Sitting tight on information

The government may have brought in progressive legislation like the Right to Information Act, but babudom is still the same. It seeks to slow down the flow of information, even if the information happens to be 50 years old and is of little use to anybody but historians.

The files now being made available from the Nehru era should have contained documents that could have thrown light on the 1962 war, the Chinese takeover of Tibet, the military standoffs with Pakistan, the Cold War’s compulsions and several other epochal events in a young nation’s life. But they are merely the tip of the iceberg.

The files unveiled by DNA offer interesting insights into the workings of the prime minister’s office, especially during Nehru’s stewardship of the country, but the extreme reluctance with which they are being made available for research and scrutiny is a telling comment on babudom’s unwillingness to release information without a fight.

Despite relentless efforts by many activists, there is no comprehensive national policy on declassifying sensitive government files. Making sensitive files available after they have ceased to remain sensitive is important in a democracy for they help raise the level of debate and provide useful lessons for policy-makers.

The Nehru era files, despite their shortcomings, provide previously unknown insights into the birth of the nation, its high aspirations, and the failure of government to implement ideas and proposals that would have helped India’s economic development and nation-building efforts.

The time is now ripe for government to enact a law, or evolve transparent rules, that allow documents to be declassified automatically after the lapse of a minimum number of years. Only the most sensitive of documents should ever be withheld indefinitely, and even in these cases, the decision should be subject to review by a publicly appointed ombudsman.