Information Society Watch

March 13, 2006, Alok Prakash Putul, BBC News Service

Although the Right to Information (RTI) Act may theoretically give Indians the right to access information held by the government, the price of acquiring this information is often exorbitant. This is largely because government offices simply do not have the money or resources to physically provide information to people. Despite recent moves towards e-governance and computerized files, most of Indian government data are still in files which need to be manually accessed. Apparently there was no forethought on behalf of the central government about the potential problems in implementing this law. While the poor should receive information for free, and some governments are trying to produce this information, critics believe that the well-off are using the poor to get information without having to pay for it themselves.

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