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Social Mobilization and Transparency: The Indian Experience

05/30/2003
Working Paper
The State

Social Mobilisation and Transparency: The Indian Experience is a study of the right to information movements in India, especially in terms of the social and political mobilisation involved in the getting of the right and then its exercise. The paper traces the history of the demands for information in the Indian context and attempts to describe and then weave together the various strands of the transparency movements, including movements for environmental information, for information about corruption, about development projects, about rural livelihoods, about elections, about arbitrary governance and about the right to food.

The paper also describes the Indian laws and policies relevant to the right to information. It lists some of the major challenges being faced by the RTI movements, including those related to the inability or unwillingness of the state to effectively act on the information procured by the use of this right, the tendency for those who stand to be exposed through the exercise of this right to resort to physical violence, and the tendency of the state to create bureaucratic hurdles to the exercise of this right.