Blog Post Year: 2010

CHRI: Preliminary Comments on the Draft RTI Amendments

The Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), the nodal agency for the implementation of the RTI Act has proposed a series of amendments to the RTI  (Regulation of fee and cost) Rules 2005 and the Central Information Commission (Appeal Procedure) Rules, 2005. Specifically, the amendments seek to restrict the number of words that an applicant can use while filing an information request under the RTI Act 2005.In addition, to curbing the word limit, the new rules also seek to restrict the questions filed under the RTI to one subject matter. DoPT invited citizens and organisations to send in their comments on the draft rules by 27th December 2010. The Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative has drafted preliminary comments on the amendments and submitted these to the government for consideration (see attached).

Specifically, CHRI recommends the following:

  • Extending the timeline for public consultation on the draft Rules by at least one more month to enable effective participation of citizens who are not Internet‐literate;
  • Publicising the text of the draft Rules in popular English and regional language dailies along with an explanation as to why changes are being made in the existing set of RTI Rules;
  • Publicising the consultation exercise through radio and TV channels to reach out to a wider cross‐section of the citizenry;
  • Issuing an assurance publicly that the number and types of objections received in relation to every draft Rule/sub‐Rule and cogent reasons for rejecting any of them will be published along with the notification of the final version of the Rules;
  • Acting upon the said assurance with due diligence at the time of notifying the final version of the draft Rules; and
  • The draft Rules applicable for the second appeal process may be made applicable to complaints as well.

For a detailed account of CHRI’s recommendations to the government, click on the document attached with this blog post.

Transparency in Legislative Processes

Mandakini Devasher

Every year the Parliament considers and debates a large number of draft bills. Whether it is the Civil Nuclear Liability Bill, the Whistleblowers Bill, the Judicial Standards and Accountability Bill or the UIDAI Bill, these draft laws have major policy implications. However, information about these bills is usually acquired by media and civil society groups post-facto – giving very little time for groups to study their contents and respond. While some Ministries have become quite good at putting up draft bills on their websites and inviting public comments, this is not an established or mandatory practice. In most cases the work of acquiring and disseminating information on draft laws and bills has been taken up by civil society groups such as PRS Legislative Research. The lack of transparency and public scrutiny in the drafting of bills has in recent times been a subject of intense criticism particularly over major bills such as the Civil Nuclear Liability Bill. At the height of the controversy over the nuclear bill, journalist, Siddhartha Varadharajan criticised the government for trying to push through a “complex legislation with the potential to affect the lives of tens of millions of people” with “stealth, subterfuge and the barest minimum of consultation”.

In many countries, pre-legislative scrutiny is an established process through which citizens are encouraged to give their comments and feedback on proposed legislation. In the UK, new pieces of legislation are often published a whole session before their intended introduction and passage. Draft Bills are normally examined by a joint-committee of MPs who invite comments from individuals and organisations. In India, the debate on pre-legislative scrutiny is slowly gathering speed. At a recent meeting organised by the National Campaign for People’s Right to Information (NCPRI) and Inclusive Media for Change (IM4C), the need for greater citizen engagement and oversight in the process of drafting legislation was centre stage. The meeting brought together civil society organisations such as Satark Nagarik Sangathan, CHRI, JOSH, Pardarshita, Association for Democratic Reforms etc along with noted activists such as Aruna Roy, Nikhil Dey, Shekhar Singh, Usha Ramanathan, Vrinda Grover, Maja Daruwala and others. Participants agreed on the need for establishing a robust mechanism for pre-legislative consultation and discussed different ways and means by which this could be achieved. Some of the major themes that emerged from the meeting were as follows:

  • Exploring existing mechanisms and spaces for people’s participation in legislative processes was highlighted as a key first step. In this regard, Section 4(1)(d) of the RTI Act  – which mandates public authorities to disclose all relevant facts when formulating policies  – was discussed as a good starting point.
  • In addition to spaces for consultation participants also discussed the necessity of procedures for mandatory debate and discussions on inputs received from the public.
  • The need for greater focus and attention on subsidiary legislation and the framing of rules at the state level was also discussed. Participants spoke of the fact that in many states,  governments often frame rules are which are contrary to the spirit and intent of laws. The high application fees charged by many states under the RTI Act is a clear example of how state rules can often subvert a progressive law.
  • Participants also voiced the need for striking a balance between widespread public consultation and parliamentary and executive privilege.
  • The need to engage with MPs and MLAs, proactively sharing information with them and strengthening their research capacity and support was highlighted as another area for action.

In terms of taking the debate further it was suggested that civil society action could be oriented around three broad areas:

  • Improving existing rules and procedures: Bringing in amendments to government rules and procedures that restrict pre-legislative scrutiny such as the Parliamentary Rules of Business, Cabinet procedures etc.
  • Strengthening Section 4 of the RTI Act 2005 and ensuring effective implementation of  Section 4(1)(d) of the RTI by public authorities at all levels of government.
  • Potentially drafting a separate law mandating pre-legislative consultation and bringing together provisions under existing laws and rules.

For more information about the meeting and the move towards greater pre-legislative scrutiny read the NCPRI-IM4C press release and approach paper attached with this post.

Mandakini Devasher is a Research Analyst with the Accountability Initiative.

Has RTE Made a Mistake by Eliminating Contract Teachers and Making All Teachers Regular?


The extensive use of contract or para teachers in government primary schools is regarded as one of the most important policy innovation in the education sector in developing countries. But this policy has been highly controversial, with both supporters and opponents arguing their sides eloquently. Indian policy-makers seem to have taken the side of the opponents, as indicated by the provisions of the recently implemented ‘Right to Education’ Act. The RTE categorically states that there would be no contract teachers in the schools. All teachers would be regular teachers.

Before taking any sides, it would be nice to look at the empirical evidence. Unfortunately, there is hardly any rigorous work in the Indian context. But the two papers- ‘The Relative Effectiveness and Costs of Contract and Regular Teachers in India’ by Paul Atherton and Geeta Kingdon, and ‘Contract Teachers: Experimental Evidence from India’, by Karthik Muralidharan and Venkatesh Sundararaman, analyzing the effect of contract teachers on learning outcomes, which were presented at the 6th Annual Conference on Economic Growth & Development (Dec. 16- 18, 2010), Indian Statistical Institute, Delhi, fill this gap.

These papers provide a strong and rigorous evidence of the huge positive impacts of contract teachers on student achievements. Both papers rely on different methods (non-experimental vs. experimental), and their underlying data comes from different states (UP- Bihar in case of the first, and Andhra in case of the second), which also suggests that the effects are likely to be very robust.

Empirical Challenges:

We are interested in figuring out the effect of contract teachers on student learning outcomes. So a simple regression would be

Y = β0 + β1.Contract Teacher + Ω.Other Controls + µ

But the coefficient β1 in the above setting is likely to be severely biased. The reason is that assignment of contract teachers to schools is likely to be correlated with the characteristics of the school. For example, the contract teachers may be assigned to the schools in remote areas. In that case, the dummy of contract teachers is picking up the effect of being a remote school as well. And there is no way we can figure out the size of that effect. We can merely guess its sign. Similarly, even within a school, the assignment of contract teachers to the kids may be non-random. For example,contract teachers may be assigned to weaker (or stronger) students. Then the dummy is picking up the effect of teaching to a particular type of students. In short, the ordinary least squares regression is not really useful in describing a causal relation between contract teachers and learning outcomes.

The above problem can be solved by either randomly assigning contract teachers to schools (as done by Muralidharan & Sundararaman) or controlling for unobserved school characteristics which are correlated with assignment of contract teachers and learning outcomes, by using school fixed effects (as done by Atherton & Kingdon).

Results:

I will merely discuss the result without going into the details of the dataset, the regression equations or the size and significance of the coefficients.

The results point in the same direction- Contract teachers are more effective than regular teachers. The evidence also indicates that the effect of contract teachers remains even after a reduction in the class size (and in the pupil-teacher ratio) due to addition of a teacher. Further, relatively disadvantaged students, and those who are in lower grades (such as grade 1, 2) are the ones who benefit more from contract teachers.

Why?

Why do contract teachers perform so much better than the regular teacher? A plausible reason would be the nature of their contracts- the contracts are annually renewable. Further, the contract teachers are hired locally. Thus, they belong to the same community, society, and thereby face strong accountability pressures. Further, being local implies the ‘social distance’ between the teacher and the student is also lesser.

Policy Implication:

The combination of low costs, superior performance measures than regular teachers on attendance and teaching activity, and higher positive impact on student learning indicates that the use of contract teachers could be a very cost-effective way of improving primary education outcomes in the developing countries. But it is not as straightforward as it seems. One can not rule out the possibility that once in large numbers, the contract teachers might demand permanent jobs and would be so granted just before the elections (as happened in Himachal Pradesh, the first state to recruit contract teachers). Then in the long term, there may not be any cost-effectiveness of contract teachers.

Nevertheless, the above evidence clearly indicates that one needs to seriously think about the recruitment, contractual terms and remuneration of teachers in the government schools. And this applies not just to teachers but to all government services.

Muralidharan and Sundararaman suggests one possible course of action- to hire all new teachers as contract teachers at the school level, and create a system to measure their performance over a period of time (six to eight years for example) that would include inputs from parents, senior teachers, and measures of value addition using independent data on student performance. These measures of performance could be used in the contract-renewal decision at the end of each fixed-term contract (or to pay bonuses), and consistently high-performing contract teachers could be promoted to regular civil service rank at the end of a fixed period of time. Continuous training and professional development could be a natural component of this career progression, and integrating contract and regular teachers into a career path should help to address most of the concerns above, including the political economy ones.

Ambrish Dongre is Senior Researcher with the Accountability Initiative.

PAISA Track – The Curious Case of Missing Passbooks in Madhya Pradesh

Under AI’s flagship project, PAISA a pilot survey tracking expenditures at the school level was launched from 4th – 9th December in Sagar district of Madhya Pradesh. Over a two day period, over 20 surveyors covered 40 schools seeking information from headmasters on the grants received under the Sarva Shikha Abhiyan and the expenditure incurred over the last two financial years.The findings of the survey were quite interesting. In many cases, surveyors were unable to access grant related information because headmasters were not in possession of their passbooks. This was surprising given that these are public documents and should be available in the schools themselves. In the attached article, Swapna Ramteke a PAISA Associate with the Accountability Initiative shares some of the experiences of the survey and the curious case of the missing passbooks! The article is in Hindi.

 

PAISA Track – Field Notes from Jaipur


I’m trying to find a story, but it’s in vain because here there is no such thing. There is no mega narrative, no such concern that seems to encapsulate life or the imagination of its people. If at all there is but a murmur of a machinery grinding slowly, faltering here and again, but nevertheless asserting its monotonous rhythm. I’m sitting in a training centre located 30 kms from Jaipur city, barely 500 meters from the highway. The training is a prelude to the PAISA survey – tracking expenditures under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan – that we will be undertaking in Jaipur. On the right of me as far as I can see are fields and what appears to be promises of tomorrow – nascent urban centers. They seem misplaced, almost as if they have been thrust into a space, which insidiously rejects them. Behind the training centre are more fields, here and there womankind makes jagged appearances, houses crop up in no discernible order.

In such a setting the only thing that captures the imagination is the setting itself, but slowly the stories tumble forth. Women hired as health workers, ASHA are being trained in a nearby room. At tea I begin a conversation with a couple of them. Their story is similar to the ones of so many others consecrated in acronyms but made to perform a service more taxing then the measly allowance they are paid. They are rancorous, claiming they cannot continue, Rs 200 per delivery is pittance, unjust and extractive. I’m forced to agree the cost of the position is more than the compensation. Concerned with their plight but aware of my own limitation I offer them the only solace I can – some namkeen, which they reject.

Act two, for our mock pilot we visit a nearby senior secondary school. As expected we reach early, and spend the first ten minutes watching the children cleaning their school, waiting for the Head Master (HM) to arrive. He finally does, and I am elated. We walk into the school once more and the HM invites us in. The volunteers take their places and I proceed to let them introduce themselves. They give him the letter of permission and he scans it and looks back at us awaiting what can only be a further explanation. They falter, but somehow manage and he appears convinced. The survey begins. The HM answers the first few questions with ease and I think it is going to be a breeze. Not quite, soon he drifts and we switch sections trying to keep up with the names of grants he begins to rattle off. The volunteers’ lose their way and I attempt to bring them back on track. I ask him the year in which he received the grant and he explains that it is for the last financial year. I’m relieved, and by now the volunteers also find their bearings. They take down the list of grants this time, but soon we realize that despite all his organization the HM is thoroughly confused. It is not his fault; the poor man cannot locate the passbook of the school account which makes it hard for him to tell us the amount that was deposited in school’s account and how much was withdrawn under each head. He nevertheless doesn’t share our lack of enthusiasm and continues, never faltering in losing the thread of his previous thought. Despite this all we manage to piece together the required information.

The oft-repeated story is recounted once again. We determine that the school received its share of grants in the last quarter of the financial year giving the HM very little time to incur expenditure. Consequently, most of the expenditure was incurred in the current financial year. The grants for this year were disbursed like the previous year in the month of November but until now the expenditure has not been incurred under any of the heads. One reason for this has been that the HM was not aware of the time when the grants were debited to the school account. Apart from the financial difficulties, the cropping up of a multitude of private schools it appears has had an impact on enrollment and retention. There were a total of 72 children from classes 1-8 with one child in class 4! Advantage – Neo liberals.

Act three, we visit a nearby KGBV, another acronym,  the love between bureaucrats and acronyms runs deep; the use of acronyms allows them to add however many names to a title, appeasing the leaders of today and those who have lost their relevance with the passage of time. KGBV’s or Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalays are schools set up to encourage girls’ education, especially of those girls who cannot afford to travel long distances to attend schools. As such then, hostel facilities are also provided in each of these schools. Upon entering the gates we encounter a group of girls playing what I can only understand could be gulli danda. I’m struck how the term doesn’t seem to be too far from what it encapsulates, maybe the powers that be can take a lesson. Once we enter however the game abruptly ends, the girls crowd around us, greeting us but maintaining their distance, sporting their shy grins and hiding their faces every time one of us attempts to make eye contact. They invite us in, and we ceremoniously accept. This always strikes me about village life, if you look like an outsider, people always invite you in and then ask you where it is you are from. Credibility is rarely established on the threshold.

Once in the hostel we are struck by its very structure, it is likened to a large house with two floors and a spacious courtyard. The girls giggle all the while, they seem to be as amazed with us. Unconcerned with their giggles, we ask for their permission and begin our investigation. We visit each of the rooms, which the girls proudly showcase. They are large enough and the accommodation seems to adhere to standards, the toilets are reasonably clean like the kitchen which is also well stocked. Pleased with the state of affairs we chat a bit with the girls, humoring them and asking them a string of general knowledge questions. The girls respond animatedly, some of them shirking off their initial reticence. The games and questions carry on for another fifteen minutes and then with the first hint of dusk we scramble to leave. We bid them goodbye and take what now a symbolizes memory- a group picture. After urging them once again to study hard we finally bid them adieu.

I’m sitting in the training centre again, where time is somehow slower, staring at a curtain trying to establish if it truly is ghastly- they have a term for this cloth now which I’m forgetting, perry cotton or something to the effect- wondering if tomorrow the machine will creak as much.

Gayatri Sahgal is a Research Analyst with the Accountability Initiative.

Word Limit on RTI Requests? Government proposes amendments

The Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), the nodal agency for the implementation of the RTI Act has proposed a series of amendments to the RTI (regulation of fee and cost) Rules 2005 and the Central Information Commission (Appeal Procedure) Rules, 2005. Specifically, the amendments seek to restrict the number of words that an applicant can use while filing an information request under the RTI Act 2005. The word limit has been posted at 250. In addition, to curbing the word limit, the new rules also seek to restrict the questions filed under an RTI to one subject. The DoPT has circulated the draft amendments for comments and individuals can write in to usrti-dovt@nic.in by December 27, 2010. RTI activists have strongly protested the proposed amendments which if implemented would severely curb and restrict citizens access to information under the RTI Act. Activists believe that the restriction of the word count would pose a major problem to illiterate and vulnerable groups for whom the RTI has proved to a be very useful tool and have pointed to the danger of the arbitrary rejection of applications based on the word limit. Most recently, the National Advisory Council has come out against the amendments terming them “ultra vries”. The NAC working group on transparency, accountability and governance has rejected the proposed amendments and has passed a resolution stating that “All amendments to RTI rules must be based on extensive public consultations. Where public objections or suggestions are ignored, reasons must be made public, in accordance with letter and spirit of Section 4(1)(d) of the RTI Act.”

CIPE partners focus on combating corruption around the world

The Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE) strengthens democracy around the globe through private enterprise and market-oriented reform. CIPE is one of the four core institutes of the National Endowment for Democracy. Since 1983, CIPE has worked with business leaders, policymakers, and journalists to build the civic institutions vital to a democratic society. CIPE’s key program areas include anti-corruption, advocacy, business associations, corporate governance, democratic governance, access to information, the informal sector and property rights, and women and youth.

CIPE’s most recent quarterly newsletter, the OverseasREPORT, highlights CIPE partners’ numerous anti-corruption efforts around the world. Combating corruption is not simply about prosecuting the biggest offenders; it is also about changing the local day-to-day mindset. CIPE partners in Russia, Egypt, and Yemen – among other places – strive daily to reduce corruption, increase transparency, and level the playing field for everyone. Click here for more information.

PAISA Track: Taking PAISA to parents- learnings from Andhra Pradesh

PAISA in Andhra Pradesh (AP) is being implemented with a slight twist – one which has taught us a lot! The district administration (read district collector) of Hyderabad city has in the last few months expressed a strong interest in strengthening school management committees (SMC) as mandated under the Right to Education Act. Hyderabad is one of the few districts in the country where any serious effort is being made to implement this provision of the RTE. To facilitate this process, the collector connected with our PAISA partner ASER/ Pratham.  Naturally, given PAISA’s own interest in this area, we got involved. The first step was to quite simply get the meetings started. One community mobilizer was assigned to 12 schools (12 SMCs) and tasked with encouraging parents to attend meetings and to facilitate discussions at these meetings. This direct engagement saw some quick results. Parents began to show up – the numbers rose from 5 to 10 to 15 and after a point the numbers were large enough even for the local municipal councilors to show up at the meetings. The meetings tended largely to focus on issues around drop outs, teacher student interaction with the councilors and sundry government officials giving lectures.  Our biggest learning from this exercise was that given the right kind of input, parents are interested in engaging with the school and intensive mobilization, therefore does yield results.

Four months in to this exercise, the Hyderabad team began to wonder what next. That meetings were taking place was an important first step but for them to sustain, the meetings needed to have a concrete agenda and a concrete output.

The RTE mandates that all schools prepare an annual school development plan. And so we decided to extend the PAISA tool to the SMC’s to get them to start the planning process. The Hyderabad collector seemed enthused by the idea. In fact he was facing a related problem – the schools had been reporting a lot of underutilization (monies not being spent) and he thought this could be an opportunity to try and get the schools energized to spend. And so he did what he knew best – issued a series of orders mandating that all SMC meetings in December discuss school level funds (using formats that we developed) and make a plan to spend the unutilized money. We were excited (or at any rate I was excited). I thought that the orders would be our weapon to get this moving. So we teamed up the SMC mobilizers with our PAISA surveyors to go out and collect data on school funds to understand the state of the problem themselves. At the same time, we also prepared formats that required the school officials to share information on funds at the meetings and develop an action plan. To implement this, we organized the first round of PAISA trainings last week.

Post the training we did a small pilot in a school in Santosh Nagar, Hyderabad. The Pratham and PAISA teams arrived at the meeting armed with their formats and the government orders. But once the conversation began things started falling apart. The officials, particularly the Head Masters were simply not interested in the proceedings – they had to be there because of the government orders but they really didn’t see the need to engage the parents, most of whom for them were not aware of how to do complex administrative tasks like make plans. And as for me – they looked at me as though I was from Mars! The meeting didn’t lead to much but it left me convinced that if such interactions were to take place effectively, a lot can change. Here is an example – the parents complained that the biggest problem in the school was that the toilets were dirty and kids ended up coming home half way through school. The school claimed that they had a cleaner whom they paid Rs. 1,000 a month to but who came only twice a week. For a school with 750 kids enrolled, this was obviously not enough. So we asked the parents if they could find a solution – and they did. One parent volunteered to identify a sweeper that would come everyday to the school for that price. Immediate action!

The problem however is that the frontline officials remain unconvinced. And this is why we don’t see effective change on the ground. On paper, India looks like the most participatory democracy in the world. Scheme after scheme, government order after order mandate that people –whether through organized community groups or other means – must make plans and audit programs. The reality of course, is completely different. A good administrator will pass a progressive order but she will never spend time motivating her team to implement the order. This is exactly what is happening in Hyderabad. The  collector seems to believe that his problems will be solved if his team implements his orders. But he doesn’t see the need to work with his team convincing them of his mission and carrying them with him. For me the greatest learning from Hyderabad PAISA is that change can only come if the foot soldiers, those on the frontlines are convinced of the  need to for change and motivated to implement it.

Public and Secret Funds

An executive order passed by a federal secretary supersedes the collective will of the country`s parliamentarians. Shocking as this may sound, the observation is based on evidence. Invisible bureaucrats that lurk behind politicians decide how our resources are to be put to use.Politicians complain about the unbridled power wielded by bureaucrats but have done little effectively to reduce these powers. Consider, for example, the following tale that unfolded when I submitted a request for information in the context of the Special Publicity Fund, under which the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting spends over Rs20m every year.

I asked for certified copies of the strategy and advertisement plans to spend under the Special Publicity Fund from Oct 1, 2002 to March 20, 2008, in addition to certified information about the names and addresses of the media houses, public relations firms, consultants or journalists that received funds under this head during this period. Further, I requested certified copies of the contracts under which the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting had released funds from the Special Publicity Fund to such recipients during the same period.

The ministry did not provide the information within the 21 days stipulated by the Freedom of Information Ordinance 2002. Consequently, a complaint about the ministry`s failure was lodged with the federal ombudsman`s office and on Sept 29, 2008, it directed the ministry to submit a report.Nearly a month later, on Oct 24, 2008, the ministry replied that the Special Publicity Fund is similar to the secret fund provided to any government organisation, as are allocations made under the head of `A03914 — Secret Services Expenditure`.

Furthermore, the ministry maintained, the Special Publicity Fund is “strictly utilised in accordance with the rules and regulations governing the Secret Services Expenditure issued by the Financial Division from time to time”. An analysis of the budget books revealed that the Special Publicity Fund was included in the `Others` category in the 2008-09 budget. Other allocations in this category were to the Pakistan Institute of National Affairs, Internews, the Institute of Regional Studies and News Network International.

When this issue was raised with the ministry, it responded that the fund had been declared `secret` by the Finance Division through a letter dated April 29, 1976. Yet when access to it was sought, the ministry said that the letter was not available with it. The federal ombudsman determined that the allocation for Secret Service Expenditure had the ID 1358 while the Special Publicity Fund had the ID 1357. Furthermore, it determined that on the New Item Statement for the Special Publicity Fund the entry against ID1357 had been titled `Secret Service Expenditure`. Here the plot started to really thicken.

Through the federal ombudsman`s office, we demanded that details pertaining to the utilisation of the Special Publicity Fund be provided to us. But the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting did not provide the letter under which this budget head had been declared secret expenditure. It maintained that the information could not be provided since it was secret expenditure, and had been declared thus through an executive order of the federal secretary of the ministry, under powers vested in him by the Cabinet Division.

Yet the fact is that parliamentarians approved the Special Publicity Fund as a normal budget item, just as they did other budgetary allocations for the Pakistan Institute of National Affairs, Internews etc which were also placed in the `Others` category of the 2008-09 budget. The Special Publicity Fund was not passed as a secret service expenditure item.

Therefore, the federal secretary`s executive order that treated it as such is in conflict with the collective will of parliament.
In a parliamentary democracy it is the collective will of the people, as represented by parliament, and not a federal secretary`s executive order, that should have supremacy.

This entire exercise, with the Special Publicity Fund as a case study, raises three important questions: first, how many budget items are passed by parliament as normal items but treated as secret expenditure? Secondly, how can the political leadership exercise its authority in the way in which public funds are utilised? And third, how can the judicious utilisation of public funds be ensured?

The prerogative to declare any public fund secret expenditure should rest with parliament alone. Powers vested in this regard with federal secretaries should be revoked through an act of parliament. Furthermore, the relevant parliamentary committees should exercise their powers to oversee how the funds are being utilised. As things stand, a federal secretary submits a certificate to the accountant general of Pakistan containing one line about how many funds have been utilised.

We need to enact effective laws regarding the right to information to ensure the transparent functioning of public departments. Such laws have been adopted in over 90 countries.

It is about time the two major political parties made good on the promise they made in the Charter of Democracy about enacting an information law and repealing the ineffective Freedom of Information Ordinance 2002, the Balochistan Freedom of Information Act 2005, and the Sindh Freedom of Information Act 2006. The new information laws should provide easy access to information. The ombudsman`s office, which is toothless as an appellant body, should be replaced with an information commission as is the case in many countries round the world. Being the most populous province, Punjab needs to enact a right to information law that can serve as an example for the other provinces.

The writer works for the Centre for Peace and Development Initiatives and can be contacted at zahid@cpdi-pakistan.org

The article was published in Dawn on December 7, 2010.