“Ya tho jack ho, ya cheque ho...” (Roy and Dey, 2002: 79). This is a phrase that is used commonly amongst the rural poor in Rajasthan. Loosely translated, it means that to achieve anything beyond the usual pale, one must have either connections (someone to push you up, much like a vehicle is ‘jacked’ up) or money. It is a pithy insight which speaks volumes about the ways in which power is exercised and experienced in rural Rajasthan.
I discovered a striking resonance with this statement in a radically different setting. Sitting across a large and imposing table (strangely devoid of any files or papers) in the office of the Director General of Police of one of the largest provinces of India, I described my research to him and his deputy. After having patiently heard a long-winded description of my interest in examining how and why ‘progressive’ legislations such as the RTI Act are made, the deputy, a tad wearily, remarked, “You know, there are two principles that make the world what it is. Might is right, and blood is thicker than water. Everything flows from a combination of these.”54 Clearly, his conception of the ‘world’ included decision-making in government, the role of different actors in the process, as well as larger questions around the practice of democracy.
In essence, the deputy chief of police and the rural Rajasthani propose a similar world view. Strength flows from the possession of material resources, even as social links, networks and kinship are essential to access varied degrees and manifestations of power. Both, independently and in tandem, constitute what could be termed as the foundational
58 characteristics of power - the power to make policy decisions on the one hand, as well as the ability to obtain, for example, a certificate proving one’s poverty on the other. Coming as they do from experiences that are rather distant from each other on the social spectrum - one from a senior functionary of the most obvious manifestation of the power of the state, the other from a humble peasant - the conflation of ideas is rather striking.
Tantalisingly attractive in its simplicity and applicability as this ‘grand theory’ may be, I will not essentialise the argument of this thesis to it. However, what I will do at this stage is to provide details of the methodology and process that framed this research, the experience of which overlaps significantly with the worldview propounded above. In this chapter, I will carry out a reflexive analysis of the data collection process, and propose that the experience of the research process itself provides important insights when attempting to gain a more sophisticated understanding of the processes that led to the enactment of the RTI Act in India in 2005. The chapter will also raise some questions about the nature and theory of method in social science research, particularly of the inter-disciplinary kind. It is for these reasons that an exposition of the methodology and process of this research is being presented here.
I am aware that dwelling on a first person account of the research process that constitutes this thesis can be fraught with risks. The primary danger is the shifting of focus, if temporarily, from the research to the researcher. Second, in describing details of the individual, personal experience of the process, some amount of sheen is ostensibly taken away from the much vaunted and desired ‘objectivity’ of the process. Identifying and locating the researcher in the research process could also result in a significant reduction of the distance between the observer and the phenomenon being observed.
59 However, when studying any individual, group or process, locating the point of observation can be critical in that where one looks from defines what one sees. When the specificity of the researcher’s perspective is clearly identified at the outset, the ensuing research makes a greater claim to a ‘truth’ - by expressly focusing attention on the limitations of any intellectual exercise that claims to establish the ‘truth’. Thus the exercise of identifying the researcher’s position in the research process performs at least two important functions. First, it provides a caveat to the research by identifying the unique contours of the perspective that intrinsically informs the research. Second, it reaffirms the philosophical limitation of any research of this kind - that absolute objectivity and neutrality can only exist in the Platonic realm. In the case of this thesis, as we will see, it also performs a third function - that of providing critical theoretical insights that this thesis will continue to engage with throughout the succeeding chapters.
As an embarkation point for such a reflexive analysis, my motivation to conduct this research is articulated below.
Research on the RTI Act: Not Only an Intellectual Curiosity
On 13 September 2010, the fifth national RTI convention was held in New Delhi. Organised by the Central Information Commission of the Government of India, the theme of the convention was “RTI: Challenges and Opportunities”. This annual convention aims to bring together Information Commissioners, as well as NGO representatives, activists, researchers, academics, and the media from across the country to debate and discuss various aspects
60 related to the RTI Act.55 It is the largest and most high-profile RTI-related public event regularly organised by the government.
The keynote address at this convention was given by Gopal Krishna Gandhi, who was until recently the Governor of the state of West Bengal.56 He is a former Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer,57 and a batchmate58 of both Aruna Roy59 and Wajahat Habibullah, the first Chief Information Commissioner (now the Chairperson of the National Commission for Minorities) of the Government of India. Gandhi served as India’s ambassador to several countries, an oddity for an officer belonging to the IAS. He is also an alumnus of St. Stephen’s College, which is affiliated to Delhi University.60 In the event that such a ‘pedigree’ was to be considered insufficient, he is also the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi on his paternal side, and of C. Rajagopalachari on his mother’s.61 In his address he said, “RTI mein ek bare aandolan kii fateh hui hai. Aur uskaa shreya sabse pahle jaataa hai Aruna Roy ko, jinhone Rajasthan mein RTI kii zaruurat mahsuus karii aur phir uske liye aandolan
55 Information Commissioners are the final appellate authority for matters related to the RTI Act. They exist at
two parallel levels - at the state government level and the central government level with jurisdictions defined along the line ministries and departments at those levels.
56 The Governor’s position in a state is akin to the post of the President of the republic at the central government
level. It is largely ceremonial, although instances of an incumbent recommending the dissolution of a state legislative assembly to impose direct rule by the Centre have occurred on numerous occasions in the past.
57 Tracing its genesis to the colonial Indian Civil Service, the IAS is the elite higher civil service of India. A
detailed analysis of the IAS, the cultural and political implications of being in that service, and the impact this had on the process of the enactment of the RTI Act is provided in Chapters 4 and 5.
58 The notion of a ‘batchmate’ is a critical one in IAS circles. In point of fact, it means that batchmates join the
service in the same year and therefore spend a year together in training at the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration (LBSNAA) in Mussoorie. It also suggests close associations and deep knowledge of each others’ personal and professional histories. At the same time, there is also a relatively higher element of competition amongst batchmates as the number of years in service forms an important element in getting promoted in the service. Thus tremendous support arising from close associations, as well as a high degree of competitiveness, are both part of this complex relationship.
59 Aruna Roy has been widely credited as one of the main forces behind the enactment of the RTI Act. The role
of the commonly accepted leadership of the ‘movement’ is examined in detail in Chapters 3 and 4.
60 St. Stephen’s College is the preferred institution of higher education in the liberal arts amongst a specific elite,
most notably senior civil servant families.
61 C. Rajagopalachari was a hugely respected leader of the Indian National Congress and through that the
freedom movement, and was the last Governor General of India before the country became a republic in 1950. He hailed from the southern state of Tamil Nadu, which, interestingly, was the state cadre allotted to Gopal Krishna Gandhi while he was in the IAS. Adding to this heady mix, one should also point out that Aruna Roy is Tamil by lineage.
61
shuruu kiyaa, aur uske liye logon kaa samarthan praapt kiyaa (In the context of the RTI, it is the victory of a movement. The credit for this goes primarily to Aruna Roy, who felt the need for the RTI in Rajasthan and started a movement for it, and gained the support of the people for it.)”.62
For anyone attempting to investigate or enter the RTI space in India, it is impossible to not countenance certain names. As mentioned by the speaker above, and in line with the well- established mainstream narrative of the evolution of the RTI Act, Aruna Roy is considered to be one of the main forces behind its enactment, representing the leadership of the grassroots- based activist aspect of the ‘RTI movement’. The urbane, intellectual and research-oriented leadership of the ‘movement’ is located mainly in the person of Shekhar Singh. In a profile of the ‘RTI movement’, The Guardian newspaper described him thus: “He opens a bottle of Australian wine and sinks back into the sofa, just below a poster of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers in a Vase. Shekhar Singh is a bearded philosopher with a deep voice... [He] is something of an emblem and a great help in understanding the current upheaval in Indian society. A retired university teacher, he is a typical committed intellectual, campaigning for a wide range of causes, tirelessly attending forums. He is the kind of awareness-raiser Indian universities excel at producing, to the despair of political and business leaders, driven crazy by hordes of hair-splitters.”63 For any journalist or researcher (Delhi-based or visiting), Singh is often the first point of contact for anyone with an interest in the RTI Act. Singh and Roy were both founder-members of the National Campaign for People’s Right to Information (NCPRI), an umbrella coalition that came into being in 1996 to advocate for an RTI Act.
62 See http://www.cic.gov.in/convention-2010/Speeches/GKGandhi.pdf. Accessed 22 January 2011. 63 From “Indian campaigners gain ‘right to know’”, The Guardian newspaper, 11 December 2009.
62 My own interest in the RTI Act in India stemmed from following the work of both these individuals over a period of time. However, this interest did not arise only from an intellectual curiosity in their work. An important constitutive element of this interest was the fact that I share a social and cultural space with them.64Aruna Roy, who is now well- established in the national imagination as one of the preeminent individuals who spearheaded the demand for the RTI Act, was a former colleague of my father. My father had joined the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) in 1966, while Roy joined the same two years later, only to resign after some years to pursue her work at the grassroots. Both of them belonged to what is now called the Arunachal Pradesh, Goa, Mizoram and Union Territories (AGMU) cadre of the IAS.65
In its most simple manifestation, the cadre-system allows the professional proximity of IAS officers within the same cadre to be much greater than with those belonging to other state cadres. This proximity also extends to the personal and social, as the recruitment and training process is designed to develop an esprit de corps that also results in IAS officers socialising with each other to a great extent. Other structured activities also take place regularly that deepen the personal links between the officers and their families. For example, bodies such as the ‘IAS Wives’ Association’ organise social events on a regular basis in a given city, especially state capitals where the number of officers present are larger.66 The head of the bureaucracy of a state typically hosts social events on a regular basis where officers and their families are invited. These regular social interactions also mean that most officers know each
64 Given that this sharing of space also exists with several other key actors, the ensuing discussion may well be
extended to them in varying forms and degrees.
65 All entrants to the elite civil service, the IAS, are assigned state cadres where they are expected to serve for
much of their careers, especially in early years in the ‘field’. Higher level civil servants who serve at the central government are drawn from various state cadres of the IAS. Thus, there is no dedicated higher civil service cadre that exclusively serves the central government.
66 Even as the nomenclature of this association can be problematic given that several IAS officers are women, it
63 others’ families well. The family links also tend to continue into the next generation as children of such officers are typically enrolled in the same schools.67 In sum, the density of social interaction within the higher civil service, particularly in-cadre, is quite high.68
Aruna Roy’s work in rural Rajasthan with the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS), an organisation she co-founded in 1990, was thus not merely a matter of academic curiosity for me, but also stemmed from my interest in the work of someone with whom a social and cultural space was shared. This interest also included an admiration (and oftentimes provided inspiration) for someone who was doing the kind of development work that ‘really mattered’ - in the grassroots, living in a rural area, having ‘sacrificed’ what would otherwise have been a privileged and powerful professional career as a bureaucrat - much in the Gandhian tradition.69 While intimate family links did not exist, this social overlap was reaffirmed in occasional social meetings and serendipitous encounters in public spaces that were commonly frequented. I would occasionally be in touch with her directly, updating her about my work and evolution first as a documentary filmmaker, and then as a functionary of an international development organisation, even as I followed the work of the MKSS in Rajasthan from a distance. Occasionally, we also met, not only in Delhi (my hometown, and also where Aruna Roy has a base), but also abroad, when we happened to overlap. Direct contact was thus irregular, but news of important events and movements would be shared through mutual friends, and the occasional email or meeting.
67 An amusing anecdote provides a succinct comment on these relationships. The Sanskriti School was set up in
New Delhi by the Civil Services Society in 1998 primarily for the children of officers belonging to the higher civil and defence services. The Chairperson of the school is the spouse of the Cabinet Secretary, the head of the civil service in the country. The anecdote suggests that when two students meet for the first time, their conversation begins with the question, “Which batch?”, referring of course, to the batch of their parent(s)!
68 This is only a very brief background of the social world of the IAS. A detailed description and analysis of the
changes that have taken place in this context over the last several decades and its impact on the process leading to the enactment of the RTI Act is provided in Chapter 5.
64 Although I had known about Shekhar Singh’s involvement with the RTI movement, I did not know him directly when I commenced my research. However, I knew that his father had been a civil servant belonging to the IAS, and my father had served under him several decades ago. His family history thus formed a part of my peripheral knowledge embedded within the context of the ‘IAS network’. When I met him for the first time at his residence in Delhi in preparation for my fieldwork, these links were quickly established. Early on in the conversation, the fact that I had met him as a child when he had visited a remote part of India where my father had then been serving and hosted him was recounted.
As my ruminations to conduct research into the RTI Act became more concrete, the attractiveness of the subject was informed by several factors. The first was a deeply felt sense of excitement and anticipation arising from the nature of the legislation itself. Breathless media reports aside, the very notion that ordinary citizens could potentially hold the all- powerful state to account in so direct and quotidian a manner appealed deeply to the left- liberal sensibility that one had (typically and predictably) found refuge in. The second factor was that the established leadership of this seemingly momentous national achievement lay in the hands of individuals who were not distant names in newspapers, but were people one had met and interacted with directly, and who inhabited one’s immediate social sphere (if a generation removed). This sense of proximity was attractive not just in an abstract sense. Brought down to the practical plane, this had implications on the levels of access one could possibly gain with ‘those that mattered’ in the ‘RTI world’, along with the candour one could presume would be forthcoming as a result of our shared social and political worldviews. In addition, given that the RTI Act was located in the context of government functioning, access to relevant government officials would also not be difficult through my family links with the senior bureaucracy, some of whom had been directly involved in the process that led to the
65 enactment of the RTI Act. ‘Studying up’ and gaining an authentic and objective ‘insider’s’ view at the ways in which social policies are drafted appeared to be a distinct possibility in