Let there be more light

What a relief! India’s Central Information Commission (CIC) threatens to spill the beans. If they get a complaint about an RTI activist being attacked or killed, they will examine his pending applications, and publish on the Net the information he was seeking. Thus making it clear to the public exactly who may have had an interest in silencing or attacking him. Finally, we may be looking at a concrete step to protect RTI activists.

Common sense suggests that if an attack or murder of an activist actually turns the floodlights on what the attackers wish to hide, the attacks would stop. Some of you may remember this suggestion in this column more than a year ago (in When RTI proved lethal, July 24, 2010; and Watching out for whistleblowers, August 7, 2010). But it took the deaths of scores of whistleblowers and RTI activists for this obvious step to be considered a worthwhile measure by the authorities.
I only hope that the process of making information public doesn’t take too long. The government’s good intentions are often defeated because the sarkari sloth bear does its slow dance, nodding, swaying and flaying about in red tape. The information sought — which cost the activist her life — needs to be examined and splashed on the Net while the murder or attack is still in public memory. It needs to be available for the police and other investigators. It needs to be offered to the media, hungry for topical news. Maybe the media would then focus less on the dead activist’s favourite foods and everyday habits and more on the wrongs she was trying to stop and the criminals she was trying to expose. At least we would have the satisfaction of knowing that she did manage to expose the wrongdoers.
“Sunlight is the best disinfectant,” said Justice Louis Brandeis. Especially, we may add, when most available disinfectants are spurious. Openness and transparency certainly are the best ways to fight corruption in a country where law and order mechanisms are unsafe, the administrative apparatus is full of holes, the state of governance is rotten and the nexus between criminals, politicians and the police is supreme. In general, an open society with wider access to information is safer than a walled society with dark corners and hidden stretches. It would make sense to allow as much sunlight as possible into every step of fighting corruption.
As it is, RTI activists and whistleblowers have no protection. The public outrage following the 2003 murder of Satyendra Dubey, the upright official of the National Highways Authority of India who protested against the enormous corruption in the construction of highways, started the demand for protection of whistleblowers and others fighting corruption. Eight years on, they still remain as vulnerable as ever. The Supreme Court had got the government to issue the Public Interest Disclosures and Protection of Informers Resolution in 2004.
In 2005, Manjunath Shanmugham, sales manager of Indian Oil Corporation, was murdered for opposing the petrol adulteration racket. Recently, RTI activist Shehla Masood was killed in Bhopal. In between, hundreds of crusaders and conscientious objectors have been attacked and scores killed. We only know of the more high profile victims. Like RTI crusader Amit Jethava, who was publicly shot dead in front of the Gujarat high court last year. Or Satish Shetty, or Arun Sawant, or Shashidhar Mishra, or Vishram Laxman Dodiya, or Vitthal Gite, or Sola Ranga Rao, or Dattatray Patil. The list of murdered crusaders fighting powerful land, mining or forest mafia, or other politically networked criminals is long and spread all over India.
The Protection of Whistleblowers Bill is pending in Parliament. Meanwhile, there is a fear that the RTI Act itself could be used against those fighting corruption by forcing authorities to reveal the identities of whistleblowers. And those trying to stem the rot in the system have no protection at all.
To protect themselves, RTI activists have been trying various means. In Mumbai, they are trying to form a union. In Bhopal, they have been seeking gun licences for self-defence. And in general there have been attempts at developing a system that could prevent such attacks. Mainly by sharing information, laying it out in public, putting up information on websites, filing non-cognisable complaints with the police and even filing detailed affidavits clearly stating who their possible attackers may be, enclosing copies of all relevant RTI documents, getting it notarised and distributing copies to friends and colleagues. When you cannot turn to the police and the law, reach instead for the sun and the open skies. Sunlight is also the best protection for crusaders in a corrupt and violent system.
But it is not just the whistleblowers or RTI activists who need protection. Witnesses and others helping in the investigation need protection, too. Remember how, while the venerated CBI was investigating the Satyendra Dubey murder, all key witnesses and suspects died mysteriously or simply vanished?
We sorely need a witness protection law. In India, witnesses can legally expect protection and anonymity only in terrorism cases. And usually that “protection” consists of one lonely, lowly
cop who would not stand half a chance against any self-respecting criminal gang.
A witness protection law or programme would dramatically boost our justice system. Most big criminal cases drag on or conclude on an unsatisfactory note because witnesses disappear, turn hostile or lose credibility. This is because the witness, usually an ordinary citizen dragged to court repeatedly to be harassed disgracefully by lawyers, is no match for the criminals they may be deposing against. And with no support from the justice system, they either back off or perish.
So yes, we need a lot of changes in our legal and administrative mechanism to ensure justice, and not only with regard to crusaders against corruption. And every step boosts our hopes. The CIC’s promise of revealing all information sought by the RTI activist if she is harmed is a very
significant step in that direction.
Let’s hope it will have retrospective effect. That the battle of the bravehearts whose deaths led to this protective measure would be included in its scope. That we would know in detail what they were up against, who they were about to expose and why exactly they were killed. That would be the first step towards justice for the dead crusaders.

The writer is editor of The Little Magazine. She can be contacted at: sen@littlemag.com [2]