The Unintended Ramifications of India’s Right to Information Act

For 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 impact 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 right-to-information 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 and 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 Right to Information Act ironically strengthens those voices that privilege the market over the state, with its axiomatic, unquestioned promise of efficiency.

At a recent discussion, Open Society Fellow Prashant Sharma engaged with the interplay between transparency, trust in governments, the market imperative, and the politics of accountability. Listen above.