Experiments with RTI

The Parliament of India, in 2005, enacted what would become one of the strongest Right to Information (RTI) laws in the world. 15 June 2025, marks the 20th anniversary of the passage of the RTI Act, which fully came into force on 12 October 2005. The law's passage reflects a rare bipartisan legacy, building on the foundation of the Freedom of Information Act, 2002, passed under the preceding NDA government led by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, which was then repealed and strengthened into the RTI Act, 2005, by the UPA government under Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh.

- BY SRINIVAS MADHAV

Twenty years later, it has empowered millions. From schoolchildren securing evaluated answer sheets (CBSE v. Aditya Bandopadhyay, 2011), to journalists exposing scams, the Act has transformed passive recipients into armchair auditors. Over 132 countries have RTI laws, starting with Sweden's 1766 Freedom of the Press Act. In 2024, the world saw 63,99,921 Access to Information requests, with India's Central public authorities handling 17,50,863 lakh RTI applications and many more in states - Maharashtra alone receiving over 7 lakh annually. India's RTI Act ranks 8th globally among 136 countries, according to the 'RTI Rating' by the Centre for Law and Democracy.

The Indian success with RTI has inspired transparency laws in Nepal, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. Nepal's 2007 Act covers political parties, while Bangladesh's 2009 law ensures Information Commission autonomy areas for India to emulate. UNESCO, as the custodian agency, reports on worldwide progress towards Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) indicator 16.10.2, which measures the "number of countries that adopt and implement constitutional, statutory and/or policy guarantees for public access to information." The 1984 Bhopal gas disaster, which claimed over 15,000 lives, starkly illustrates why secrecy can be deadly. As Harvard Professor Sheila Jasanoff wrote, Bhopal was not just an industrial accident; it was a failure of knowledge - a lack of timely access to critical information for the people living in neighbourhoods, which could have saved lives.