Little evidence to suggest that RTI being misused against nationalized banks, contends senior activist

Taking strong exception to the high-level report by the committee formed by Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor Raghuram Rajan to review governance of nationalized banks in India, which recommends that public sector banks should be out of the purview of the Right to Information Act, 2005, a senior activist Venkatesh Nayak has said the committee's attitude towards RTI is “very disturbing” and “problematic”, as there is no evidence to suggest that RTI is in any way being misused against the nationalized banks.
Working as programme coordinator, access to information programme, the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, Nayak says, “The report blames the RTI Act as one of the several external constraints on the governance of public sector banks. The committee has found that coverage under the RTI Act inhibits the public sector (PSU) banks' ability to compete with their counterparts in the private sector as the latter are not covered by the same law.”
Pointing out that the committee recommends that the external constraints be addressed first by the ministry of finance before addressing the internal weaknesses that affect the competitiveness of PSU banks, the activist says, while he is not competent to comment on the banking and financial issues discussed in the report, “publicly available facts” indicate “only 20 of the 30 plus nationalized banks have submitted their RTI returns to the Central Information Commission (IC), through their parent Ministry of Finance, for the year 2011-12.”
Nayak points towards how RTI remains a low priority with nationalized banks, much against the RBI characterizing it as a constraint: “Statistics for the year 2012-13 are not available.” But “the available data indicates that, on an average, the maximum number of RTI applications per branch received by a PSU bank during this period is an 'astronomically high' 2.25 applications for Allahabad Bank followed by Bank of Baroda at an average of 2 RTI applications per branch”!
Nayak says, “Several banks have received an average of less than one RTI application per branch during this period. Of course, this is only a statistical picture because some branches, including the head office would have received many more applications than the average. Nevertheless, the point that I am illustrating here is that work-wise there is simply no logic to the committee's claim that the Banks are burdened by RTI applications.”
Nayak insists, “The RTI burden in those branches receiving more applications than others could be reduced by appointing more public information officers.” He adds, “Surely bankers know this solution better than their customers.”
Nayak further says, “The highest percentage of rejection of RTI applications in the same year was 52.9 per cent by the State Bank of Hyderabad followed by 41.5 per cent by Vijaya Bank. Corporation bank alone had not rejected a single RTI application and the lowest rejection rate was 6.4 per cent for the UCO Bank. Most other PSU banks had rejected between 13 per cent and 50 per cent of the RTI applications.”
The activist comments, “With such low average figures for receipt of RTI applications and such high rejections rates, it is not clear how the RTI Act can be treated as a constraint on the governance of public sector Banks. The Committee has simply failed to explain its point.”
Nayak says that the committee starts its report by stating that the financial position of PSU banks is “fragile” and that capital is “significantly eroded” with the proportion of stressed assets rising rapidly. “When I filed two rounds of requests for information about non-performing assets (NPAs) of 10 PSU banks, almost every bank rejected the request on grounds of commercial confidence, fiduciary relationship and/or personal privacy”, he underlines.
“These banks are not willing to reveal to citizens who deposit their hard earned money with them as to who has defaulted on loans. Yet the committee goes ahead and reports that the RTI Act is a constraint on the governance of PSU banks”, Nayak says.
The activist says that there is an urgent need to “debate and oppose is this trend of blaming everything bad on the RTI Act”, adding, “No bank secrets have been disclosed under the RTI Act till date. This shows the strength of the legitimate exemptions under the RTI Act which the committee fails to recognise.”
He adds, “We as civil society actors must challenge the banks to show how RTI has adversely affected their performance in objective terms. Until then such criticism of the RTI Act must be treated as merely a case of overflowing of the bile due to an unhealthy lifestyle. We could however wish them- Munnabhai style: Get well soon".

Comments

Ahmedabad's civic chaos: Drainage woes, waterlogging, and the illusion of Olympic dreams

In response to my blog on overflowing gutter lines at several spots in Ahmedabad's Vejalpur, a heavily populated area, a close acquaintance informed me that it's not just the middle-class housing societies that are affected by the nuisance. Preeti Das, who lives in a posh locality in what is fashionably called the SoBo area, tells me, "Things are worse in our society, Applewood."

RP Gupta a scapegoat to help Govt of India manage fallout of Adani case in US court?

RP Gupta, a retired 1987-batch IAS officer from the Gujarat cadre, has found himself at the center of a growing controversy. During my tenure as the Times of India correspondent in Gandhinagar (1997–2012), I often interacted with him. He struck me as a straightforward officer, though I never quite understood why he was never appointed to what are supposed to be top-tier departments like industries, energy and petrochemicals, finance, or revenue.

PharmEasy: The only online medical store which revises prices upwards after confirming the order

For senior citizens — especially those without a family support system — ordering medicines online can be a great relief. Shruti and I have been doing this for the last couple of years, and with considerable success. We upload a prescription, receive a verification call from a doctor, and within two or three days, the medicines are delivered to our doorstep.

Powering pollution, heating homes: Why are Delhi residents opposing incineration-based waste management

While going through the 50-odd-page report Burning Waste, Warming Cities? Waste-to-Energy (WTE) Incineration and Urban Heat in Delhi , authored by Chythenyen Devika Kulasekaran of the well-known advocacy group Centre for Financial Accountability, I came across a reference to Sukhdev Vihar — a place where I lived for almost a decade before moving to Moscow in 1986 as the foreign correspondent of the daily Patriot and weekly Link .

Environmental report raises alarm: Sabarmati one of four rivers with nonylphenol contamination

A new report by Toxics Link , an Indian environmental research and advocacy organisation based in New Delhi, in collaboration with the Environmental Defense Fund , a global non-profit headquartered in New York, has raised the alarm that Sabarmati is one of five rivers across India found to contain unacceptable levels of nonylphenol (NP), a chemical linked to "exposure to carcinogenic outcomes, including prostate cancer in men and breast cancer in women."

Dalit rights and political tensions: Why is Mevani at odds with Congress leadership?

While I have known Jignesh Mevani, one of the dozen-odd Congress MLAs from Gujarat, ever since my Gandhinagar days—when he was a young activist aligned with well-known human rights lawyer Mukul Sinha’s organisation, Jan Sangharsh Manch—he became famous following the July 2016 Una Dalit atrocity, in which seven members of a family were brutally assaulted by self-proclaimed cow vigilantes while skinning a dead cow, a traditional occupation among Dalits.

Tracking a lost link: Soviet-era legacy of Gujarati translator Atul Sawani

The other day, I received a message from a well-known activist, Raju Dipti, who runs an NGO called Jeevan Teerth in Koba village, near Gujarat’s capital, Gandhinagar. He was seeking the contact information of Atul Sawani, a translator of Russian books—mainly political and economic—into Gujarati for Progress Publishers during the Soviet era. He wanted to collect and hand over scanned soft copies, or if possible, hard copies, of Soviet books translated into Gujarati to Arvind Gupta, who currently lives in Pune and is undertaking the herculean task of collecting and making public soft copies of Soviet books that are no longer available in the market, both in English and Indian languages.

Boeing 787 under scrutiny again after Ahmedabad crash: Whistleblower warnings resurface

A heart-wrenching tragedy has taken place in Ahmedabad. As widely reported, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner plane crashed shortly after taking off from the city’s airport, currently operated by India’s top tycoon, Gautam Adani. The aircraft was carrying 230 passengers and 12 crew members. As expected, the crash has led to an outpouring of grief across the country. At the same time, there have been demands for the resignation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, and Civil Aviation Minister Venkaiah Naidu. The most striking comment came from BJP MP Subramanian Swamy, who stated : "When a train derailed in the 1950s, Lal Bahadur Shastri resigned. On the same morality, I demand PM Modi, HM Amit Shah, and Civil Aviation Minister Naidu resign so that a free and fair inquiry can be held. All that Modi and his associates have been doing so far is gallivanting, which must stop." Amidst widespread mourning, some fringe elements sought to communalize the tragedy. One post ...

Revisiting Gijubhai: Pioneer of child-centric education and the caste debate

It was Krishna Kumar, the well-known educationist, who I believe first introduced me to the name — Gijubhai Badheka (1885–1939). Hailing from Bhavnagar, known as the cultural capital of the Saurashtra region of Gujarat, Gijubhai, Kumar told me during my student days, made significant contributions to the field of pedagogy — something that hasn't received much attention from India's education mandarins. At that time, Kumar was my tutorial teacher at Kirorimal College, Delhi University.

Search This Blog