In the turmoil of the information age, accurate data contributes to a healthy democracy and saves the political economy. Without access to a wide range of credible information and accurate statistics, the public’s ability to engage with power and politics is limited. Recent outrage over the debate about whether the Digital Personal Data Protection Regulations, 2025The dilution of the RTI Act has grabbed headlines and raised concerns among media professionals about its impact on civic engagement and data-driven politics.
Here we begin the story of two political strategies – and the trade-offs that must be made between individual privacy and public intelligence.
The RTI Act: A Pillar of Democratic Accountability
The RTI Act, came into force in 2005is a groundbreaking law that aims to improve government transparency. It has given citizens the opportunity to access and request information about the use of public funds, the implementation of social programs, project progress and administrative decisions of government bodies. For citizens, it was a valuable tool to address their concerns, hold officials accountable, and expose government inefficiency and corruption.
Structurally, DPDP and RTI diverge, with RTI focusing on the institutional and government-centered aspects of public knowledge that typically concern the internal workings of government and public offices. The DPDP addresses the way organizations handle individuals’ personal data to protect their privacy. Although there may be some overlap, the objectives of these two directives are fundamentally different. DPDP and RTI address particular, critical issues in the digital age – ensuring government transparency and protecting citizens’ personal data are two imperatives for modern democracies, both of which arise from the Constitution.
The DPDP law: data protection or political shield?
In theory, these two measures should complement each other as they aim to preserve autonomous constitutional rights. However, the BJP faced severe backlash for systematically weakening the RTI and refusing to take public responsibility for its regressive, divisive policies. UPA general secretary in charge of communications Jairam Ramesh Information that “for the BJP, the RTI means the right to intimidation.” The shocking fact that over 100 RTI activists have been murdered since 2014 supports these claims and has created a climate of fear that threatens the very foundation of transparent governance. Ramesh gives several reasons for this methodological underpinning of the RTI. According to him, “The first was the Chief Information Commissioner’s order directing disclosure of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s MA degree in ‘Complete Political Science’ in RTI.” The second case was the discrediting of the Prime Minister’s claim that there were “many fake ration cards” in the country through RTI replies.
According to the law, every citizen has the right to request information from the authorities and the authorities are obliged (with certain exceptions) to provide the requested information.
Furthermore, the RTI applications helped bring to light the blatant deception of the much-touted benefits of demonetisation in curbing black or counterfeit money. “The RTI application revealed that just four hours before Prime Minister Modi announced demonetisation, the central board of the Reserve Bank of India had concluded that demonetisation would in no way help in curbing black money or counterfeit money,” he said. He added that RTI revelations had “embarrassed the government on multiple occasions”, including revelations that the Reserve Bank of India had already sent a list of the country’s top 20 willful loan defaulters to the Prime Minister’s Office. “Through the RTI, it came to light that no black money had returned from abroad as Prime Minister Modi had promised before the 2014 general elections,” Ramesh said.
The provisions of the DPDP law are part of a carefully systematic approach by the incumbent government to circumvent transparency issues and thus prevent the glass facade of a healthy democracy from shattering. The National Campaign for the People’s Right to Information (NCPRI) has said that the Digital Personal Information Protection Act 2023 and its draft regulations are “extremely problematic” and do not provide journalists with protection from being identified by those whose wrongdoing they expose. The NCPRI has strongly opposed the weakening of Section 8(1)(j) of the RTI Act by the DPDP Act. By expanding the definition of “personal information,” the law creates broad new grounds for denying access to public records, including voter lists, use of government resources, and details of expenditures.
Constitutional imperatives vs. political expediency
“This amendment has opened the door to hide public information. RTI became a lifeline for the poor and marginalized, giving them access to rights related to food distribution, pensions, arrears and scholarships, but the BJP is now blocking everything,” Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) president Mahesh Kumar Goud alleged. accuse The BJP restricted the independence of information commissions by changing their terms of office and conditions of service, which increased the vulnerability of election commissioners to government pressure.
With Noam Chomsky framework of justiceHe argues that justice requires the free flow of information and the public’s ability to make informed decisions. The RTI Act has significantly contributed to strengthening democracy, fighting corruption and promoting public participation and interaction. It has helped uncover countless major scams, including the Adarsh Society Scam, the 2G Scam, the Commonwealth Games Scam and the Indian Red Cross Society Scam, and earned India the 4th position out of 111 countries in the global Freedom of Information Law rankings in 2016.
In addition, according to the law, every citizen has the right to request information from the authorities, and the authorities are obliged (with certain exceptions) to provide the requested information. However, the RTI Act has evolved from a powerful tool of political economy to a political tool Life supportwith the government routinely denying and denying RTI applications due to misguided, ill-conceived policies.
The systematic weakening of the RTI law and the climate of intimidation faced by transparency activists threaten to undermine the foundations of participatory democracy.
During demonetization, information was withheld on the flimsy grounds that its disclosure would “prejudice the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security, strategic, scientific or economic interests of the State, or relations with a foreign State, or lead to incitement to commit a crime.” This trend continued during the Covid-19 pandemic with an apparent refusal to provide further transparency regarding the PM CARES Fund.
The RTI Act has also been confronted several obstacles: 58% of the 374 information officers appointed in the 29 SICs since their inception are former government bureaucrats. In comparison, the number of RTI appeals increased by 83% and the number of Central Public Information Officers only increased by 13%. With state information commissions taking an average of over a year to process complaints/objections, it seems that the RTI law is slowly and deliberately dying.
Democratic transparency and individual privacy need not be mutually exclusive – but India’s current trajectory suggests a dangerous prioritization of opacity over accountability. The systematic weakening of the RTI law and the climate of intimidation faced by transparency activists threaten to undermine the foundations of participatory democracy.
Insha Hamid works in film and television and has a strong interest in intersectional feminism, public policy, and how progress can be achieved at the intersection of economic development and social justice. When she’s not immersed in a philosophy book or writing a political article, you can find her headbanging at a death metal gig, shredding a rock song on the drums, or filming a horror movie with her Canon 6D Mark II.
