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TheIndian EXPRESS

THE OP-ED PAGE

l SATURDAY l SEPTEMBER 15 l 2012

15

RTI isnt broken, why fix it?

The courts order on appointments could embroil the law in unnecessary controversy
sioners, not to incompetence. Surprisingly, a study of the Manupatra database of high court judgments has shown that in the early years of the RTI, barely five to six cases relating to RTI disputes were decided by the high courts. This number increased to 30-40 in the subsequent three years and has now grown to around 60-70 cases a year from all the information commissions across the country. Appeals to the high court, therefore, account for a very small proportion of cases disposed of by the Central and state information commissions and this begs the question of whether such high-level judicial acumen is required at all. More pertinent is the fact that most RTI-related forays to the high courts are almost entirely filed by the public authorities that do not wish to part with information; or they emerge from private entities who dispute their being covered by the Act. Not many members of the public, with exceptions such as the ubiquitous petitioner, Subhash Chandra Agrawal, with a legal-cum-social background, particularly when it comes to the district machinery, not to speak of panchayats, which are also public authorities under the RTI dispensation. Yet another concern expressed by RTI activists is whether the apex courts order

SHAILAJA CHANDRA

THE recent order of the division bench of the Supreme Court has cooked the goose of the Right to Information (RTI) world. Using a PIL as its plank, the apex court has pronounced that the Information Commission is a judicial tribunal performing functions of judicial as well as quasi-judicial nature and having the trappings of a court. It hasdirectedthatpersonspossessing a legal background must hencefor-

ward be one among two members on every information commissions bench. More importantly, only a person who has been a judge of the Supreme Court should head the Central Information Commission (CIC) and likewise, the state information commissions should be headedbytheformerchiefjusticeof a high court. RTI activists are baffled. The general perception is that appeals and complaints over the last seven years does not show evidence of mishandling that merits such an extreme response. The Central Information Commission gets around 2,500 complaints and appeals every month and disposes of around 1,900 cases leaving a backlog that gets accumulated. This is, basically, attributable to the paucity of commis-

APPEALS TO the high court account for a very small proportion of cases disposed of by the information commissions and this begs the question of whether high-level judicial acumen is required at all.
have been venturing to the high court a fact that should have settled misgivings about the miscarriage of justice. Finally, there is the question raised by NGOs about how the appellate authorities can muster so many judges and people may not result in circumventing the present independence of the CIC, who has asked for the assets of the judges to be made public something that has gone into appeal and has not been disposed of for a long time.

Admittedly, there is a flip side to the handling of RTI which merits mention. Some information commissioners do not know the meaning of speaking orders, in the absence of which certain orders may sound subjective and arbitrary. Second, information commissioners have been known to remand cases back even when they possess every authority, as well as a duty, to dispose of matters when citizens complain. Information commissioners, therefore, do need both knowledge and experience in interpreting the provisions of the law. More than any other law, the RTI has been used by very ordinary citizens to access information mostly unassisted by lawyers or daunting court procedures. Its success has been its

user-friendliness and the simplicity with which matters can be disposed of. It is worrying that a law that was working perfectly well for the most part and which had empowered so many people in such a short span of time may become embroiled in controversy. At the end of the day, citizens might see the effect of this order snatching away an amazingly simple opportunity to get justice. If the result is that a simple strategy gets waylaid by the rigmarole of filling new positions, accompanied by a cumbersome judicial process, the results may not justify the solution. Whoever wins or loses, the citizen will pay the price. The writer administered the Delhi RTI Act as chairman of the public grievances commission

The costs of adopting measures to contain Beijing are much lower than the costs of inviting aggression by failing to compete
JACQUELINE DEAL, STEPHEN ROSEN AND SHIVAJI SONDHI
IN this final essay we turn to some ideas on what India can do to use the favourable trends catalogued in the second of our articles to address the challenges outlined in the first. Since it has taken decades for Indias current predicament to come into being, escaping it fully will also take decades. India needs a strategy for the next generation, based on the conditions that will exist over the next generation. Saying that a democracy needs a long-term strategy is not an exercise in futility, even though the political challenge of working with millions of voters to produce a relatively steady course of action for decades seems impossible. Yet both tasks have been accomplished. India did build a nuclear arsenal and a national space programme and a metro in Delhi, all of which took decades of hard and steady work, by both national parties who were willing to cede daily management to specialist organisations tasked for these purposes. Equally to the point, we will be making choices based on assumptions about the future whether we like it or not. When we buy military systems and train officers today, we make decisions that determine what capabilities we will have 20 years hence. Our only choice is whether to do it thoughtfully or in response to the pressures of the moment. Clearly, the foremost task is for India to maximise its potential national power by maximising its economic growth. Many thoughtful Indians appear to believe that the distribution of national income is at least as important as its total quantum, but global economic history reveals that for a country atIndiaslevelofwealththisisanillusory trade-off more is better in reducing poverty, enhancing social peace and securinginternationalpeace.Whatneeds to be done on this front is, at some level, well understood and discussed by fine Indian economists based in India and abroad and we do not wish to belabour issues that must be foremost in the minds of thinking Indians during the for instance, an attack through Bhutan. Ideally, Indias military should constantly think through such novel scenarios as military capabilities in China evolve and fine tune the mix of Indian forces, fixed and mobile, to be able to respond to various contingencies and go on the tactical offence when needed. Other strategic surprises can involve the use of precision weapons against Indian assets and command and control facilities far from the border zone. Indeed, hardening Indian assets against such precision attacks should be accorded the highest priority. India needs an urgent effort to deal with its cyber vulnerabilities this is a problem more in need of attention than large sums of money (by the standards of military spending). Finally, India should aim at keeping its defence spending at or above the 3 per cent of GDP on defence recommended by Indian strategic experts. It has been noted by Indian strategists such as Admiral Raman Puri that compared with Indias, Chinese hardware costs are lower because they typically involve domestic production. While this certainly argues in favour of seeking to maximise the indigenous component of Indias defence acquisitions, the current policy based around foreign purchases tied to escalating offsets (compensating purchases) is seriously flawed. The current policy neither furthers the goal of Indias acquiring the best available Western military technology (access to which is an area of advantage to India over China) nor of building up Indias own defence production, as the offset purchases have no meaningful connection to technology niches where India has a comparative advantage, such as in equipment of use to other Asian countries. In principle, there exists a niche where India could respond to shrinking Western defence budgets by creating an outsourcing defense industry driven by the private sector, but the structure of Indian processes currently precludes such a response. Let us turn now to the scope for India to cooperate more actively with other Asian countries concerned with maintaining a favourable balance of power and with the US. Much unofficial interaction proceeds with the assumption that there is a shared problem to be managed. Yet, official Indian positions as well as semi-official thinking as recently on display in the Non-Alignment 2.0 document seem still paralysed by the curious notion that Indias challenge is somehow to triangulate between China and the US and above all to avoid offending China. If India were happy with an equilibrium in its dealings with China this might make some sense, but India is neither happy nor is the relationship in equilibrium, so it is hard to understand what India gains by self-censorship. The evidence is that what cannot be said eventually cannot be dealt with in any rational fashion. Indian policymakers should take heart the contest is not yet over, and in any case the option of accommodating to Chinese power will always be available, and thus there is no need to exercise it prematurely. The hope of the world is that Chinas rise will not endanger peace and stability but instead bring back to the frontiers of human accomplishment one of the greatest civilisations to grace the planet. With this China, India must of course engage, economically and culturally. However, China is also a nation-state with definite views on the international order and it would be irresponsible for India not to take steps to ensure that a Beijing that decides to challenge the status quo faces the steepest odds. The virtue of the measures described above is that if they work as planned, they will render themselves obsolescent. Moreover, the costs of adopting them are much lower than the costs of inviting aggression by failing to compete. Deal is president and CEO of the Long Term Strategy Group, a Washington DC-based defence consultancy. Rosen is Beton Michael Kaneb Professor of National Security and Military Affairs at Harvard University and senior counsellor at LTSG. Sondhi is on the faculty at Princeton and directs the India and the World programme at its Centre for International Security Studies

Anticipating China

Printline
PAKISTAN
RUCHIKA TALWAR A register of reports and views from the Pakistan press

FRIENDS AGAIN
LAST year, when Pakistan Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar visited India, she was promised by her Indian counterpart S.M. Krishna of a return visit in the near future. When he fulfilled that promise last week, the Pakistani press gave the trip positive coverage. Daily Times said in an editorial on September 10: Relations between the old foes linked by ties of geography, history, culture and many other shared values can be looked at in one of two ways: whether glass half-full or half-empty. Both descriptions carry a grain of truth, but neither is complete on its own. The progress made so far can be built upon to nudge both countries to a realisation of the dividends nestling in the lap of improved, if not friendly relations. Noted Indo-Pak peace activist and journalist Imtiaz Alam wrote a front-page article in The News on September 10, calling the movement in bilateral ties slow but steady. More than for tactical reasons... as rightly claimed and professed by... Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar that change of policy in allowing trade with India opens new opportunities and moving forward on concurrences rather than being bogged down by divergences. India, on the other hand, should strengthen this new strategic shift in Pakistans India policy, if not a paradigm change, rather than exploiting the heightening pressures on Pakistan that will be tantamount to playing into the hands of extremists. While keeping the big picture in mind and taking a positive note of the civil-military consensus for peace with India, New Delhi must not haggle on Prime Minister [Manmohan] Singhs visit to Islamabad. Dawn, on September 10, reported an event with symbolic importance. For an Indian political leader to visit the symbol of Pakistans inception is no ordinary event. In scenes reminiscent of the day in 1999 when former Indian PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee set foot on Minar-i-Pakistan and said his initiative was aimed at removing Pakistans misgivings that India had not accepted, at heart, the creation of this country, Indian External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna visited on Sunday the monument to the 1940 Pakistan Resolution.

C R SASIKUMAR

current economic slowdown. The next task is to focus on the narrow military asymmetry issues. Here there are issues of defence management, strategy, choice of hardware and total spending, roughly in that order of priority. The single most important thing India could do is to make the China problem much more salient in its defence management processes and the object of an integrated effort. Precisely what bureaucratic mechanism is required is beyond our competence to prescribe, but it is clear that if a dedicated group of talented military officers and civil servants under the highest levels of political supervision are tasked with improving Indias defence posture vis--vis China, much could be accomplished quickly after

ESCAPING INDIAS current predicament will take decades. India needs a strategy for the next generation, based on the conditions that will exist over the next generation.

all, Indias military performance underwent a sea change in a short three years after the 1962 defeat. Such an effort would then take into account the growth in Chinese capabilities and the trends in military technology we discussed earlier to update Indian strategy vis--vis China. An important component of this shift would be to adopt an anti-access, area denial strategy in Tibet, where China is dependent on a limited number of roads, rail lines and runways. All of these are relatively vulnerable as fixed targets for modern precision strike systems. The same set of tools should be employed to make it harder for Chinese naval power to operate in the Indian Ocean, much as China is making it hard for the US to operate off its coast. Such an approach would be quicker and cheaper than setting out to build a competing Indian surface presence in the Indian Ocean. Finally, Chinese strategic doctrine emphasises speed and surprise and thus Indian counter doctrine should emphasise paranoia and flexibility. Tactically speaking a mountainous border is good terrain to defend, but it still leaves room for strategic surprises

Those who represent their nations overseas believe they can make a difference. They must be protected
PRUDENCE BUSHNELL
others, and of how we carried on under horrendous circumstances. Now every time I pass the black marble wall, I will think of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and his colleagues who died after an attack on our consulate in Benghazi, Libya, this week. Diplomats dont often make headlines until something horrible happens. Even then, it is policy and politics that get the attention. We had barely learned of the attack before talking heads began to expound on Middle East policies and the words administration officials used, or should have used, to uphold our national dignity. Where were the conversations about the diplomats who were actually carrying out those policies in faraway, often dangerous places, the people who take careofusdespitethehardshipandrisk? Imagine what it must have been like trying to escape the raging fire in the Benghazi consulate or enduring hours ofassaultintheannexewaitingforrelief from the Libyan government. Diplomacy is a dangerous profession. You cannot exert influence by whispering in diplomatic code to your government counterparts behind closed doors. You do not spread American values by remote control from Washington. You have to get out from We must make that work safer. The reasons for violence change with time and place but the human effects are the same. For two years before we were blown up in Nairobi, Kenya, my team and I fought to have security threats and vulnerabilities addressed. We were too close to the street, an easy target. Washingtons assessment was that things were O.K. Anyway, I was told, there was no money for a more secure embassy. What was Washingtons assessment of our consulate in Benghazi? We may not like the image of American diplomats working out of fortified boxes, but we cannot let them work in buildings that can be overrun by attackers. This is a lesson our government still hasnt learned since 1979 in Tehran. If the Benghazi tragedy traces the same journey we made from the rubble in Nairobi, heartfelt pronouncements will be made; the dead will be given due homage and then they will be buried. The press will alight on other stories. A Congressionally mandated accountability review board will determine what happened and what needs to be done to avoid such tragedies in the future. Easy fixes will be made; expensive and hard ones will not. The foreign service is short on people, and those people are rushed into the field short on training. We build concrete fortresses when we have to, but we dont invest in the mobile communications and security technology that would protect diplomats when they leave the embassy, as they must. What kinds of technology, systems, training and deployment do we need to get results through diplomacy in the 21st century? These are the difficult questions that will remain unanswered, while diplomats disappear from public view once again. The writer is a former US ambassador to Kenya and Guatemala

Diplomats deserve better

WHERE WERE the conversations about the diplomats actually carrying out those policies in often dangerous places?
behind the walls and engage with people. We know this can put us in harms way; our people in the Benghazi consulate knew it. And they did their jobs anyway. That is because, hokey as it sounds, the people who represent us overseas really do believe they can make a difference.

SEVERAL fires gutted industrial complexes across major cities in Pakistan this week. Calling it the countrys worst industrial disaster, The Express Tribune reported on a factory fire in Karachi on September 13: Around 259 people have died because of the fire... Up to 600 people were working inside at the time, in a building that officials said was in poor condition without emergency exits, forcing dozens to jump from upper storeys to escape the flames, but trapping dozens in the basement where they perished. Sindhs Minister for Industry and Commerce Rauf Siddiqui resigned over the tragedy on Friday. Another factory in Lahore also went up in smoke. Dawn reported on September 12: Twentyone people burned to death and 14 others suffered multiple injuries after a fire broke out in a shoemanufacturing unit in Shafeeqabad... Most of the dead... were trapped inside the 10-marla factory because there was only one entry-exit point. The Express Tribunes website reported on September 14 that a fire had broken out in a commercial building in Islamabads Blue Area.

UP IN FLAMES

THERE is a black wall in a state department lobby inscribed with the names of those who died while serving overseas. Every time I passed that wall after al-Qaeda blew up two American embassies in east Africa in 1998, I thought of the 12 American and 32 Kenyan friends and colleagues who died on my watch as ambassador. I thought of my own journey that day down flights of stairs in the building next door to the embassy, after having been knocked out by the blast, of the people who risked their lives to save

The New York Times

AN EDITORIAL in The Express Tribune on September 13 stated that the reason for industrial fire disasters fire in Pakistan was the obsolete electric wiring, made worse by the lack of separate entry and exit points in old industrial buildings. A report on the website of The News on September 14 explained the industrial negligence towards fire laws: Under [the] Factory Act 1934, the owner will have to pay only Rs 500 in penalty over negligence in the protection of workers... Changes had been made in the Factory Act, promulgated [during] British rule but it was not completely changed. The act further says that if the factory owner commits negligence a second time, the penalty will be Rs 750 and the penalty will be increased to Rs 1,000 the third time.

ARCHAIC PENALTY