What India should learn from Angus Deaton

A day before the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences was announced, Mint listed three Indian economists—Avinash Dixit, Jagdish Bhagwati and Partha Dasgupta—who have for long been contenders but have not won the prize. Although the decision of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences this week will only prolong their wait, the eventual winner, Angus Deaton, has India connections that should not be ignored.

Deaton is a familiar name for anybody who has followed the heated debates about poverty, inequality and under-nutrition in contemporary India, especially after the 1991 economic reforms. Deaton has taken an active part in these debates, many of which have been featured on the pages of the Economic & Political Weekly, and has edited a fine book that collected some of the best academic work on Indian poverty. On a lighter note, Jean Drèze, his co-author in many papers, seems to be a lucky mascot as far as the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences is concerned. He has also co-authored numerous works with Amartya Sen, the only Indian to have won the prize so far.

But on a serious note, what is the message Indian policymaking can take from Deaton’s research?

The Nobel Committee has noted Deaton’s contributions in building a bridge between theory and data, and individual and aggregate economic behaviour. His work, according to the committee, has helped economic policy and modern economic research.

One of Deaton’s main efforts has been to disabuse the economics fraternity of the belief that there exists a silver bullet to formulate policies or judge their effects. The fallibility, according to Deaton, is not due to lack of sophistication of technique, but due to the diversity—or heterogeneity, as economists would call it—which prevails in human society. Deaton’s research comes at a time when there is a clear attempt to roll out methods such as randomized control trials as the be-all and end-all of policymaking, in place of older methods such as centralized planning or the World Bank/International Monetary Fund-style structural adjustments that seek to fix the big picture.

Deaton is also an example of how effective policymaking requires that economists do not become prisoners of their own research. He was an active participant in the poverty estimation debate that erupted after the findings of the 55th Round of National Sample Survey data were released in the early years of the previous decade, and he undertook a sophisticated and detailed empirical analysis of NSSO data and price indices to recalculate poverty headcount ratios in India. These rigorous endeavours, however, have not prevented him from critiquing the non-transparent and complicated poverty estimation procedure in place currently and calling for delinking of poverty estimates—which in his own words are mere statistical tools for comparison—from all welfare entitlements.

In his intellectual pursuits, Deaton has joined issue with economists on both the Right as well as the Left ends of the spectrum. His critique of Arvind Panagariya’s thesis explaining less-than-normal heights of Indian children in comparison with those in much poor countries like Sub-Saharan Africa to genetic factors is an example of the former while the debate between Deaton-Drèze and Utsa Patnaik about the growing wedge between calorie intake and poverty headcount ratios is an example of the latter.

As a logical corollary of his arguments, Deaton has been underlining the need for better nutrition-monitoring arrangements in India, and has regularly pointed out the inadequacy of current indicators. The government could pay heed to his advice on this issue and at least release detailed findings of the Rapid Survey of Children, titbits of which have appeared in the media on the basis of leaks.

The majority of today’s economists seek refuge in even more complicated modelling and theory to solve the growing conundrum of mismatch between theory and reality in economics. Deaton is unambiguous in a 2009 paper: “Technique is never a substitute for the business of doing economics”. Deaton’s Nobel should be an occasion to bring back the social in economic sciences.

The richest 1% of Indians own 53% of the country’s wealth,

The richest 1% of Indians own 53% of the country’s wealth, according to the latest data on global wealth from Credit Suisse. The richest 5% own 68.6% of the country’s wealth, while the top 10% have 76.3%. At the other end of the pyramid, the poorer half of our countrymen jostles for 4.1% of the nation’s wealth. As Deng Xiaoping put it so pithily, “It is glorious to be rich.”

What’s more, things are getting more and more glorious for the rich. Data from Credit Suisse show that India’s richest 1% owned just 36.8% of the country’s wealth in 2000, while the share of the top 10% was 65.9%. Since then the richest have managed to steadily increase their share of the pie, as the chart shows. This happened during the years of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government from 2000-04, during the first United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government backed by the Left, during the second UPA tenure and now in the first year of the Modi government; the share of the top 1% has now crossed 50%. The colour of the government has been no impediment to the steady rise in the riches of the wealthy.

The chart shows that the difference between the share of the top 1% and that of the top 10% was 29.1 percentage points in 2000, but is down to 23.3 percentage points in 2015. In other words, the top 1% is eating into the share of the next 9%. The richest are growing at the expense of the relatively well-off. Between 2010 and 2015, the share of the poorer half of the population shrank from 5.3% to 4.1%.

According to Credit Suisse, India’s wealth increased by $2.284 trillion between 2000 and 2015. Of this rise, the richest 1% has hogged 61%, while the top 10% bagged 81%. The other 90% got the leftovers.

The share of India’s richest 1% is far ahead than that of top 1% of the US, who own a mere 37.3% of the total US wealth. But India’s finest still have a long way to go before they match Russia, where the top 1% own a stupendous 70.3% of the country’s wealth.

Reversing the continental drift

The India-Africa Forum Summit process, that began in 2008, is a much needed intergovernmental attempt to give direction and thrust to bilateral synergies.

Geologically, eons ago, peninsular India was once part of Africa, the fused ‘Super-Continent’ called ‘Gondwanaland’. Some 200 million years ago when the continental drift started, the region broke away from the African continent and pushed in a north-easterly direction till it joined South Asia.

Mahesh Sachdev

In the economic domain, too, till recently there had been a similar sense of drift between India and Africa. The two sides were only partially able to leverage their socio-economic similarities (such as a colonial history, similar developmental profile and challenges) and complementarities (such as India’s growing need for Africa’s commodities and the suitability of Indian technology and spirit of jugaad for Africa). More often than not, it was left to private operators, market forces and middlemen. As a result there was a steady but slow growth in our ties with Africa, often called ‘the only remaining economic Eldorado’ for its fast-growing population, increasing prosperity, and its untapped mineral and agricultural wealth.

Thus, the India-Africa Forum Summit (IAFS) process that began in 2008 is a much needed intergovernmental attempt to give a direction and thrust to the bilateral synergy. After two summits in New Delhi (2008) and Addis Ababa (2011), the next summit is to take place towards the end of this month once again in New Delhi. This time heads of states and governments of all African countries have been invited and over 35 of them are likely to attend. A number of new Indian initiatives are likely to be announced during IAFS-3 to boost ties.

Resources committed
As we approach IAFS-3, it is necessary to assess the impact of over seven years of the IAFS process and make it more effective and purposive. Over this period, India has committed unprecedented level of resources to Africa: for instance, at IAFS-2 India promised $5 billion dollars in soft loans, half a billion dollars in grants, institution building and training fellowships to Africa. Earlier at IAFS-1, India had offered duty-free market access to Africa’s least developed countries. Injection of these resources has had considerable impact. India’s credentials as a uniquely suitable development partner for Africa have been widely acknowledged. There has been a welcome surge in people-to-people contacts as large numbers of African entrepreneurs, medical tourists, trainees and students have started coming to India and Indian experts and entrepreneurs have headed there. Similarly, the IAFS process has given a fillip to cultural and informational contacts and mutual awareness. The growth in India’s trade and investment activities with Africa has been partially affected by the global economic slowdown. Though the actual delivery of projects and institutions has improved, it is still not commensurate with the higher resources expended.

“The IAFS needs to better leverage two strong and as yet untapped assets: the vibrant Indian private sector and the Indian diaspora in Africa. ”

Before we proceed further, a few of the contextual factors must be mentioned. First, India is not alone in having an Africa strategy. Our competitors on the continent, such the European Union, China, Japan and the U.S. also have IAFS-type processes and often commit even more resources than we do. Second, in recent years, new drivers of the putative African century have emerged; these include lower commodity prices, greater democracy, rise in militancy, population growth, preponderance of youth and urbanisation. Last but not the least, although Africa has lost some of its economic attractiveness, the long-term importance of the continent is undimmed.

Visible engagement

How can the momentum achieved so far by the IAFS process be sustained or even accelerated? First, we need to inject greater bilateralism and balance into the process. The African nations, many of them with higher per capita income than India, expect India to bear gifts for them under the IAFS process. But they also need to contribute more, so that the joint endeavour is more productive for their own people. This is also because India does not have a mercantilist approach to get back its developmental assistance in other ways. Similarly, India should not abrogate its responsibility for mid-stream and downstream delivery to the African Commission bureaucracy. This has often caused confusion and dismay among bilaterally important countries such as Nigeria for being neglected. It has also deprived our diplomats in Africa a valuable card to promote our bilateral agenda. (During the writer's tenure in Africa, it was often necessary to mention that the project was implemented and financed by India, and not by the African Union!)

Second, the IAFS process needs to better leverage two strong assets that have hitherto remained untapped: the vibrant Indian private sector and the Indian diaspora in Africa. Third, a lot can be done to improve the last mile of the delivery chain to ensure efficacy. For instance, the $150 million Pan Africa e-Network project has often received only limited interest because the actual providers had no personal incentive. Fourth, India needs to make more vigorous efforts to inform its African friends about its contributions.

Last year, when the Ebola epidemic ravaged five West African countries, India rendered more assistance than many other donors. However, while their contributions were acknowledged and appreciated, Indian help received scant attention and publicity, partly because India delivered it multilaterally or in a piecemeal manner. A better organised, more coherent and faster responding mechanism accompanied by an appropriate media campaign is desirable. To this end, having a dedicated, commercially-driven Indian television channel for African countries may be a good beginning.

The IAFS process has shown the promise of Indo-African partnership. Indeed, the current global economic stagnation only enhances the relevance of a mutual interface between the world’s fastest growing continent and the world’s fastest growing major economy.

India bags third slot in global startup space

After the success in the IT services industries, India has now emerged as the youngest startup nation in the world with over 72 per cent of founders are less than 35 years old. With the presence of more than 4,200 startups, the country has also become the third largest startup base worldwide. By registering a growth of 40 per cent over the last year, India has overtaken Israel to become the third largest startup base after the U.S. and the U.K.

According to a report published by Nasscom in association with research firm Zinnov, around 1,200 tech startups were born in the year 2015, out of which more than 50 per cent focus on e-commerce, consumer services and aggregators business.

“India is the youngest startup nations in the world with around 72 per cent of the founders less than 35 years old, and 50 per cent rise in share of female entrepreneurs in 2015 over 2014,” said Ravi Gururaj, Chairman, Nasscom, Product Council.

Bengaluru remains the hot destination for entrepreneurs to launch their business and was ranked 15 globally. More than 65 per cent of the startups are located in Bengaluru, Mumbai and NCR. Around 26 per cent of India’s start-ups are located in Bengaluru; and NCR and Mumbai had 23 and 17 per cent respectively.

Another reason cited for the growth of the entrepreneur ecosystem is the investment of business tycoons like Ratan Tata and Azim Premji in startups. So far, Mr. Tata has made around 10 investments in startups.

Large Indian enterprises have also formed dedicated corpus to invest in startups. Wipro has set up $100 million VC fund to invest in startups while Infosys has formed a $500 million innovation fund, of which $250 million is dedicated for India.

The report published by Nasscom also reveals many interesting numbers in terms of the activities happening in the Indian startup environment. As per the report, one of the major reasons for India’s growth in the new age business is the rapid increase in the availability of risk capital.

In 2015, Indian startup founders have managed to raise capital to the tune of around $4.9 billion, an increase of over 125 per cent against last year. This is also much higher compared to cumulative funding of approximately $3.2 billion over 2010-14 period.

While the overall VC/PE funding has grown by 2.2 times the seed stage funding has grown by 6.5 times. More than 390 startups have received funding compared to 175 startups in 2014, stated the report ‘StartUp India Momentous rise of the Indian Start-up Ecosystem’.

“The maturing Indian startup ecosystem is now contributing to the Indian economy in many ways. Apart from positively impacting the lifestyles of citizens involved, start-ups are now creating innovative technology solutions that are addressing the key social problems that India is facing and creating significant growth opportunities for every stakeholder,” said R. Chandrashekhar, President, Nasscom.

Some of the major rounds of funding this year was $700 million by Flipkart from Tiger Global and Steadview Capital, Snapdeal’s $500 million round from Alibaba Group, SoftBank, Foxconn among others and Paytm $635 million.

Render sedition unconstitutional

Sedition, defined as “incitement to violence” or “disorder”, is a legislation meant to suppress the voice of Indian people and has no place in a 21st century democracy. The Supreme Court, being the protector of the fundamental rights of the citizens needs to declare the law unconstitutionalSince the governments and its agencies have strictly gone by the text of Section 124A though the Supreme Court itself did not apply these principles to the speech of Kedarnath, the law declared in Kedarnath has lost its potencyIndependent India’s governments seem to have found great relief in having a provision on sedition. Amendments made to Article 19 of the Constitution imposing curbs and validating them on the ground of “reasonable restrictions”, indicate just that

Some trigger-happy State governments in India start shooting from the hip the moment they see an article or a cartoon or hear a speech very critical of the government or Ministers or politicians in power. ‘Sedition’ is an offence incorporated into the Indian Penal Code (IPC) which they have found handy to silence or discipline critics. This nineteenth century law, enacted to silence the Indian people by the colonial rulers, has been retained by the democratic government in free India. Not only that, it has perhaps been used more often by free India’s governments than the colonial government did during the 77 years of its presence in the Penal Code. Sedition was not a part of the original Indian Penal Code (IPC) enacted in 1860 and was introduced in 1870.

P. D. T. Achary

Independent India’s governments seem to have found great relief in having a provision on sedition in the penal statute. A spate of litigations in the fifties and sixties, and the amendments made to Article 19 of the Constitution — widening the scope of penal legislation and validating them on the ground of reasonable restrictions — indicate just that. During the past four years, we have again witnessed frequent invocation of sedition to deal with free speech and expression.

State intolerance to freedoms

Recently, the Gujarat government booked a Patel leader under sedition for sending messages containing “offensive language against the Prime Minister, the State Chief Minister and Amit Shah, the President of BJP”. These cases are indicative of a high level of intolerance being displayed by governments towards the basic freedom enjoyed by citizens. Democracy has no meaning without these freedoms and sedition as interpreted and applied by the police is a negation of it.

Section 124A of the IPC defines sedition and says: (i) whoever by words either spoken or written or by signs or by visible representation or otherwise brings or attempts to bring into hatred or contempt, the government established by law; or (ii) whoever by the above means excites or attempts to excite disaffection towards the government established by law, has committed the offence of sedition. The punishment prescribed varies from imprisonment up to three years to life imprisonment, with fine or without it. The first explanation says that disaffection includes disloyalty and all feelings of enmity. Explanations 2 and 3 in effect say that disapprobation of the measures or administrative action etc. of the government to obtain their alteration by lawful means is not an offence.

The caveat however, is that there should be no attempt to excite hatred or contempt or disaffection. In other words, even if the impugned speech or article or cartoon seeks to obtain the alteration of the wrong governmental decisions, if they excite hatred, contempt or disaffection towards the government, the author of the speech and others are liable to be charged with sedition and punished.

History of sedition

The history of the offence of sedition in the IPC is one of conflicts in judicial interpretations. In the pre-Independence era, a number of landmark cases on sedition were decided by the Federal Court as well as the Privy Council. These two high judicial bodies had taken diametrically opposite positions on the meaning and scope of sedition as a penal offence. The Federal Court in Niharendu Dutt Majumdar Vs. King Emperor (1942) FCR 48, held that “public disorder or the reasonable anticipation or likelihood of public disorder is the gist of the offence”. These judges were of the view that sedition implies resistance or lawlessness in some form. In all these cases the point that has been emphasised is that if there is no incitement to violence, there is no sedition.

On the other hand, the Privy Council was of the view that acts like incitement to violence and insurrection are immaterial while deciding the culpability of a person charged with sedition. It said that since the IPC defines the offence of sedition, unlike the English Law, which doesn’t define it, one needs to go by that definition only. Queen Empress Vs. Bal Gangadhar Tilak (1897) was the first case wherein the law on sedition under Section 124A in the IPC was explained. Strachey J. stated the law in the following terms;

“The offence consists in exciting or attempting to excite in others certain bad feelings towards the government. It is not the exciting or attempting to excite mutiny or rebellion or any sort of actual disturbance, great or small. Whether any disturbance or outbreak was caused by these articles is absolutely immaterial.”

In King Emperor V. Sadashiv Narayan Bhalerao (1947) , the Privy Council not only reiterated the law on sedition enunciated in the Tilak case, but also held that the Federal Court’s statement of law in theNiharendu Majumdar case was wrong. The Privy Council overruled the decision of the Federal Court and held that excitement of feelings of enmity to the government is sufficient to make one guilty under Section 124A of the Code.

Now, let us look at the decisions of the Supreme Court of independent India on sedition. The Constitution bench of the Supreme Court explained the amplitude of sedition for the first time in 1962 in the case of Kedarnath Vs. State of Bihar (1962). Quite interestingly the court adopted the view of the Federal Court of India that the gist of the offence of sedition is “incitement to violence” or the “tendency or the intention to create public disorder”. So, as per the Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court, a person can be charged with sedition only if there is incitement to violence in his speech or writing or an intention to create disorder.

Kedarnath decision

The occasion for this decision was an appeal by a person named Kedarnath Singh of Bihar who was punished by the trial court for making a speech, a punishment upheld by the High Court. A few lines of his speech are worth quoting:

“To-day the dogs of CID are loitering around Barauni. Many official dogs are sitting even in this meeting. The people of India drove out the Britishers from this country and elected these Congressgoondas to the gaddi…. When we drove out the Britishers, we shall strike and turn out these Congressgoondas as well… They have today established a rule of lathis and bullets in the country…. We believe in [a] revolution, which will come and in the flames of which, the capitalists, zamindars and the Congress leaders of India… will be reduced to ashes and on their ashes will be established a Government of the poor and downtrodden people of India.”

It can be seen from this speech that there is no “incitement to violence” or “disorder” which alone, according to the Supreme Court, formed the basis of a charge of sedition. Therein lies the contradiction in this landmark judgment. In fact, the issue before the court was whether Section 124A was violative of Article 19(1)(a) relating to freedom of speech and expression. If the view of the Privy Council on sedition was to be adopted, then Section 124A would have had to be struck down as violative of Article 19(1)(a). The Supreme Court did not want to do that, so, it adopted the strict principles of English Law on sedition which were laid down in the Niharendu case in 1942. But the court upheld the punishment of Kedarnath who did not incite anyone to resort to violence and overthrow the government.

Sedition defined under Section 124A of the IPC is a colonial law meant to suppress the voice of Indian people. That is why the Indian law on sedition was different from the English law. Despite the strict construction adopted by the Supreme Court, the law enforcement agencies have always used it against artists, public men, intellectuals, et al for criticising the governments. In fact the Supreme Court itself did not apply these strict principles to the speech of Kedarnath and his conviction. The government and its agencies have, in reality, followed the law enunciated by the Privy Council and not by the Supreme Court in Kedarnath. The governments in free India continue to use it for the very purpose for which the colonial government used it.

Therefore, since the governments and its agencies have strictly gone by the text of Section 124A though the Supreme Court itself did not apply these principles to the speech of Kedarnath, the law declared in Kedarnath has lost its potency. The Supreme Court, being the protector of the fundamental rights of the citizens may step in now and declare Section 124A unconstitutional. India of the 21st century does not require a law used by the colonial government to suppress India’s voice.

(P .D.T. Achary is a constitutional expert and former Secretary General of the Lok Sabha)

Jamaican writer Marlon James wins Man Booker Prize

His novel 'A Brief History of Seven Killings' is a fictionalized history on the attempted murder of the reggae singer, Bob Marley, in 1976.

Jamaican writer Marlon James has been named the winner of the Man Booker Prize for 2015 for his novel A Brief History of Seven Killings. It is the first Booker Prize to be won by a Jamaican, and the first for its independent publisher Oneworld Publications.

Mr. James’s book was chosen from a shortlist of seven writers, who included the bookies favourite Hanya Yanagihara for A Little Life, and the British writer of Indian origin Sunjeev Sahota for The Year of the Runaways.

Set in Jamaica

Set in Jamaica, the 686-page book is a fictionalized history on the attempted murder of the reggae singer, Bob Marley, in 1976. Mr. James (44) — who with his dreadlocks tamed into a ponytail at the back of his head — looks like a reggae artist himself, described his feelings as “surreal” in his acceptance speech. He dedicated his award to his late father from whom he said he had acquired his “literary sensitivities.”

He also acknowledged the book’s debt to Jamaica’s reggae singers like Marley and Peter Tosh “who were the first to realize that the voice coming out of our mouths was a legitimate voice for fiction and poetry.”

Making sense of the world

Acknowledging the other books in the shortlist as “outrageous, dark and beautiful,” he said that writers ultimately “try to make sense of the world we are in.”

The jury chair Michael Wood announced Mr. James’ name at a black-tie dinner at London’s Guildhall. Mr. Wood described the book as “startling in its range of voices and registers, running from the patois of the street posse to The Book of Revelation.”  A Brief History of Seven Killings reconstructs the attempted assassination through the voices of a range of witnesses, from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and CIA to ghosts, beauty queens and murderers.

‘Going beyond crime’

“It is a crime novel that moves beyond the world of crime and takes us deep into a recent history we know far too little about. It moves at a terrific pace and will come to be seen as a classic of our times,” Mr. Wood said.

In addition to his £50,000 prize and trophy, which he received from the Duchess of Cornwall, Mr. James also received a designer bound edition of his book and a further £2,500 for being short-listed. 

RTI needs a second revolution

The Right to Information Act is now 10 years old — long enough to give us a fair idea of how it has performed on the ground. Riding on a huge wave of civil society activism, it started on a positive note and made unexpected impact early on. It promised to herald transparency and accountability in government functioning and thus reduce corruption. A number of significant disclosures were forced by the RTI, including the information regarding 2G and Commonwealth Games and so on. Among the educated and city dwellers, the RTI spread faster. Most importantly, it led to the demand for several other equally important rights like the right to employment guarantee, the right to education and the right to food security. The RTI has had the effect of slackening the tight hold of the government and its officials on both information and instrumentalities of the state. The decade following 2005 witnessed the slow withering away of the Central government and the RTI surely played a role in that unravelling — by increasing irreverence, scrutiny and through the critiquing of its authority among the general public. However, of late, one witnesses a waning of fervour even though the number of RTI applications has been growing. We examine here the reasons for that. Understandably, from the beginning, civil society activists and the media have been more enthusiastic about the RTI than civil servants, who have traditionally used information as the source of their power and mystique. The civil service’s indifference and hostility towards the RTI has not diminished over the years; if at all, it has only increased although many government servants, no doubt mostly disgruntled, have also been most successful users of RTI, largely seeking information to fix their own cases and fix those they did not like. Ordinary citizens mostly seek personal information regarding various services otherwise denied to them by the system, be it a passport or a ration card or various commonly required certificates. Since disclosure of such information poses little threat to the system, the public authorities share such information relatively easily. It is the contentious or potentially controversial information that the public authorities have been very wary of disclosing. Thus, as far as personal information goes or information of an innocuous kind, the RTI has been a success. But as a tool to inculcate the value of transparency, the RTI has neither sunk deep into the government nor among most of the citizenry. The civil society enthusiasm for the RTI has declined; some leading stars of the movement that led to the RTI have moved on to politics or other equally important areas like analytical studies for the World Bank. Many small-time blackmailers, in the guise of media persons or RTI activists, have successfully milked the RTI to make a living or settle personal scores, thus giving it a bad name among public authorities. As such, the RTI has, in its rise as well as in its decline, done a lot of good to many people. The public authorities, and their otherwise harried employees, must be heaving a sigh of relief now that the pressure is less. The initial interest shown by the media has also somewhat waned. The attitude of the judiciary, in any case, was always ambivalent from the very beginning; many high courts had framed very restrictive rules — some even fixing a Rs 500 fee for each piece of information demanded (clearly not intended by the RTI Act), and thus making it very difficult for people to access the information held by courts. Between the Supreme Court and several high courts, a large number of decisions by information commissions have been stayed for years, without much explanation. This has created an impression among the public authorities that the judiciary is not very appreciative of the RTI or the way it is used by citizens. The contribution of the information commissions, both Central and state, in diluting the public interest in the RTI is no less. Long pendency in most information commissions — some even for a year or more — signals their casual approach. This, in turn, emboldens public authorities to take the RTI casually. Besides, a widespread reluctance to penalise errant government officials also contributes to a general sense of laxity in the enforcement of this law. The appointment of information commissioners, especially in the states — many of whom are not equal to the task in terms of intellect and stature — has seriously undermined the citizen’s trust in information commissions. The absence of enforcement provisions in the law has rendered the information commissions toothless. The law is too ambitiously and, some say, unrealistically drafted as it defines both “information” and “public authority” in the widest possible manner. As a result, the sheer volume and variety of information being sought places a huge burden on the public authorities. This induces a strong sense of resistance in them. Poor record-keeping makes retrieval of information very cumbersome. In most offices, the public information officer is a reluctant low-level official, without much clue about the information held or sought. Consequently, the response of the public authorities has often been sub-optimal and unsatisfactory for information seekers. Finally, in spite of the mandate of the RTI Act, most public authorities have failed to digitise their records and make proactive disclosure of their information in the public domain. Looking back, one can say the RTI has achieved much but clearly, it seems to have reached a plateau now. One witnesses the same old faces, some weary and tired, at all RTI meetings. People inside the public authorities seem to have taken the RTI in their stride. It would surely need a second revolution to revive the old fervour with which the RTI was first initiated. As far as laws go, the RTI Act has been the best thing to happen after the Constitution of India; we must make it work. - See more at: http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/rti-needs-a-second-revolution/#sthash.79OoFgbY.dpuf