*This was presented in Conference on Freedom of Information and Civil Society in Asia which was held in April 13-14, 2001 and orginezed by Information Clearinghouse Japan (ICJ). This record was written in Japanese based on tape record of conference at first and translated in English. ICJ has all of responsibility concerning this report.

Editor's note: In India, a national-level freedom of information bill has been introduced in Parliament. A number of state level governments, though, have already enacted information disclosure statutes.

1. The Indian Social Context

As you know, India is an extremely large country where many cultures coexist. If you were to go to India, to a large city that is filled at every turn with people externally like you or I, you perhaps would not feel at much of a remove from Japan. If, however, you were to go to the Indian countryside, you would likely find entirely different people living in entirely different houses in entirely different-looking villages from what you found in the urban areas.

In most of these rural villages, there are hardly any people who are able to eat three meals a day. Some manage to eat just one or perhaps two meals a day. Even if they work, they do not get paid nearly the national statutory minimum wage, nor do they have access to adequate supplies of safe water. Even small children forgo school to work. Girls, at any rate, go to fetch water. Hour after hour, mile after mile, every day they miss school and go to fetch water. Even to my mind, they are living in a place where one would think it impossible to survive. There is this reality in today's India.

In the midst of such a country I campaign for the enactment of an information disclosure law; conditions in my country are such that people are institutionally deprived of their basic human rights. Various so-called "powers" torment people in various places. There are also political "powers." With their systemic and institutional force, they do not allow people any autonomy whatsoever. The power at work is of the sort that does not allow any exercise of rights. This phenomenon is an issue at international conferences, but it is a fact that the conferences go on at places that are completely removed from the reality of countless poor Indian peasants.

2. Demanding the Right to Know Accurate Information

Nevertheless, the basic rights of people are, in fact, guaranteed. The people do not know that, though. They do not know how they should use those rights. But how can we let them know?

Let us say, for instance, that there are two ordinary villagers. Currently, issues involving village land and who owns that land are so extremely important that they have given rise to the term "land politics." In order for me to claim that this piece of land is mine, there must be a land register indicating that fact. Without that, I cannot show and prove my rights as a landowner.

A land register is a slip of paper. But what is it like in a rural Indian village? Let us say that I have the piece of paper that indicates those land ownership rights. But the money that ought to be coming in from the use of that land is not coming at all from the other party. For example, I might have provided or let land, and he may have built a school, piped in water, or built some facility such that money ought to be coming in from rent or the like, and yet nothing is coming in. This kind of thing happens here and there.

There is also the issue of where the money goes when it is distributed by the center for the ostensible purpose of school construction or when it is to be used for purposes of rural development. Finally, there is the issue of where the money for improving people's housing goes, when there have been cases in which the bricks that were used would practically crumble if you touched them. The "right to know" is thus the right to know where one's own school is, where one's village truly is, who owns what land, and where one's water and, therefore, food are.

Even if you actually go to the registry office, though, they will only give you a copy of the register or only allow you to look at the register. You find out that what you yourself have is in fact not the actual register. Even if people at the grassroots then say, "We have rights. We are the owners of this piece of land," it really does not benefit them. Instead, they are being abused by someone else. First, then, we have to guarantee people that the documents are legitimate.

Next, there are various identification documents, but the most important of these are the labor identification documents needed for employment. Among the labor identification documents is one that we call the "master roll." This records when the worker arrives and leaves, how many hours he worked, how much his basic pay is, as well as his name and worker registration number. But these items are not recorded accurately. Thus it happens that no matter how much someone works he might not get the statutory minimum daily wage.

But if people say "show us the master roll," and they get to see the actual master roll, that master roll is the one the firm or plant makes up for submission to the tax office. The wages written down in that document are three or four times the actual wages. By going to request information bit by bit, rural people found out that they were receiving not nearly the amount of wages they ought to have been getting for working as much as they had worked. People in the villages thus spread a movement to get the villagers themselves to make sure that whatever documents they carried were truly legitimate and that those documents had the truth recorded on them.

This is, first and foremost, the right to information, the right to obtain information, the "right to know," and it is also the right to participate. This is not just getting information after something has happened. If one is to actually have some effect on one's own village, information must be linked to a movement for the right to participate in the process.

3. Problems with the Freedom of Information Bill

At the national level, the Supreme Court has actually handed down much favorable precedent on the right to know. Many opinions defending the right to know have been handed down from the 1960s and 1970s through the present. But they have constructed the right to know very narrowly, and most citizens have come to demand an interpretation of the right to know as the government having to inform them. Even though the Court has ruled, the government does not abide by those decisions. The reason for this is that often the information turns into a matter of national security, or something top secret, or a confidential matter.

Actually, laws are supposed to be written for people, in order to improve their circumstances. Thus, from the time that it was drafted, the freedom of information bill ought to have involved people like me. That is, people who read and are able to write laws, who have access to various organizations, and who assert their opinions, ought to participate in the planning and drafting of laws.

India's freedom of information bill does not enable access to information. For example, once someone has made his request and paid the fee, he does not find out whether or not the information will be disclosed until 30 days have elapsed. If after 30 days a decision still has not been handed over, the rules state that the requestor must go to another agency. From the standpoint of jurisprudence, I think that this represents an excessive devolution of authority.

Also, on whether a request can be made to the local government or must go to the central government, the bill opts for the latter. Do you think that a poor person in a small village can do that sort of thing? That person must have access to basic information to overcome such impediments. Even if information is their right, this sort of stuff is ridiculous. They cannot get even simple information, on top of taking time off and not getting paid.

Second, article 15 of the freedom of information bill eliminates the power of the courts. Even if you appeal a decision about disclosing information, you cannot bring that dispute to court. This is a flaw in the current freedom of information bill.

India is still at the bill stage, but there are problems with other provisions of the bill as well. Unlike the information disclosure laws in Japan and South Korea, and even compared with Indonesia, where an information disclosure law is being drafted using the power of civil society, in India the problem is that the system has not been designed so that the law gives power to the people, even in the event that a freedom of information law comes to fruition.

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