RTI and Transparency
How India's Right to Information Act empowered ordinary citizens to hold the government accountable, the activists who won this right, and the threats to its effectiveness.
The Right to Information Act (2005)
The RTI Act, passed in 2005 after years of civil society campaigning led by activists like Aruna Roy and the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS) movement, gave every Indian citizen the right to request information from any public authority. Government bodies must respond within 30 days. The law applies to all levels of government, including state-owned enterprises, and covers everything from village development budgets to defense procurement files.
The impact was transformative. Millions of RTI applications are filed annually. Citizens have used RTI to expose corruption in food distribution programs, irregularities in government hiring, misuse of development funds, and environmental violations by government-approved projects. The law gave ordinary people a tool to demand answers from a bureaucracy long accustomed to operating in secrecy.