RTI Coming?

IT is indeed good news that a bill concerning the right to information (RTI) is going to be itnroduced during the ongoing parliamentary session. The assurance was given by none other than Minister for Information and Communications Jayaprakash Prasad Gupta in his meeting with a delegation of Federation of Nepalese Journalists (FNJ) central committee. The delegation was seeing the minister to discuss the 17-point demand it had submitted to the government. One of the top demands of the federation has been the formulation and passage of a Right to Information bill. For some time now, the federation has been engaged in drafting an RTI bill. Interactions where media people, lawyers, representatives of government agencies and others both in Kathmandu and outside have been held on the preliminary drafts. One of the oddities in Nepal’s legal regime and communication field has been the lack of an Act that ensures the citizens’ right to information. And this, despite the clearly expressed sentiments, in letter and spirit, contained in Article 16 of the 1991 Constitution that came with the restoration of democracy. Article 16 says: Every citizen shall have the right to demand and receive any information on any matter of public importance.

More than ten years down the democratic road, the letter and spirit of that clause remains unhonoured. Nepali press, and by extension the public, continues to routinely face stonewalling public institutions when they seek information on various matters of great public importance. The first demarache in breaking this tight-lipped culture has to be the passage of a comprehensive RTI Act from which rules and regulations should flow. To be sure, there is no guarantee that with the passage of a RTI bill, information will be forthcoming on silver platters from government and other agencies to journalists and that their job of reporting truth to the public becomes easier. There will be many barriers to be toppled before easy access to information becomes a fact of life. But such an Act definitely facilitates the receipt of information from the responsible organisations and individuals who, as things stand now, feel no need to divulge information no matter how important it is for the public to be in the know of things that affect their lives. What such an Act will do is empower the journalists and the public to more assertively demand information and be persistent in seeking it out, with the option of taking a legal recourse should it be denied.

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