Everyday we read about the massive corruption in the Commonwealth Games activities. The electronic media brings the news relentlessly for 24 hours in all its sickening details. As a common citizen I feel an acute sense of revulsion at the scale and brazenness with which some people are ravaging my motherland. I feel a frustrating anger in the knowledge that the corruption cannot be stopped or punished. With the investigation methods and mechanisms in our country, combined with the legal and judicial system we have evolved, it is guaranteed that no powerful person will really pay for this corruption. The Coffin scam, Hawala Case, Food-for-Oil scam, Bhopal gas disaster, anti-Sikh riots and the riots in Gujarat are amongst the myriad cases that have proved that powerful criminals cannot be sent to prison in India. In the rarest of cases if they do go to prison they will spend their time on parole or in air conditioned hospitals. The ‘punishment’ of a wrongdoing can be becoming the chief justice of a small state.

Corruption and misgovernance have become our favourite reality shows and entertainment. In a few weeks media will have a new scandal to satisfy our need to be entertained, and perhaps after two decades the corruption surrounding the Commonwealth Games in 2010 will again provide some days of media material when an enquiry report is submitted on this. All of us know that not one powerful person will go to prison to atone for the thousands of crores of public money which have been looted. All those who put their hands in the till know this with complete certainty. We feel very angry about this corruption since it deprives the poorest citizens of their money. The mental picture in my mind is of greedy lechers snatching a morsel from the hands of a poor emaciated girl while molesting her. This corruption is responsible for grabbing the resources which could give the poorest people their food, education and access to healthcare. It is this corruption which provides the justification for the Maoist who picks up the gun.

So long as our current lethargic investigation and judicial delivery systems remain, it looks unlikely that we can stop this corruption. Is there no hope of being able to curtail this? There is another way which could act as a check on this rampant and brazen corruption. The Right to Information provides this path. Section 4 of the RTI Act mandates that information about all projects, sanctions, tenders etc. must be made available to citizens. Most information about various government bodies and their activities must be declared suo moto. It must be published in a manner which ensures widespread dissemination, so that public have minimum resort to the RTI Act. Unfortunately Information Commissions and the government have paid very little attention to the requirements of Section 4 and its implementation. If details of all the money being spent on the Commonwealth Games projects, their deadlines, the terms and conditions of the contracts had been put on the websites and continuously updated, the brazen purchase of things at 10 or 20 times their worth may not have been possible. When information about all this is in public domain, various people would have sounded the alarm if anything very brazen was being done. If people knew about the deadlines for the works, the budgeted amounts and the overruns they would have questioned the authorities. The fact that information about all transactions was to be put in public domain would have acted as a check on the officers who were plundering the nation.

The RTI Act had stipulated that this must be done in 2005. Even now if the Information Commissions, governments, citizens and media start focusing on implementation of Section 4 as per the RTI Act in letter and spirit we could begin the journey towards curbing corruption. Our Independence would be meaningful and we would have reason to be optimistic.