INDIA TODAY EDITOR-IN-CHIEF ON RTI.(7.2.2008) When the Right To Information (RTI) Act was passed in 2005 it was welcomed as a landmark legislation that would lead to transparent governance. For journalists, the Act promised to be the key to unlock doors which usually stayed shut due to the government's obduracy. We decided to launch a series of investigations that would use the RTI Act to get information on how the Government deploys its funds.
This issue features the first of those investigations which was based on a simple hunch: that the members of the UPA Government spent an inordinately large amount of time outside the country. That impression turned out to be correct. We found that 71 of the 78 ministers have made overseas trips and at least 12 out of the 78 (not including the prime minister) have travelled more than 2.5 lakh km each in threeand-a-half years with 47 of them running up over Rs 27 crore in bills. If you calculate the total miles travelled by them, the Manmohan Singh Ministry in total has made more than 256 trips around the earth. Since the UPA came to power, ministers like that for commerce, Kamal Nath, have logged in nearly 14 months on 72 overseas trips while Agriculture Minister Shard Pawar spent 37 days abroad on ministerial work and 49 days overseas as BCCI president. This is certainly worthy of further scrutiny. Beyond a point, the ministers' portfolios become convenient alibis for official tourism or pushing their non-ministerial interests. Our cover story this week is an exhaustive detailing of this expenditure of taxpayers' money. It was researched by our indefatigable Principal Correspondent Shyamlal Yadav from India Today Hindi, who has now become the in-house expert on the RTI Act. It took him 59 applications over four months and much persistence to get the information we wanted. At the end of this game of intra- governmental badminton, we discovered: that the UPA Government has an extraordinary appetite for overseas travel and that it requires an Olympian stamina to make the full use of the RTI Act. We understand that with the opening up of the Indian economy it is important for the country to be represented in global forums and on international high tables. We are not saying that foreign travel is not necessary. It is the extent of the travel which raises questions about its justifications and the corresponding neglect of domestic duties. Surprisingly, this level of travelling has taken place despite the fact that all foreign travel by ministers has to be approved by the Prime Minister's Office. Perhaps, it is a reflection of Manmohan Singh's hands-off style of coalition management. Whatever be the reason, it seems that if you joined the UPA Cabinet, you could see the world—at someone else's expense, of course. -- Frederick Noronha http://fn.goa-india.org Ph +91-832-2409490 The Goa books blog: http://goabooks.wordpress.com Goa1556 (alt.publishing.goa): http://goa1556.goa-india.org
