My Shailesh Gandhi versus CIC Shailesh GandhiThursday, March 12, 2009 2:33 AM
BEWARE IMPOSTER ON THE RPOWL From: This sender is DomainKeys verified "Krishnaraj Rao" <[email protected]>View contact details To: "krish" <[email protected]> Last Saturday, I witnessed what is nowadays a rare sight: CIC Shailesh Gandhi taking up cudgels against dishonesty. For a few moments, I thought it was my Shailesh Gandhi. Speaking at an Indian Merchants’ Chamber (IMC) meeting on ‘Corporate Governance’ in Mumbai, Shaileshbhai publicly named a dozen fat-cats looting the public exchequer, including Tata Finance, Mukesh Ambani, Shapoorji Pallonji, Shah Rukh Khan and Simplex Mills. When his fellow-speakers tried to muddy the waters with management jargon, Shaileshbhai wasted no time with political correctness. “There is more dishonesty in the corporate sector than our friends would have us believe,” he said bluntly. (Download photo from this link: http://www.box.net/shared/k70rry88bp ) Here was a glimpse of the Shailesh Gandhi I knew and loved: introspective, brutally frank, crystal clear, with no ambiguity. He knew where the lines were drawn, and repelled attempts to make those lines fuzzy. This Shailesh Gandhi was my mentor. I cherish the things that I -- along with many other activists -- learned from him. I keep trying to speak to my mentor, but the person who comes up nowadays is someone else. This person, known as CIC Shailesh Gandhi, speaks in favour of ambiguity. With master-strokes of logic, he effortlessly fudges the lines that my mentor once struggled to define razor-sharp. This imposter has many of the qualities of head and heart that my mentor Shailesh Gandhi possessed; he speaks with great conviction and authority... but he speaks lies. Throughout the IMC meeting, Shaileshbhai was at pains to make one point: the private sector, which habitually points fingers at government and the public sector, is at least as corrupt if not more. He urged corporates to make suo moto disclosures of its contracts and MOUs with government bodies as part of their moral obligation to be transparent before the public. “It is a human tendency for every man to wish that the wives of other men wear transparent clothes,” he quipped. “Before we demand transparency from others, we should ourselves be transparent.” MISDIRECTING PUBLIC ANGER… A persuasive argument -- but it misdirects public anger away from the fountainhead of corruption, the administration. You see, business enterprises are not there to serve the nation; any fool will tell you that the sole reason for every business to exist (even self-righteous ones like Tata enterprises) is to make greater profits. When businesses bend the laws to earn greater profits, we are angry, but we understand that it is natural. However, we citizens feel betrayed when government and administration fudge the laws. It is the same sense of betrayal that some unfortunate little girls feel when they wake up to find daddy’s hand sliding between their thighs. At first, we become insecure, and later, when we get used to it, this incest makes us cynical, and sets off a vicious cycle of denial and corruption. When the fence eats the crops that it was meant to protect, hopelessness spreads everywhere. “We, the People”, elect the legislature specifically to legislate i.e. make laws, draw the lines, define the rules of the game. The government is expressly formed to govern in the best interest of “We, the People”, and not to pander to vested interests. Various organs of administration are formed under various laws expressly to implement the laws ie. to ensure that nobody crosses the lines drawn by the legislature. In the case of the Right to Information Act. Information Commissioners are expressly appointed to IMPLEMENT & ENFORCE the Act – and not to remove its teeth and nails. My mentor Shailesh Gandhi painstakingly taught me the Act in his living room in mid 2008, when I was just a clueless agitator asking for better roads for pedestrians. He pointed out to me that the citizen who questioned administrative acts of omission or commission was fighting an uphill battle. WHAT I LEARNED FROM THE MASTER… “This battle is not fought on the ground, it is fought in the minds of people,” Shaileshbhai said. “To hold the government accountable, you need information. Information is power, and that is why it is restricted, delayed, denied and diluted.” My mentor pointed out that the Act recognized that each day was precious as a citizen lacked the physical and financial strength to sustain this unequal battle for long. And that was why the penal provisions specified Rs 250 penalty for each day of delay. That was why the onus was put on the Public Information Officer (PIO) to prove his innocence -- to prove that he had acted strictly according to the RTI Act. Those who had drafted the Act anticipated the various methods of delay, denial and misinformation used to wear out the citizen trying to fight against “the system” and hold it accountable to public scrutiny. My mentor taught me that acting as watchdogs, we citizens must ensure that the administration’s actions closely conform to norms, rules and regulations. He taught me that the correct use of RTI was to make the public authority disclose the rules and norms applicable, and then use them to measure its actual performance. (As an example of this approach, you may read an RTI application format formulated by Shaileshbhai. Download from this link: http://www.box.net/shared/rjpnkbyklz . Please notice the stress on various penalties prescribed by BMC for sloppy roadwork.) To me, this was the Gospel revealed, and I held to it close to my heart. And this is the reason that I am raging against this imposter who is doing much to uphold the myth that those with law-enforcers have mysterious and undefined ‘discretionary powers’ that allow them to override the letter and spirit of the law. THE FACE OF THE IMPOSTER… Admittedly, CIC Shailesh Gandhi is heroically fighting to reduce the mountain of pendency before the Central Information Commission. Yes, he is doing so at great personal cost, and is sacrificing much of his income to pay the extra staff that he needs for this. Yes, he has disclosed his own personal income and assets, and thereby set up a benchmark of transparency for other Information Commissioners, judges etc. CIC Shailesh Gandhi is indeed going to great lengths to live upto his own sense of right and wrong. But make no mistake, this larger-than-life imposter is part of the fence that eats the crops. He has joined those who claim ‘discretionary powers’ to do what they feel is best, rather than implement the letter and spirit of the law. He now wishes to be accepted as a law unto himself. Such behavior empowers him and others like him, but drains power away from the common man. In effect, CIC Shailesh Gandhi is saying, “We know best how to implement the Act. And we, in our wisdom, choose not to strictly implement the penal provisions. We shall occasionally wave the stick, but we shall not use it to beat the guilty.” SWARAJ IS MY BIRTHRIGHT… My Shailesh Gandhi was committed to Swaraj – self-rule, which he said was co-terminus with Rule of Law. I was inspired by his conviction that Rule of Law was vastly superior to rule of babus, rule of policemen, rule of judges, rule of ministers etc, because Rule of Law was not arbitrary. Rule of Law promised a level playing field for everybody. It promised consistency as opposed to arbitrariness. It did not depend on the individual goodness or wisdom of the person implementing the law. With Rule of Law, ‘We the People’ could govern ourselves with dignity without depending on individual rulers who came and went. With Rule of Law, the rights of the weakest of citizens would be upheld as diligently as the rights of the high-and-mighty. To me, this was Gospel… and it remains so. This imposter finds specious and roundabout arguments to say that the RTI ACT CANNOT BE IMPLEMENTED IN ITS ENTIRETY. Now that he is an insider to “the system”, he claims special knowledge of how the whole thing functions -- special insights and far greater wisdom than ours. He places himself beyond the pale of reasoning; when questioned and opposed, he retreats into the cloak of his greatness. Time and again, his words and actions imply that we must bow and not question. I owe it to my mentor not to bow before this imposter. My loyalties are to the Gospel of Swaraj and Rule of Law, to the sanctity of measuring performance against the rules and laws laid down. (Across the country, there are hundreds like me – maybe thousands – who have independently sworn allegiance to the same Gospel.) RTI Act 2005 shall not go the same way as the other laws, which have been lost amidst discretionary powers and the cobwebbed maze of courts. The RTI Act shall be implemented, uncut, with penalties and the onus on PIO to justify his actions. The orders of appellate authorities shall unambiguously state whether or not the PIO has defaulted, and to what extent has he defaulted. Every default, being intrinsically mala-fide, shall be punished in various degrees. And every RTI activist shall confidently tell the Daridra-Narayans of this country, “If a PIO dares to delay information for even one day more than the time-limit, he shall definitely pay for this delay. Rely on this Act, and it shall set you free.” This shall happen, Shaileshbhai; I have sworn it, and so have many other activists. One fervently prays that when this happens, you will be found on the right side of the historical forces that you yourself played a key role in unleashing. It would be such a shame if you are found to be among those who unsuccessfully resisted the coming of Swaraj.
