act for getting information, and there should be change in the law to allow the officials to examine whether the requested information is useful for the person asking for it.

While media is carrying regular news about how citizens of Delhi and Mumbai are using the RTI Act to get the babus moving, just a few cases do not make much difference to the lives of crores of citizens.

Denial of the RTI Act is not just affecting ordinary citizens, but it will hit the IT and communications industry too. If this Act is implemented in its letter and spirit, industry experts hope to see that sale of PCs, photocopiers, scanners, IT consumables et al will go up significantly. Similarly, Internet subscribers, mobile users, fixed line phone connections will all go up sharply.

Unfortunately, there are quite a few reports coming in where vendors and service providers are actually hands in glove with the Government. The objective is to win large e-Gov orders so that vendors are happy, and provide solutions which are so complicated or un-economical in the long run, that after sometime, it is all scrapped. A case in point comes from a district in Maharashtra, where despite several failed attempts to start Internet kiosks for the benefit of villagers, it has been completely ignored. This is because the big and influential vendors have the officials in their pockets. And lots of money is being wasted.

The vendors might have picked up an order, but what they do not realize is that in the process they have hit the nerve of the RTI Act. They are creating hurdles for faster adoption of the RTI Act, rather than facilitating it. They do not realize that they are actually hitting the communications and IT industry itself. The entire approach in e-Government selling will have to be vastly different from corporate selling. Here the industry has to actively participate in market development, a crucial role they want to bypass, before it starts bearing fruits. Smaller players, who best understand local needs, habits, and conditions, will have to be taken along if RTI and e-Governance has to succeed.

There is clearly a stake that the industry has in the success of the RTI Act. And, therefore, the industry must play an active role in pushing for the implementation of this Act. And, if they see e-Gov as a golden goose, then we all know how the story ended.

ibrahima@cybermedia.co.in