Author: Birat Anupam
”Knowledge is power. Information is liberating. Education is the premise of progress, in every society, in every family.” – Former UN Secretary General and the co-recipient of 2001 Nobel Peace Prize, Kofi Annan, has famously said this on strength of information in a society.
Nepal has adopted value of Right to Information (RTI) both in constitutional and civilian fronts. In this regard, article 16 of the now defunct 1990 constitution of Nepal gave first constitutional RTI for the first time in South Asia.
The article 16 read, ”Every citizen shall have the right to demand and receive information on any matter of public importance; provided that nothing in this Article shall compel any person to provide information of any matter about which secrecy is to be maintained by law.”
In, the 2015 promulgated Constitution of Nepal, article 27 has put RTI as a fundamental right of the Nepalese citizens and has stated, ”Every citizen shall have the right to demand and receive information on any matter of his or her interest of of public interest. Provided that no one shall be compelled to provide information on any matter of which confidentiality must be maintained in accordance with law.”
Having made constitutional provisions, Nepal RTI Act was enacted on 21 July 2007 which came into force on 20 August 2007 and to give constitutional and institutional framework for the RTI Act 2007, National Information Commission (NIC) was established in May 2008.
Thaha; Nepal's indigenous RTI movement engineered by Rudane
Rupchandra Bista, ‘Rudane’ was far ahead of his time to advocate for information. Rudane never used the term RTI for his hugely popular campaign for information. His famously used term was ‘Thaha’ which roughly translates as knowing.
Thaha movement, born out of Hetauda, got lightening impression among locals and people from across Nepal. According to Ramnarayan Bidari, former member of the Upper House of Parliament, and the chair of Rupchandra Bista Smarak Samiti, an organization working for the promotion and preservation of Thaha Movement, Rudane initiated his campaign since 1970s.
Born on 9 January 1934, during his 66-long life, Rudane spent half of his life campaigning for Thaha movement. His movement was widely appreciated. He was elected twice- first in May 1981 and second in May 1985 for the parliament-like structure of party-less Panchayat era. He strongly advocated his ‘Thaha’ movement even at the house.
Many consider ‘Thaha’ as the first Nepali philosophical movement to have reached the settlements of general people. Respecting his movement, on 8 May 2014, Nepal Government has named a local municipality situated on the northern part of Makwanpur district as ‘Thaha Municipality’ accommodating three previous Village Development Committee (VDC) namely Daman, Palung and Bajrabarahi. A couple of years later, other VDCs like Chitlang, Agra and Tistung were also integrated in this municipality.
Nepal's local governments disowning the RTI legacy
Despite being the South Asian leader both on civilian and constitutional fronts, Nepal has yet to fully realize this legacy from its grassroots governments. Local governments are denying in a way or other the RTI. For instance, not long ago, a local government from Parsa officially decided to give information to local government only after 60 days which is contrary to the legal provision. Bindabasini Rural Municipality is one local government which denied RTI legally.
However, there are many local governments denying RTI requests practically. They act to accept RTI requests but either they end up giving low or no information. Various reports on RTI also speak about this troubling trend. In a reportcompiled by Freedom Forum, it is said that ‘of the total 753 local levels, only 198 have implemented the right to information, said the report.’ The report was based on seven-month-long research of all 753 local levels of Nepal’s seven provinces.
In a recent meeting of the Education, Health and Information Technology of Nepal’s lower house of parliament, National Information Commission’s leadership also confessed the challenges of RTI movement. Chief Information Commissioner Mahendraman Gurung said NIC’s major challenge was to make outreach to the grassroots citizens.
RTI challenge comes mainly for three reasons. First, there are many collective corruption-heavy projects in local government from purchasing materials to constructing infrastructures. This prevents them from giving true information to an ordinary citizen. Second, not all local government leaders are informed of legal obligations for RTI requests from citizens. Three, lengthy red-tapes while gathering information by ‘Information Officer’ of the local governments.
Against this tragic reality, still, there remains hope. Many citizens are aware of their RTI provision. Social activists and various NGOs are proactively promoting RTI which has given ample opportunities to work on this beautiful democratic practice making informed citizens and responsible government with transparency at its core.
RTI implementation ensures good governance, deters disinformation, and fine-tunes transparency for which it is mandatory to make it accessible to all citizens from all concerned authorities. Government stakeholders, mass media, social media influencers, civil society leaders and commoners all must work whole-heartedly and open-mindedly to create effective RTI movement from the grassroots.
Writer's Introduction
Birat Anupam is a Kathmandu-based young Nepali journalist writing mainly on tourism, diplomacy and the environment. Having worked both in English and Nepali languages simultaneously, He is one of the few bilingual journalists of Nepal. Currently, He is working as a senior reporter for Nepalpress.com news portal and contributing author for The Diplomat of the US.
The views and opinions expressed in the piece above are solely those of the original author(s) and contributor(s). They do not necessarily represent the views of Governance Monitoring Centre Nepal and/or Centre for Social Change.
