The Unintended Consequences of Right to Information

For many accountability and transparency activists, greater openness in government functioning is worth pursuing for its own sake. But a country’s political, economic, and social context can have a significant impact on how these much-desired aspirations play out in reality.

India and its celebrated Right to Information Act is an interesting case in point. Popular discourse around India’s RTI law has largely focused on exposing government corruption, but not on the crucial role played by government in the first place. Thus it has, perhaps unwittingly, reiterated the trope that the state is venal, hinders growth and development, and therefore the production and delivery of public goods and services must be handed over to the market. By halting at merely exposing corruption, the popular discourse around the RTI Act ironically strengthens those voices that privilege the market over the state, with its axiomatic, unquestioned promise of efficiency.

This discussion seeks to engage with the interplay between transparency, trust in governments, the market imperative, and the politics of accountability.

Speakers

• Prashant Sharma is an Open Society Fellow researching accountability questions related to public-private partnerships involved in developing social infrastructure in the BRICS countries, with a focus on India.
• Subarna Mathes (moderator), is a program officer with the Open Society Fiscal Governance Program.