How the new RTI memo threatens to blow the whistleblowers' cover

Every just law comprises two key elements- its regulation and the sense of empowerment it provides its people. The Right To Information Act (2005) could be one such law. This watershed legislation has exposed widespread corruption and led to greater governmental action and accountability than was ever imagined possible. It did this by enabling people to ask the government questions on a vast array of subjects and ordering authorities to reply to them within a deadline, penalising those that didn't. Crore rupee scams have been exposed. Delivery of welfare schemes have been probed. The common man has been able to take on everyone from their local municipal ward to the highest echelons of government to task.

But this has come at a cost - RTI applicants have had to deal with harassment, assault and even murder. And so the questioners have called for the strengthening of one of the key elements in the Act - the empowerment of the people - with stronger safeguards. One of these, paradoxical as it may seem for a seeker of transparency, has been anonymity. It stands to reason that if powerful vested interests are unable to find out who seeks the information that will expose them, they will be unable to intimidate or harm the seeker.

Instead of working towards this, an office memo issued to ministries by the department of personnel and training - which executes the Act - threatens to make things worse. It lays down the procedure for the uploading of RTI applications, appeals and replies on government websites, without indicating anything about whether the names, contact and other personal details of RTI applicants, which are a part of the applications, will be revealed as well.

A DoPT official, requesting anonymity, tells me that from October 31, some applicants' names and details may be revealed - not because policy dictates it but because of a technicality. "It will be a lot of work to avoid scanning the names and details of applicants (by covering them before scanning) before uploading them as PDFs," the official says, referring to the on-paper applications (applications received over the internet should go without the detail). "We want to reduce paperwork hazards."

In the debates that have erupted when news of the memo caught wind, there have been a few arguments to justify these possible disclosures - mostly inane.

"Everyone who takes on powerful interests, whether or not they use RTI, puts themselves in danger. Why should RTI activists have separate protection? We are trying to create a better system for all and not create a new class of VIPs," Shailesh Gandhi, former Central Information Commissioner, told me.

This report, published in 2010, ekes out the horrors RTI applicants have had to face in the past. Murders, abductions, beatings, torture, false imprisonment… one applicant had his house demolished in front of him, his family thrown out. According to a list compiled by activists Nachiket Udupa and Venkatesh Nayak in December last year for the National Campaign for People's Right to Information (NCPRI), more than 31 RTI activists had been killed. The number of murder, assault and harassment cases in all totals to 250. Today, Nayak tells me "more than 40" activists have been murdered. The number for the total is now "more than 300". A significant increase.

Instead of taking cognisance of this, Gandhi adds, "A very few (probably less than one per cent to two per cent) do use RTI to harass officers or get a favour. Displaying the RTIs would deter them." Sure. It would also, instead of instituting an internal mechanism for dealing with ill-intentioned requests, put the safety of 98 per cent of applicants in jeopardy.

"One should also consider another part of the issue - that RTI activists even today proactively approach media with their names," says Ahmedabad RTI activist Pankti Jog, making a sweeping generalisation. Udupa and Nayak's list reveals two activists who had committed suicide. Going by Jog's logic, one should also consider that murders are okay, perhaps, because some RTI activists seem to be proactively killing themselves.

"The RTI has been registering names and addresses and information sought for the last nine years. These registers are disclosed proactively," Jog says, in an unnecessarily fatalistic defense of the online disclosures.

The solution, then, is not to use this fact as sanction for making the names, addresses and other personal details of RTI applicants even more easily accessible to vested interests, but to protect these from being available at all. When you learn of an increase in the crime rate, for instance, you strengthen the police force. You do not do away with them altogether!

A Calcutta High Court order from last year offers some degree of protection. It reads Section 6 (2) of the RTI Act to mean that an applicant needn't provide an authority with personal details beyond those needed to contact him or her (in this case the court felt the post box number of the applicant would suffice). Also, the court said that in cases where the authority finds the post box number insufficient, it may "insist on personal details". But, it would be its "solemn duty" to "hide such information", "particularly from their website so that people at large would not know the details".

There are two ways to approach this order. One is to read it as applicable to the RTI Act, and therefore, throughout the country, as there is no other high court or Supreme Court order on the issue. The other is to see the order as applying to only those authorities in the jurisdiction of the Calcutta High Court, ie in West Bengal and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The DoPT, in trying to give effect to this order, sent a memo out to key authorities throughout India in January this year, which shows that the government seems to interpreting the order in the former manner.

But the order is hazy on another count as well. Even if it were to be implemented throughout, it is unclear whether it will prevent the names and basic contact details of RTI applicants from being published online, or divulged. All it states with certainty is that any other "personal details", that have been asked for, should be protected.

In short, in the absence of an Indian Data Protection Act, the only thing that will safeguard, definitively, RTI applicants' identities is either a clear provision for this in the Act or a government rule, made as per the Act, and approved by Parliament.

But while this may take some time to come in effect, the DoPT has a more immediate decision on hand. "Paperwork hazards".The possible violation of a high court order if it puts out personal details along with names. More than 40 murders. More than 300 cases of killings, assault and harassment. And the possible negation of the idea behind the RTI. While the right to information is crucial, it cannot come at the cost of the right to safety. Is anyone weighing the odds?