Right to Information and Transparency

The Right to Information Act 20051 has perhaps been one of the most significant legislative enactments in terms of creating a framework of transparency and accountability in the Indian context. The legislation makes the constitutionally guaranteed right to know a procedural right that ensures the role of the State shifts from being an owner of the information to being the trustee of the same. There has been much academic discussion on issues related to the right to information such as the constitutional foundation of the right, the right’s interpretation in law courts, official bureaucracy’s resistance against it, conflict of interests with privacy, public participation, and transparency and digital governance. Nevertheless, very little research has been carried out regarding another equally significant question of whether there are inequities in transparency in relation to rural vs urban citizenship. In this paper, it is contended that it will not be possible to evaluate the right to information merely from the point of view of statutory provisions or appellate decisions but rather from a more pragmatic perspective based on the accessibility of the right. Through the means of statutory interpretation, policy analysis, institutional discourse, and comparative methodology, this paper introduces the notion of transparency equity and illustrates that transparency cannot be analysed exclusively from the perspective of being a legal value, but rather needs to be considered as an access framework. This paper further argues that a fresh outlook on the right to information and transparency in India necessitates a shift from disclosure to inclusion.