Research paper

‘Adopting the RTI Act as a mechanism to

Preeti Kannan
SID: 309302196

1
Contents

1. Introduction

2. India’s interaction with aid and corruption

2.1 India and aid

3. Good governance and aid effectiveness: How important is tackling corruption for aid to
be effective in recipient countries?

3.1 Aid effectiveness: The endless debate

4. To what extent if any can the Right To Information (RTI) Act be used as a mechanism to
fight corruption to promote aid effectiveness in India?

4.1 The access to information movement

5. Conclusion

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Section 1: Introduction

Good governance has become a buzzword in development today. Fighting corruption, raising
accountability and promoting transparency are increasingly perceived as being indispensable to the
notion of good governance. The concept of good governance is gaining popularity and is being used
unsparingly in the international community to promote development, economic and social security
and peace. There is realisation that robust engagement with the civil society is at the heart of good
governance and citizen participation has become a recurring theme because of the inherent impact
policies can have on citizens – the ultimate beneficiaries. This research paper examines the different
scholarly debates around good governance and aid effectiveness. It draws parallels to similar
debates in the Indian context by using the newly-enacted Right to Information Act (RTI) as a case
study for good governance since corruption, lack of accountability and transparency have been often
cited as impediments to governance. 1

The RTI Act, which started as a small social justice movement in a village in Rajasthan and became a
nation-wide campaign for a legislation, 2 “empowers Indian citizens to seek any accessible
information from a public authority and makes the government and its functionaries more
accountable and responsible”. 3 Barely two and a half years after its enactment in 2005, over two
million requests for information 4 were filed under the act, reflecting the overwhelming interest in
the legislation and the potential to increase the political influence of the marginalised population. 5
The RTI Act’s utility in the past five years has centred heavily on seeking information on a range of
issues including development programmes, anti-poverty schemes and public projects to expose
corrupt practices and claim rights. This paper broadens the scope of the RTI Act and makes original
contributions to ongoing deliberations on governance in the Indian sub-continent by exploring the
possibility of ‘adopting the RTI Act as a mechanism to fight corruption to promote effective aid
delivery’ since aid recipient countries also have a major responsibility to improve governance. 6

1
A Roberts, "A Great and Revolutionary Law? The First Four Years of India's Right to Information Act," (Suffolk
University Law School, 2010).
2
R Jenkins and AM Goetz, "Accounts and Accountability: Theoretical Implications of the Right-to-Information
Movement in India," Third World Quarterly 20, no. 3 (1999).
3
Prizewaterhouse Coopers, "Final Report: Understanding the Key Issues and Constraints in Implementing the
Rti Act," (New Delhi: Department of Personnel and Training, 2009).
4
Roberts, "A Great and Revolutionary Law? The First Four Years of India's Right to Information Act."
5
Ibid.
6
"The Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness and the Accra Agenda for Action", (Paris, 2005).

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The research moves seamlessly from section to section, tracing the history of aid in India, examining
the deep-rooted problem of corruption in the society and its impact on development projects,
probing the concept and origins of governance and aid effectiveness in the international community
by relying on the available literature and finally attempting to position the RTI Act as a model for
good governance. It also raises questions on what constitutes governance, looks at the different
debates on the fundamental issue of aid effectiveness. The arguments presented in this research
make no claims to be exhaustive instead they offer a selective view of the broader debates in the
international and Indian community on aspects of governance and aid effectiveness. Ultimately, this
paper contributes to the discourse on foreign aid in India and initiate further discussions on the
community’s role in ensuring aid is effective.

Section 2: India’s interaction with aid and corruption

2.1 India and aid

Since independence in 1947 from the British rule, India has been heavily reliant on Official
Development Assistance (ODA), 7 also known as foreign aid or external assistance. 8 In fact, India has
“always been one of the largest recipients of net economic aid”, 9 despite the desire to not be
dependent on aid, stemming from its policies of non-alignment and anti-colonialism. 10 The United
States, Japan, Germany and the United Kingdom have been key donors to the Aid-India Consortium,
formed in 1958 to assist India 11 to address its growth needs in different sectors. The nature of
foreign assistance has evolved drastically in India where initially, aid was provided to improve food

7
OECD defines ODA as: Flows of official financing administered with the promotion of the economic
development and welfare of developing countries as the main objective, and which are concessional in
character with a grant element of at least 25 percent (using a fixed 10 percent rate of discount). By
convention, ODA flows comprise contributions of donor government agencies, at all levels, to developing
countries (“bilateral ODA”) and to multilateral institutions. ODA receipts comprise disbursements by bilateral
donors and multilateral institutions. Lending by export credit agencies—with the pure purpose of export
promotion—is excluded (OECD website 2010).
8
ODA, foreign aid and external assistance are used interchangeably in this paper.
9
M Lipton and J Toye, Does Aid Work in India? A Country Study of the Impact of Official Development
Assistance (London & New York: Routledge, 1990).
10
G Price, "Diversity in Donorship: The Changing Landscape of Official Humanitarian Aid, India’s Official Aid
Programme," (London: Overseas Development Institute, 2005).
11
T Lum, "U.S. Foreign Aid to East and South Asia: Selected Recipients," ed. Congressional Research Service
(2008).

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security through the US-India bilateral food assistance programme, PL-480. 12 Aid has been a source
for balance of payments to meet foreign exchange requirements, while also supporting reform
initiatives in the social and economic sectors. External aid before the 1990s covered about “18
percent of India’s total gross budgetary support for the central government ministries’ development
programmes and assistance to states”. 13 Most of the aid from the World Bank, Japan, Germany, the
UK and the US – the major donors, was pumped into infrastructural projects like power, coal,
transport and communications. 14 Foreign assistance helped usher in the Green Revolution of the
1960s, 15 improving India’s food security. Between 1951 and 1956, India received about Rs 1430
crores 16 (approx US$ 92.19 million) as aid and as of 2008, aid stands at US$ 2.10 billion. 17

Over the years, the role and focus of aid has dramatically changed in India, especially post the
economic liberalisation. NK Singh, member of the Planning Commission, told a conference in Mexico
in 2003:

Foreign assistance has lost its critical relevance in the national development paradigm as a
means of balance of payment support in the post-1991 era. Twelve years after the
commencement of significant economic reforms, foreign assistance is now increasingly a
set of sector-specific programmes aimed at more direct development initiatives. 18

The sectoral focus implied a shift from financing infrastructural development to aid being used in key
areas like health and education because of India’s commitment to meet the Millennium
Development Goals.19 External assistance has supplemented the national government’s funding of
state and central initiatives 20 and “Roughly 20 percent of aid flows are accounted by the social
sectors”. 21 In 2003, India made some dramatic announcements – it would provide bilateral

12
NK Singh, "Aid Management India Country Report" (paper presented at the 5th UN global forum innovation
& quality in the government of the 21st century, Mexico, 3-7 November 2003).
13
Ibid.
14
G Mavrotas, "Aid and Growth in India: Some Evidence from Disaggregated Aid Data," South Asia Economic
Journal 3, no. 19 (2002).
15
Singh, "Aid Management India Country Report".
16
Ibid.
17
Development Cooperation Directorate, "Aid Statistics, India," (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and
Development, 2008).
18
Singh, "Aid Management India Country Report".
19
"Position Paper on External Assistance Received by India," (New Delhi: Department of Economic Affairs,
2008).
20
Domestic funding of programmes like the Sarva Siksha Abhiyan or the universal elementary education
programme is supplemented by World Bank, UNICEF, Netherlands and other international donors. Similarly,
the World Bank assists three state governments to implement rural water supply and sanitation projects
(Singh 2003).
21
Singh, "Aid Management India Country Report".

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assistance to other countries, it would accept aid only from five countries22 and most importantly, it
would not accept any more tied aid. 23 Bilateral donors could henceforth channel aid only through
NGOs, the UN or other multilateral agencies. 24 This signalled a change in its stand from an ‘aid-taker
to an aid-giver, 25 following which it has been actively providing financial assistance to other
developing and neighbouring countries 26 like Nepal, Bhutan and Afghanistan. 27 Interestingly,
researchers observe three important ideas influencing India’s attitude towards aid: assistance is
given for political or economic purposes and that can be a highly effective means of improving
relations, the wrong type of assistance is counter-productive and conditional or tied can be
degrading to the recipient. 28 India’s interaction with aid as a recipient has conditioned its thinking as
a donor and its political aspirations for providing assistance is to gain support for its bid to gain a
permanent seat on the UN Security Council. 29 The next section looks at governance hurdles India
faces.

2.2 Corruption in India

Time and again corruption has been identified as the biggest challenge in development in India. 30
The culture of corruption has become well entrenched in the society and is expected to be a part of
any transaction. In the past, people paid a bribe or an additional fee to get an illegal benefit, but
mow public servants have to be bribed even for a legitimate demand or for services citizens are
entitled to. 31 A number of government commissions have noted corruption as being systematic in
India because of the concentration of power among bureaucrats and politicians, “who flourished on
the basis of mutual dependence and institutional abuse of power structures”. 32 Many trace the
growth of corruption to its colonial roots. They believe that culture of secrecy in governance, which

22
Donor countries include Japan, the UK, Germany, the US and Russia, besides the European Union. One of the
reasons for its decision to cherry pick donors is because of its resentment of countries’ criticism of India’s
nuclear tests in 1998 and the Gujarat communal riots of 2002. It also repaid loans to the tune of US$ 4.6 billion
(Price 2005).
23
G Price, "India’s Aid Dynamics: From Recipient to Donor?," (London: Chattam House, 2004).
24
Ibid.
25
Ibid.
26
Price, "Diversity in Donorship: The Changing Landscape of Official Humanitarian Aid, India’s Official Aid
Programme."
27
India has been providing assistance since 1964 and that has totalled to US$ 2 billion until 2004 (Price 2005).
28
Price, "Diversity in Donorship: The Changing Landscape of Official Humanitarian Aid, India’s Official Aid
Programme."
29
———, "India’s Aid Dynamics: From Recipient to Donor?."
30
S Sondhi, "Combating Corruption in India: The Role of Civil Society" (paper presented at the XVIII World
Congress of International Political Science Association, Canada, 2000).
31
N Vittal, Corruption in India: The Roadblock to National Prosperity (New Delhi: Academic Foundation, 2003).
32
A Kumar, The Black Economy of India (Penguin Books, 1999).

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began during the British rule and continues now, has perpetuated corruption, where large amount
of public money is diverted from development projects and welfare schemes for private use by the
authorities. 33 Highlighting the prevalence of corruption and its impact on development, former
Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi estimated that for every rupee spent on anti-poverty programmes by
the government only 15 per cent went to intended beneficiaries, 34 where the remaining 40 per cent
was spent on administrative costs and nearly 45 per cent “disappeared into the corruption
column”. 35 Hence, it comes as little surprise that India is ranked 84 among 180 countries in the
Corruption Perception Index, 36 which measures the perceived level of public-sector corruption
around the world.

In India, the continuing existence of corruption has been attributed to the weak system of
governance, the societal structure based on caste and kinship, the differences in the states of
development, nepotism, society’s tolerance of amassing of wealth as it is viewed as a “symbol of
competence”, 37 growing consumerism and the practice of the dowry system. 38 Corruption is also
believed to be a result of policy distortion, institutional incentives and governance. 39 Interestingly,
the emphasis of tolerance and sense of forgiveness in Hinduism, the dominant religion in India, has
also been cited as a reason for the passive acceptance of corruption. 40 Experts say people are not
concerned with corruption on higher levels, instead worry about corruption “at the cutting edge
level of administration” 41, which they experience on a daily basis. A detailed empirical research in
2007-08, focussing on 22,728 households living Below the Poverty Line (BPL), found that they paid
about Rs 9,000 million (approx US$ 192 million) in bribes to access basic and need-based public
services. 42 This survey, one of the largest undertaken in India, found the police to be the most
corrupt. It also found that in “two-thirds of the instances bribes were paid to an official or staff in the
concerned service”, 43 where one-third of the bribes for basic services like getting a new ration card,

33
MM Ansari, "Impact of Right to Information on Development: A Perspective on India’s Recent Experiences"
(paper presented at the UNESCO Lecture, Paris, May 15 2008).
34
CR Kumar, "Corruption and Human Rights: Promoting Transparency in Governance and the Fundamental
Right to Corruption-Free Service in India," Columbia Journal of Asian Law 17(2003-2004).
35
Ibid.
36
Transparency International, "Corruption Perceptions Index,"
<http://www.transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/cpi/2009/cpi_2009_table>.
37
Kumar, The Black Economy of India; D Mehta, Tackling Corruption: An Indian Perspective, United Nations
Asia and Far East Institute Seminar (Japan2010).
38
Vittal, Corruption in India: The Roadblock to National Prosperity.
39
Sondhi, "Combating Corruption in India: The Role of Civil Society".
40
Vittal, Corruption in India: The Roadblock to National Prosperity.
41
Ibid.
42
Centre for Media Study Transparency International India, "Tii-Cms India Corruption Study 2007 with Focus
on Bpl Households: National Report," (CMS India
Transparency International India, 2008).
43
Ibid.

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new connection, new installation or school admission. 44 A similar study conducted in 2005 on 14,
405 respondents found that citizens had paid bribes to the tune of Rs 21, 068 crores (approx US$
4517 million) to avail public services. 45 The two studies sets up corruption as a major obstacle in
governance in India and underline the importance of laws like the RTI Act in facilitating “greater
transparency in public spending”. 46

2.3 Corruption in aid in India

Since foreign assistance often supplements existing government programmes and projects at the
national and state level, 47 the research relies on available literature on corruption in welfare
schemes aimed at poverty alleviation. Examining instances of corruption in food aid and
humanitarian aid would give a sense of the urgency and necessity to address corruption in foreign
aid. In the absence of extensive academic literature on corruption in aid, particularly in the area of
tsunami, the research examines news reports published in the Indian media at that time.

Food For Work (FFW)

A scam involving food aid, meant for millions of poor farmers in the Southern state of Andhra
Pradesh following a drought in the state, received considerable attention in the media in 2002. After
“allegations of corruption in the supply of rice intended for poor farmers and agricultural
labourers”, 48 the Indian government, which had allocated more than three million metric tons of
rice, enough to feed 20 million workers for nearly a year, 49 stopped aid for the FFW scheme. Under
this programme, rice was meant to be given to farmers in exchange for working on developmental
projects. However, it was found that members of the ruling party in the state and other officials
were selling the rice back to the Food Corporation of India, an agency of the central government,
and adding fictitious names of labourers to claim more rice.50 When some villagers did try to

44
Ibid.
45
Transparency International India, "India Corruption Study 2005 to Improve Governance," (New Delhi: Centre
for Media Studies, 2005).
46
Ibid.
47
Singh, "Aid Management India Country Report".
48
O Farooq, "India Corruption Row Halts Food Aid," BBC, August 23 2002.
49
P Deshingkar, C Johnson, and J Farrington, "State Transfers to the Poor and Back: The Case of the Food-for-
Work Program in India " World Development 33, no. 4 (2005).
50
Farooq, "India Corruption Row Halts Food Aid."

8
telephone the local police, contractors cut off their telephone lines. 51 Authorities were found to
have wielded unfair influence in the employment of contractors, the selection of beneficiaries,
wage-setting and for payments. 52 The Overseas Development Institute and Management Accounting
of NGOs concluded that “Design faults, administrative mismanagement and local politics created
conditions that were conducive to large-scale misappropriation of resources meant for the poor”. 53

Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS)

The ICDS, financially and technically assisted by UNICEF and the World Bank, 54 was initiated in 1975
in response to the growing problem of malnutrition among children. Its goals are to improve the
nutrition and health of children up to the age of six, reduce infant mortality, school dropout and
educate families, particularly mothers, on the need for balanced diets for children. The
programme, 55 implemented through Anganwadis or community-based institutions, has been
punctuated with complaints of corruption and failure to reduce deaths, which continues is as high as
two million children a year. 56 Investigations show that the food meant for children is often sold by
contractors 57 and workers or funds meant to purchase food siphoned off. 58 Experts have also called
for banning the practice of packaging food for children because of the malpractices involved, 59
besides being unhealthy. There has been a strong demand for immediate governance reforms and
transparency 60 in the ICDS programme to prevent children’s deaths and avoid malnutrition.

The Indian Ocean Tsunami

The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami saw unprecedented international response and invited “unseen
scales of generosity”. 61 In the wake of an “avalanche of aid”, 62 concerns of misappropriation of funds

51
Deshingkar, Johnson, and Farrington, "State Transfers to the Poor and Back: The Case of the Food-for-Work
Program in India ".
52
P Ewins et al., "Mapping the Risks of Corruption in Humanitarian Action," (Overseas Development Institute
and Management Accounting for NGOs, 2006).
53
Ibid.
54
M Huff-Russle et al., "Assessment of Decentralized Food Models in India’s Icds Program," (Washington:
Academy for Educational Development, 2007).
55
ICDS has received funding from CARE through USAID and the World Food Programme since its inception and
is infact an extension of the US government’s food aid programme that began in 1950 (Russel et al 2007).
56
M Bhandari, "Impoverished Kids Starved, Deprived as Corruption Rules," CNN-IBN 2008.
57
NC Saxena and N Srivastva, "Icds in India: Policy, Design and Delivery Issues," IDS Bulletin 40, no. 4 (2009).
58
Moribund ICDS, "A Study on the Icds and Child Survival Issues in Madhya Pradesh," (Bhopal: Vikas Samvad
Sanket - Center for Budget Studies, 2009).
59
Saxena and Srivastva, "Icds in India: Policy, Design and Delivery Issues."
60
ICDS, "A Study on the Icds and Child Survival Issues in Madhya Pradesh."
61
B Korf, "Disasters, Generosity and the Other," The Geographical Journal 172, no. 3 (2006).
62
E Amstrong, "The Tsunami's Windfall Women and Aid Distribution " in Meridians (Indiana University Press,
2006).

9
and transparency of aid flows arose, leading to a meeting in Indonesia to curb corruption with six of
the worst affected countries. 63 While countries like Sri Lanka have been censured for large scale
corruption, 64 lapses in relief and reconstruction aid were considered to be lesser of an issue in India
due to media vigilance. 65 In the state of Tamil Nadu, “tsunami victims alleged that junior government
officials were taking a sizeable cut of compensation payments”. 66 The disaster has been unique in
the sense not just because of the overwhelming aid that was involved, but also because of the
number of complaints of embezzlements against both Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) and
government authorities. In one instance, officials from the Church of South India were accused and
later arrested for swindling over seven crores (approximated US$ 1.5 million), donated by an
American NGO for the rehabilitation of tsunami victims. 67 The media observed that NGOs and social
workers may have taken advantage of the generosity of individual donors and charities and cashed
in on the grief of millions.68

Having established that corruption in development programmes is preventing Indians from accessing
services, the next section looks at the discourse on governance and its relation to aid.

Section 3: Good governance and aid effectiveness: How important is tackling

3.1 Aid effectiveness: The endless debate

There are many dimensions to the good governance and aid effectiveness debate and this section
consolidates existing views in the international aid community, while attempting to wed the
conceptual concerns around aid effectiveness to governance. The impact of aid hinges on the quality
of governance 69 and “the quality of a country’s governance system is a key determinant of the ability

63
Secretariat of the ADB-OECD Anti-Corruption Initiative for Asia-Pacific, "Curbing Corruption in Tsunami Relief
Operations," (Jkarta: Asian Development Bank
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
Transparency International, 2005).
64
"Tsunami Aid Missing, Says Anti-Corruption Group ", Irin News 2007.
65
P Menon, "Rebuilding Lives," Frontline 2005.
66
M Batha, "Q & A: Corruption and Aid," Reuters AlertNet 2005.
67
"Csi Kin Swindles Tsunami Aid Funds," Deccan Chronicle 2009.
68
G Vannan, "Was the Tsunami a Godsend for Some?," Express Buzz 2009.
69
E Neumayer, The Pattern of Aid Giving: The Impact of Good Governance on Development Assistance
(London: Routledge, 2003).

10
to pursue sustainable economic and social development”.70 Experts opine that without improving
governance, aid will not have the desired impact. However, before examining the role of
governance, it is imperative to look at the complex topic of aid effectiveness. Though this research is
based on the assumption that development assistance helps in poverty alleviation, ongoing
conceptual concerns around aid effectiveness are hard to overlook because of the massive
outpouring of studies – theoretical and empirical, in the past thirty years. 71 Aid effectiveness,
arguably, is one of the most controversial and extensively researched issues. A lot of the criticism on
aid has centred on Africa and the question constantly asked is has, “One trillion US$ in development
assistance over the last several decades made African people better off?” 72 One of the earliest critics
of foreign aid was Peter Bauer, who argued that aid was “likely to obstruct” 73 development, urging
donors to take cognisance of the relative ineffectiveness of foreign aid to promote “higher living
standards in poor countries”. 74 He dismissed any analogy between the success of Marshall Aid and
aid programmes for developing countries, arguing that while the former helped restore the
economies of Western Europe, the latter was attempting to develop the economies of recipient
countries. Bauer also maintained that aid provided little incentive for governments to adopt good
policies. 75

After decades of engagement with foreign aid, a significant drop in aid allocation by the Organisation
for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries 76 was observed in 1997, reflecting the
widespread pessimism in the aid community. 77 “After a generation of aid giving, politicians and the
public in donor countries had become somewhat weary with it and cynical about what aid had
achieved, or could achieve”.78 A year later, a World Bank study concluded that “foreign aid in
different times and different places has been highly effective, totally ineffective and everything in
between”. 79 The study, placing a strong emphasis on governance, urged a rethink on aid and
attempted to provide a blueprint for the future, in response to the disillusionment in the aid
community. World Bank economists Burnside and Dollar argued that on an average “aid had little

70
C Santiso, "Good Governance and Aid Effectiveness: The World Bank and Conditionality," The Georgetown
Public Policy Review 7, no. 1 (2001).
71
H Hansen and F Tarp, "Aid Effectiveness Disputed," in Foreign Aid and Development, ed. F Tarp (London:
Routledge, 2000).
72
D Moyo, Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa (London: Penguin
Books, 2009).
73
PT Bauer, Dissent on Development (London: Cox & Wyman Ltd, 1976).
74
Ibid.
75
P Collier, "Aid Dependency: A Critique," Journal of African Economies 8, no. 4 (1999).
76
C Burnside and D Dollar, "Aid, Policies and Growth," The American Economic Review 90, no. 4 (2000).
77
P Collier and D David, "Development Effectiveness: What Have We Learnt?," in The Economic Journal
(Blackwell Publishing for the Royal Economic Society, 2004).
78
Lipton and Toye, Does Aid Work in India? A Country Study of the Impact of Official Development Assistance.
79
World Bank, "Assessing Aid: What Works, What Doesn't, and Why," (New York: World Bank, 1998).

11
impact on growth” 80 and their study further resonated with the Bank’s findings, linking foreign aid to
sound economic policies. They observed that “making aid more systematically conditional on the
quality of policies would likely increase its impact on developing country growth” 81 and concluded
that aid had a positive impact in good environments and was ineffective in countries with poor
governance and policies. These two studies also gave further impetus to conditionality or tied aid,
which will be explored later. Besides paving the way for discussions on good governance, the
Burnside and Craig research provided the basis for policy recommendation to increase foreign aid, 82
which was heavily contested by economist and aid sceptic William Easterly. On his part, Easterly
does not completely negate the benefits of foreign aid, instead advocates improving the quality of
aid first. He notes that the aim of transferring money from high income people to very poor people
remains a worthy cause, despite the experiences of the past. “The goal is simply to benefit some
poor people some of the time...Improving quality of aid should come before increasing quantity,” 83
he argues. Easterly also suggests adopting a piecemeal approach to aid as an alternative to
economist Jaffrey D Sachs’ Big Push theory, which he dismisses as being Utopian. 84

The foreign aid discourse would be incomplete without examining the views of economist Jeffrey
Sachs, who has provided the strongest clarion call for increased aid in recent times. Besides
propagating a drastic increase in foreign aid to achieve the MDGs, he seeks to attack, what he terms,
“conventional rich-world wisdom about Africa”, 85 which believes aid to the continent has simply
gone down the drain. He fuelled the aid debate further when his ‘Big Push’ theory recommended
doubling foreign aid to about US$ 100 billion a year and then nearly doubling it again by 2015. Sachs’
theories have, no doubt, stirred a hornet’s nest and Harvard-educated African economist Moyo
makes the most scathing attack on aid proponents like him. Terming aid to Africa as “the single
worst decision of modern developmental politics”, 86 she dismisses aid effectiveness as a myth. A
Zambian by birth, she attempts to be the authentic African voice in the aid discourse, urging donors,
historically from the West, to permanently shut the taps of aid to Africa, 87 which according to her is
addicted to aid. She asserts that the continent was better off without aid and offers “a road less
travelled in Africa...and aid-free solution to development”. 88 Her alternative to foreign aid includes

80
Burnside and Dollar, "Aid, Policies and Growth."
81
Ibid.
82
W Easterly, "Can Foreign Aid Buy Growth?," The Journal of Economic Perspectives 17, no. 3 (2003).
83
Ibid.
84
———, "The Big Push Déjà Vu: A Review of Jeffrey Sachs’s the End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our
Time," Journal of Economic Literature 44(2006).
85
J Sachs, The End of Poverty (Penguin Books, 2005).
86
Moyo, Dead Aid.
87
Ibid.
88
Ibid.

12
attracting Foreign Direct Investments, increasing trade internationally and regionally, banking on
micro-credit, encouraging remittances from Africans living overseas and increasing domestic savings.
Importantly, she advocates accountability, transparency, removing bureaucracy and curbing
corruption as an alternative to aid.

3.2The relationship between good governance and corruption in aid

Despite the ongoing disputes around the fundamental issue of aid effectiveness, there exists
consensus among aid advocates and critics that corruption, lack of accountability and absence of
transparency are major deterrents to foreign aid delivery. There has been a growing cognisance in
the aid world that tackling corruption is central for aid to have its desired results and good
governance is the antidote to corruption. Therefore, good governance has become a recurring
theme in foreign aid. It has been identified as a key factor for enhancing aid effectiveness by
academics and the World Bank, where researchers placed controlling corruption and government
accountability as two of the six distinguishing dimensions of good governance. 89 A World Bank
report illustrated how foreign aid has been an unmitigated failure in some countries, notably the
Democratic Republic of Congo and Tanzania, where heads of states channelled development aid in
to their personal bank accounts. 90 At the 2002 Monterrey Conference in Mexico, the former World
Bank President noted, “We have learned that corruption, bad policies, and weak governance will
make aid ineffective”. 91 Economists Paul Collier and David Dollar, who worked for the Bank,
observed that corruption can significantly impair aid effectiveness 92 and weaken aid programmes.
Economist Moyo cites a World Bank study which found nearly 85 per cent of aid money was either
diverted or channelled for ‘unproductive’ or ‘grotesque’ ventures and asserts how aid fuels
corruption in many African regimes. 93 While in theory aid is meant to be a vehicle for development,
in practice it is far from this, because countless examples have demonstrated how assistance can be
hampered by unscrupulous government officials. 94 The fact that the discourse on governance
occupied an important place in the global agenda was echoed by former UN Secretary-General Kofi

89
Santiso, "Good Governance and Aid Effectiveness: The World Bank and Conditionality."
90
Bank, "Assessing Aid: What Works, What Doesn't, and Why."
91
Easterly, "Can Foreign Aid Buy Growth?."
92
Collier and David, "Development Effectiveness: What Have We Learnt?."
93
Moyo, Dead Aid.
94
The World Bank, in Assessing Aid, cities examples of Zaire and Tanzania, where government officials
swindled billions of aid dollars meant for development.

13
Annan, when he stated, “Good governance is perhaps the single most important factor in eradicating
poverty and promoting development.” 95
In reality, the concept of good governance is relatively new and remains largely undefined in the
absence of an “unambiguous and operational definition”. 96 Governance, in fact, appeared on the
World Bank’s agenda only after a 1989 Bank report cited a crisis in governance for the failure of aid
in Sub-Saharan Africa. 97 In 1995, it characterised poor governance that undermined development as
“arbitrary or unenforced and unaccountable government bodies susceptible to abuse or inefficient
use of power”. 98 Towards the end of the millennium, the institution however urged donors to
confine lending to countries with sound economic policies and good institutional environment or
have in place policy and governance reforms, 99 in what is better known as selectivity in the aid
world. These recommendations, however, condoned the practice of conditional or tied aid and the
Bank’s linking of foreign aid to conditionality has drawn considerable flack not just because of the
nature of conditionality donors were imposing, but also on the principle of the approach. 100
Economist Carlos Santiso argued that the Bank’s traditional approaches to good governance was
‘misguided’ and concluded that “conditionality is not the appropriate approach to strengthening
good governance in developing countries”. 101 Importantly, the Bank’s researchers have alluded to
instances where aid had fuelled “incompetence, corruption and misguided policies” 102 echoing
concerns in aid community that corruption undermined aid and aid was fuelling corruption. 103 Critics
of aid have often cited instances of corruption as reasons to convince the donor community to plug
the flow of aid. Moyo, for instance, cites the examples of Zaire and Nigeria, 104 asserting that
development assistance aids corruption, props up corrupt governments and pushes countries
further into poverty. Corruption has been termed the chief enemy of foreign aid, 105 reducing “the
effectiveness of aid-funded development projects”. 106 Hence, tackling financial irregularities and

95
J Court, "Assessing and Analysing Governance in India: Evidence from a New Survey," (Andhra Pradesh:
World Governance Survey, 2002).
96
Santiso, "Good Governance and Aid Effectiveness: The World Bank and Conditionality."
97
VP Nanda, "The Good Governance Concept Revisited," Annals of the American Academy of Political Science
603(2006).
98
Bank World, "Strengthening the Effectiveness of Aid: Lessons for Donors," (New York: The International Bank
for Reconstruction and World Bank, 1995).
99
Bank, "Assessing Aid: What Works, What Doesn't, and Why."
100
Browne says conditionality can undermine domestic accountability, instead of enhancing governance, by
imposing policy direction from outside (Browne 2006).
101
Santiso, "Good Governance and Aid Effectiveness: The World Bank and Conditionality."
102
Bank, "Assessing Aid: What Works, What Doesn't, and Why."
103
Ibid.
104
Transparency International estimates Mobutu of Zaire and Nigerian President Sani Abacha to have swindled
to the tune of US$ 5 billion of foreign aid.
105
"The Failure of Aid," (Institute of Public Affairs, 2006).
106
M Robinson, "Corruption and Development: An Introduction," The European Journal of Development
Research 10, no. 1 (1998).

14
ensuring aid effectiveness hinge on the conditions in the recipient country primarily on governance
and politics. 107

Academics, who have sought to answer what constitutes good governance, note that the shift from
the notion of governance to good governance “introduces a normative dimension addressing the
quality of governance”. 108 Surely, the notion of good governance has gained momentum over the
years as a response to the instances of corruption in aid. However, the concept would have to be
expanded to include political dimensions rather than just economic dimensions, which is what the
World Bank’s approach has been confined to.109 The friction has been a source of intense debate as
internal governance targets the state’s power, political structures, and democracy. The Bank’s
apolitical stand has been a source of contention among donors and scholars, who have criticised this
approach maintaining that political and economic aspects of good governance are indispensable. 110

Academics note that the relationship between governance and democracy is layered with
controversies and there is no consensus in the aid world on how good governance can be promoted
from the outside, without addressing issues inside a state. Santiso maintains, “Good governance
although theoretically distinct from democracy, often substantially overlaps with it in practice”. 111
Precisely due to this inherent tension between political and economic aspects of governance, there
has been a growing emphasis on internal governance incorporating citizen participation for
development. The idea first surfaced in 1997 in the World Bank’s Development Report 112 and was
later highlighted in its subsequent reports where the Bank noted the role of civil society, observing,
“Effective aid in this case often involves supporting civil society either to pressure the government to
change or to take service provision directly into its own hands”. 113 There is growing awareness on
the importance of engaging with the civil society 114 and reliance on a country’s internal mechanisms
to tackle corruption and raise accountability.115 There have been instances where donors have been
able to address governance issues, particularly related to tackling corruption, by supporting

107
"Good Governance, Aid Modalities and Poverty Reduction: From Better Theory to Better Practice," (The
Advisory Body for Irish Aid, 2008).
108
Santiso, "Good Governance and Aid Effectiveness: The World Bank and Conditionality."
109
Nanda, "The Good Governance Concept Revisited."
110
Santiso, "Good Governance and Aid Effectiveness: The World Bank and Conditionality."
111
Ibid.
112
Ibid.
113
Bank, "Assessing Aid: What Works, What Doesn't, and Why."
114
As per the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness (2005, p.3), one of the commitments of recipient countries
is taking the lead in co-ordinating aid at all levels in conjunction with other development resources in dialogue
with donors and encouraging the participation of civil society and the private sector.
115
The Declaration also encourages donors to using a country’s existing institutions and systems for effective
aid.

15
institutional reforms “that increase accountability and transparency and reduce monopoly and
discretion in the allocation and management of public resources”. 116

A possible approach that could be explored by donors is by supporting existing citizen movements
calling for governance reforms and available internal mechanisms and home-grown solutions within
recipient countries. Citizen participation is central to governance and the “umbilical relationship
between state and the civil society” 117 can determine the pace and direction of developmental
efforts. The next section looks at the adoption of such an internal mechanism and home grown
solution – the RTI Act, as a possible tool for civil society to tackle corruption since:

Ultimately, the most effective systemic check on corruption would be where the citizen
herself or himself has the right to take the initiative to seek information from the state, and
thereby to enforce transparency and accountability.118

Section 4: To what extent if any can the Right To Information (RTI) Act be
used as a mechanism to fight corruption to promote aid effectiveness in
India?

4.1 The access to information movement

Recipient countries shoulder significant responsibility in ensuring aid has the necessary impact. As
discussed, good governance broadly entails fighting corruption, eliminating fraud and ensuring
transparency for aid to be effective. The examples of corruption in aid in India illustrate an urgent
need for an internal strategy and the support of the civil society to initiate change from within. It is
in this milieu of corruption, absence of accountability and transparency that this paper explores the
adoption of the newly-enacted RTI Act, which extends to the whole of India, except the state of
Jammu and Kashmir, 119 to foreign aid inflows and outflows.

In order to understand why the act is considered a landmark legislation and a “watershed moment in
the history of public governance in India", 120 it is important to look at the right to information
movement and how it gained momentum over the last three decades as a result of advocacy by

116
"Good Governance, Aid Modalities and Poverty Reduction: From Better Theory to Better Practice."
117
Sondhi, "Combating Corruption in India: The Role of Civil Society".
118
H Mander and A Joshi, "The Movement for Right to Information in India: People’s Power for the Control of
Corruption," in Conference on Pan Commonwealth Advocacy (Harare: Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative,
1999).
119
National Informatics Centre, "Right to Information: A Citizen Gateway," <http://righttoinformation.gov.in>.
120
Roberts, "A Great and Revolutionary Law? The First Four Years of India's Right to Information Act."

16
NGOs and the civil society. The right to information campaign began in the state of Rajasthan with
the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS), an NGO. The organisation was keen to tackle deep-
seated corruption, hold the state accountable for minimum wage regulations and ensure the
availability of subsidised food and other essential commodities through the government’s Public
Distribution System. 121 It found that local authorities were billing the central and state government
while underpaying workers and selling subsidised food grains and other commodities, meant for the
poor, in open markets. 122 Authorities were also inflating the costs of public work projects, using poor
quality materials, over billing the state and engaging in other malpractices, which the MKSS
recognised could be controlled only through by accessing official documents including balance
sheets, employment registers and bills submitted for the purchase of materials. 123 The organisation’s
focus was on access to information to verify government records of allocation of funds and
quantities of essential commodities for people, on paper, with what had really reached them. 124 For
cross-checking records and holding the government accountable, the NGO, alongside other civil
society organisations, demanded the state government permit photocopies of government
records. 125 A national campaign, along with other anti-corruption NGOs and interested groups, for
the Right to Information seeking legal access to government documents was launched in 1996,
countering the Official Secrets Act of 1923. 126 After years of rallying, the national Freedom of
Information Bill was introduced in the Parliament in 2002 and later replaced by the RTI in 2005. 127

According to the Indian government, the RTI is an:

Act to provide for setting out the practical regime of right to information for citizens to
secure access to information under the control of public authorities, in order to promote
transparency and accountability in the working of every public authority, the constitution of
a Central Information Commission and State Information Commissions and for matters
connected therewith or incidental thereto. 128

The Act adds:

121
The South Asian, "History of the Right to Information," Commonwealth Human Rights Institute,
<http://www.thesouthasian.org/archives/2006/post.html>.
122
Jenkins and Goetz, "Accounts and Accountability: Theoretical Implications of the Right-to-Information
Movement in India."
123
Ibid.
124
According to Jenkins and Goetz (1999), the MKSS is known for its innovative collective method analysing
approach, where in a series of public hearings or jan sunwais, details of official expenditure records are read
allowed to assembled villagers through village assemblies of gram sabhas. The direct form of social audit
helped people realise that they had been listed for anti-poverty schemes and had never received payment.
125
Certified copies of documents are important to register prima facie cases of corruption and to give poor,
illiterate people time to seek assistance to interpret them.
126
Jenkins and Goetz, "Accounts and Accountability: Theoretical Implications of the Right-to-Information
Movement in India."
127
Asian, "History of the Right to Information."
128
Centre, "Right to Information: A Citizen Gateway."

17
 Democracy requires an informed citizenry and transparency of information which are vital
to its functioning and also to contain corruption and to hold governments and their
instrumentalities accountable to the governed. 129

All public authorities or government bodies and non-governmental organisations, financed by the
government, are covered by this act, which empowers Indian citizens “to seek any accessible
information, 130 from a public authority and makes the government and its functionaries more
accountable and responsible”, 131 by filing applications with the Central Public Information Officer.
The applicant should be supplied with an answer between 48 hours 132 to thirty days, depending on
the nature of the information and can file appeals if no response is received.

4.2 Scope of the legislation:

Presently, there appears to be a lot of optimism among academics, NGOs and the civil society on the
potential of the act to improve governance. Despite being barely five years old, it is already being
extensively used by Indians, from different economic and social strata and age groups, to obtain
information and track public expenditure. The fact that over two million requests were received
within a couple of years of the act coming into force, illustrates its reach and gives a glimpse of its
potential to engage with policy and policy makers. With corruption being viewed as one of the
biggest “obstacles in the efficient delivery of development resources to the poor in developing
countries,” 133 an empirical study concluded that the RTI negatively impacted corruption and its
statistical impact on curbing corruption was quite significant. The study, conducted in 20 states over
a span of three years, found that the act “reduces corruption in an average state by 18.5 per cent
points”.134 The authors found that the act “explains approximately 62 percent of the actual decline
in corruption in Bihar over the period 2005 to 2008”, 135 which is rather a large impact considering
Bihar is one of the most corrupt states. The study concluded that the legislation makes significant
contribution in controlling corruption, enhancing the quality of public goods and services,

129
Ibid.
130
As per the act, the right includes inspection of work, documents and records, taking notes, extracts or
certified copied of documents or records, taking certified samples of material held by the public authority or
held under the control of the public authority.
131
Coopers, "Final Report: Understanding the Key Issues and Constraints in Implementing the Rti Act."
132
If the information sought concerns the life or liberty of a person, the information shall be provided within
48 hours (RTI Act 2005).
133
Jenkins and Goetz, "Accounts and Accountability: Theoretical Implications of the Right-to-Information
Movement in India."
134
S Bhattacharyya and R Jha, "Economic Growth, Law and Corruption: Evidence from India," (Canberra:
Australian National University, 2009).
135
Ibid.

18
empowering citizens and by breaking the informational monopoly of public officials. 136 “It prevents
corrupt public officials from misusing this information to advance their own interest. On the other
hand, it provides the government with more power and public support for conducting top down
audit of corrupt departments,” 137 Bhattacharyya and Jha conclude.

The ability to access information from the state, which was previously shrouded in secrecy and
bureaucracy – legitimised by the colonial Official Secrets Act 1923, 138 and direct form of social audit
has led to a new-found sense of empowerment among citizens, who are willing to resort to the law
to claim their rights, as the study indicates. The media, which has been a powerful ally for the civil
society, has reported numerous stories on how ordinary citizens have evoked the act to secure their
right to food through the PDS, ensure their children received the promised midday meals under the
ICDS centres at anganwadis, 139 enable pensioners receive their dues, help people realise their basic
rights to water and tackle corruption in many instances. 140 The legislation does, to an extent, satisfy
some internationally agreed criterions of good governance in aid delivery including curbing
corruption, accountability and transparency. It is a classic example of a grassroots struggle and
demand for participatory democracy that translated into a nation-wide policy change.

Clearly, the demand for the people’s right to information, emerging from a people’s
struggle and campaign, is far more incisive than the comparatively limited assertion that
the Right to Information is contained within the Constitutional right to the freedom of
expression. Because it is rooted in action, facets of the issue have been thrown up which
have altered its discourse in India. 141

While there is a link between the contemporary debates on governance in India and the
international community and the right to access information, academics caution transparency need
not necessarily result in accountability. 142 However, Jenkins and Goetz conclude that since
transparency aims to make procedures clear, remove discretionary control and ensure
accountability, their interchangeable use and their “utility as a euphemism for a means of combating

136
Ibid.
137
Ibid.
138
Mander and Joshi, "The Movement for Right to Information in India: People’s Power for the Control of
Corruption."
139
P Dasgupta, "A Wbsite to Log the Rti Success Stories of Puulia Villagers," The Indian Express, January 06
2010.
140
Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, "Rti Success Stories," Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative.
141
A Roy and N Dey, "The Right to Information: Facilitating People's Participation and State Accountability,"
(Rajasthan: Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan).
142
Jenkins and Goetz, "Accounts and Accountability: Theoretical Implications of the Right-to-Information
Movement in India."

19
corruption” 143 are justified. They observe that debates on transparency in the public sphere in India
revolve around the right to information and acknowledge a growing awareness in the society’s
conscience on the inextricable link between “opacity and the perpetuation of everyday forms of
corruption”, 144 reflecting the growing convergence of these issues in governance.

Though rights are indivisible and interconnected, there has been scepticism associated with the right
to information movement because of its portrayal as having little relevance to the poor and
marginalised as “they do not possess the means required to actualise it: time, literacy, appropriate
forms of collective action...” 145 In other words, civil and political rights hold some value only when
social and economic rights have been realised. However, NGOs like the MKSS have identified and
positioned the act as being indispensable in realising socio-economic rights like the right to food.
They have been able to emphasise the potential role of the right to information – an archetype first
general civil and political right, as a procedural right to combat corruption and secure socio-
economic rights. “Even the poorest of Indians are using the RTI to secure everything from repairing
roads and sewers to getting passports, subsidised food, school places and old age pensions”.146 The
next section examines the possible expansion of the act to fight corruption to promote aid
effectiveness.

4.3 Adopting the RTI Act for foreign aid:

By outlining the scope and the utility of the RTI Act, this paper explores the possibility of using the
act to improve governance in foreign aid and make valuable contribution to the debates on the
legislation. The above sections demonstrate the potent role of the RTI Act in improving governance
in the Indian public sphere and also highlight the opportunities the act presents for the various
stakeholders – mainly civil society. Since India continues to receive significant ODA for its
development and is emerging as a donor, Indian citizens possess the ‘right to information’ on how
and where aid is being spent in India and how Indian aid is being spent overseas. India has agreed to
147
adhere to the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness in 2006, requiring it to improve aid

143
Ibid.
144
Ibid.
145
Ibid.
146
K Rao, "Need to Know," Developments 2007.
147
SN Sharma, "India Finally Agrees to Paris Declaration on Aid," The Economic Times 2006.

20
effectiveness and the quality of aid. 148 The Declaration clearly outlines the roles and responsibilities
of recipient and donor countries and India, as a signatory, has pledged its commitment to enhance
accountability on its development policies, strategies and performance. 149 It has also pledged to act
against “Corruption and lack of transparency, which erode public support, impede effective resource
mobilisation and allocation and divert resources away from activities that are vital for poverty
reduction and sustainable economic development”.150 The Declaration therefore establishes a clear
framework for the involvement of civil society, strengthening governance and improving
development performance. 151 Hence, India is morally bound to involve and engage Indian citizens in
disbursing external aid within India and with Indian aid abroad.

Since aid supplements the government’s expenditure by financing major infrastructure projects and
social sector projects, 152 the money, received in the form of loans of grants, 153 is then channelled to
different states based on their requirements. Every year, during the annual Union Budget, the Indian
Ministry of Finance announces the external aid it seeks to receive and the assistance it plans to give
to other countries. 154 While the information on aid inflows and outflows are available on
government websites, 155 there is a need for further scrutiny by the civil society and CSOs to curb any
malpractices involved in the utilisation of aid. Assistance to India is used to supplement
development and in poverty alleviation programmes like the FFW, ICDS, which have been shown to
be fraught with corruption. A Finance Ministry report in 2008 highlights the skewed aid distribution
among states and the low utilisation of aid 156 as major obstacles in aid delivery. It observed that
prosperous states like Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal and Gujarat received between 80 to 90 percent
of aid, while poorer states like Bihar, north eastern and special category states received negligible
external assistance. 157 While revealing an obvious disparity and inequality in aid distribution, it offers
no explanation on why poorer states, in dire need of development, are being neglected or the
reasons for continued aid to richer states. However, the government claims an increased utilisation
of aid from 50 percent in the 1990s to over 90 percent today, by facilitating states’ access to

148
India was pressured into accepting the Declaration because it receives considerable aid and is also a major
donor (Economic Times 2005).
149
"The Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness and the Accra Agenda for Action".
150
Ibid.
151
Ibid.
152
"Position Paper on External Assistance Received by India."
153
Ibid.
154
Ministry of Finance, "Union Budget and Economic Survey," Government of India,
<http://indiabudget.nic.in/ub2010-11/bag/bag2.htm>.
155
India’s external assistance is detailed on the Ministry of Finance’s website, while its lending to other
developing countries is detailed on the Ministry of External Affairs’ website.
156
"Position Paper on External Assistance Received by India."
157
Ibid.

21
resources. It also boasts of achieving aid effectiveness because of its ability to incorporate foreign
aid into domestic programmes. 158

The Indian government argued at a conference in 2003 in Mexico that it has been relatively “under
aided” 159 in comparison to the rest of the developing world, where the aid flows to India stood at an
average USD 2.5 a year when compared to the USD 8 developing country average. 160 It is true that
India’s economic growth over the years has largely influenced its decision in recent years to reject
tied aid and pick and choose its donors based on its economic and political needs. However, the fact
remains that India has been heavily dependent on aid post independence and while it is pursuing a
conscious policy to become less reliant on foreign assistance, it continues to receive significant
multilateral and bilateral assistance from the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, Japan, UK,
Germany, the United States, to name a few. Since external assistance plays a crucial role in not just
meeting the commitments of MDGs but also contributing effectively to the overall growth of the
country, this paper underlines the need for greater public scrutiny and a potential role for civil
society and NGOs to be involved in the process of disbursing aid by employing the RTI. Series of
government reports on external assistance reflect an understanding among policy makers on the key
priorities of the country and for the need to utilise foreign aid to align international commitments
with India’s own development strategies. However, it is a well known fact that policies and priorities
on paper do not necessarily translate into action that enables the betterment of people.

Similarly, Indian assistance to countries including Nepal, Bhutan, Afghanistan and other countries
contributes to the recipient countries’ development. While India decried tied aid, it has shown little
scruples in imposing conditions on recipient countries, which has been rightly criticised as being
hypocritical. 161 India’s changing stance on foreign aid has not gone completely unnoticed and there
has been conflicting views in the media. While an article in the Economic and Political Weekly
criticised India’s position on conditional aid, an opinion voiced in the Times of India urged the
adoption of ‘new mindsets in the face of new realities’. 162 EPW also questioned the country’s
decision to become a donor when economic realities in the country demand otherwise. The debate
in the media, even if not exhaustive, demonstrates an interest in the country’s foreign aid priorities
and future direction, proving an impetus to the question this research seeks to raise – To what
extent can the RTI be used as a mechanism to increase government accountability to promote
effective aid delivery?

158
Singh, "Aid Management India Country Report".
159
Ibid.
160
Ibid.
161
"Aid: Old Morality and New Realities," Economic and Political Weekly, June 14 2003.
162
Ibid.

22
Being an active democracy with a robust civil society, there is an obvious need for increased
engagement with foreign aid to increase government accountability on the programmes and
projects that external aid is financing internally and overseas. The changing nature of the Indian
economic landscape and its economic policies provide immense opportunity for the community to
scale up its interaction with the present and future policies of the country. The RTI advocates the
notion of social audit 163 while maintaining its core mandates of raising accountability, ensuring
transparency and fighting corruption. The uniqueness of the act, as demonstrated in the sections
above, is its bottom-up approach rooted in its grassroots movement. By presenting the debates
around RTI, the paper argues that the poor are important actors, who can rely on their civil and
political rights to realise their social and economic rights and can consequentially shape the future of
the country. Since external aid to India impacts development, the act will serve as an important
mechanism to pressure the government to pay attention to the needs of its own people by
alleviating poverty, improving literacy and other aspects of the society that will contribute to the
overall social and economic growth of the country. Intellectuals fear India’s political expansionism,
refusal to heed to criticism of its human rights record and double standards in providing conditional
aid to developing countries are placing it in par with the United States and China. 164 Hence, given the
political and economic changes, the legal framework in which the RTI Act operates, the moral
responsibilities enshrined in the Paris Declaration and the notions of participatory democracy, there
seems to be an environment conducive for the RTI to be adopted as a mechanism to fight corruption
and promote aid effectiveness in India, as a recipient and donor country.

The Indian government at a recent conference in Mexico conceded that aid effectiveness for
“enabling growth and development has come to depend more on how well it is integrated with
domestic policies and economic conditions”. 165 Since foreign aid is being incorporated with
government spending on development projects, 166 it is considered public expenditure allowing for
the employability of the act to seek information. The Act mandates disclosure of:

The budget allocated to each of its agency, indicating the particulars of all plans, proposed
expenditures and reports on disbursements made. 167
The manner of execution of subsidy programmes, including the amounts allocated and the
details of beneficiaries of such programmes. 168

163
Jenkins and Goetz, "Accounts and Accountability: Theoretical Implications of the Right-to-Information
Movement in India."
164
"Aid: Old Morality and New Realities."
165
Singh, "Aid Management India Country Report".
166
Ibid.
167
Centre, "Right to Information: A Citizen Gateway."
168
Ibid.

23
Since public programmes fall under the purview of the RTI, it can be concluded that citizens can
track foreign aid to India and India’s assistance abroad. NGOs and CSOs that receive government
funding also fall within the purview of the act, 169 thereby enabling public scrutiny of projects. 170
Since the act has already made it possible for people to engage with policy by strengthening ongoing
anti-corruption efforts, it can be argued that the act holds strong potential to allow the community
to engage with India’s foreign aid policies in the long term. This law, as a model of good governance,
can achieve much more than what donor countries can through conditional aid because it matches,
to an extent, with donor countries’ perception of good governance.

Section 5: Conclusion

The RTI, which has been compared to the United States’ Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), 171 holds
the allure of a corruption-free society and showcases India as being on the cusp of a “socio-
economic revolution”. 172 In the international sphere, the right to information was viewed
predominantly as an administrative governance reform in the 1990s, but is now increasingly viewed
as a fundamental human right. 173 The Indian scenario is also evolving to recognise that access to
information is a basic human right. However, studies undertaken in the past two years reveal a
number of pitfalls in the implementation of the act including a weakness in the enforcement
mechanisms, 174 low public awareness on the existence of the act and its utility, constraints in filing
applications like inconvenient submission channels, high levels of dissatisfaction with the responses
to the appeals, failure to respond on time and other logistical constraints on the government’s part
to provide information. 175 Once an application is made to the Public Information Officer (PIO) and a
timely response isn’t received, the applicant can file an appeal with a senior officer but senior
officers were found to be sympathetic to junior officers and “tend to go along with them”, 176 thereby
discouraging the applicant from pursuing the issue further. The government has not been able to

169
Ibid.
170
This provision in the act is particularly useful to avoid misappropriation during humanitarian disasters like
the tsunami. However NGOs that do not receive government funding do not fall under the act’s purview.
171
Roberts, "A Great and Revolutionary Law? The First Four Years of India's Right to Information Act."
172
Coopers, "Final Report: Understanding the Key Issues and Constraints in Implementing the Rti Act."
173
Ibid.
174
Roberts, "A Great and Revolutionary Law? The First Four Years of India's Right to Information Act."
175
Coopers, "Final Report: Understanding the Key Issues and Constraints in Implementing the Rti Act."
176
Roberts, "A Great and Revolutionary Law? The First Four Years of India's Right to Information Act."

24
comply with the enthusiasm on the part of citizens to demand information, thereby leading to
pending applications and long delays. 177

While the above issues highlight the problems faced by citizens in using the RTI Act in general, the
problem of awareness is particularly relevant in the attempt to adopt it for foreign aid. The available
literature on aid in India reveals a low, if not negligible, interest and awareness on India’s foreign aid
policies. It is true that the concept of human development is directly linked to human rights and a
“rights-based approach demands participation in governance and development, which guaranteed
access to information can provide”. 178 But, the lack of knowledge on the existence of the RTI Act
compounded with the near non-existent public discourse on the issue of aid throw up significant
challenges. There is also no provision under the act to protect the identity of applicants, thereby
compromising their safety. Incidents of RTI applicants getting roughed up 179 because of their
decision to take on establishments or authorities have surfaced in the media. 180 This will no doubt
deter applicants, from taking an active interest in the governance of the country. Academics also
caution against overestimating the impact of the act on governance in India, warning that it cannot
be the sole answer to corruption. 181 The most important setback, if implemented, could be the
proposed changes to the RTI Act, “to avoid frivolous or vexatious requests”,182 among other things.
There have been fears this would dilute the transparency legislation and defeat the purpose of the
act. 183

However, the fact remains that the law is still very nascent and five years is a short time to achieve
significant change. People’s familiarity with the act will grow only with time. As more people realise
the potential of the act, there is scope for it to become a powerful tool to curb corruption and
ensure accountability in the effective delivery of foreign aid. “If, through persistence and innovation,

177
Ibid.
178
D Sankhari, "Right to Information as a Human Right and Developments in India," (Commonwealth Human
Rights Initiative, 2000).
179
The Times of India reported a story of a man being thrashed for seeking accountability from government
authorities on public money spent on a development project (Times of India 2009,
<http://www.rtiindia.org/forum/23941-man-thrashed-seeking-info-under-right-information.html>.
180
An RTI activist was recently harassed by cops for running a campaign against corruption and exposing
corruption in banks and government departments (NDTV 2010, < http://www.ndtv.com/news/cities/no-right-
to-probe-cops-rti-activist-harassed-by-police-28650.php>.
181
Jenkins and Goetz, "Accounts and Accountability: Theoretical Implications of the Right-to-Information
Movement in India."
182
J Venkatesan, "Government Moots Amendments to Rti Act," The Hindu 2010.
183
B Janin, "New Hands Aboard, National Advisory Council Ready for Biz," The Times of India 2010.

25
the RTI can be made to work effectively, then India will become a model for dozens of other
countries in developing world”. 184

184
Jenkins and Goetz, "Accounts and Accountability: Theoretical Implications of the Right-to-Information
Movement in India."

26
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