President Kovind lauds RTI, says info overload preferable to deficit

NEW DELHI: Strongly advocating for transparency in governance, President Ram Nath Kovind said on Friday that there is no such thing as "too much information" in a democracy and that "information overload is always preferable to information deficit".
Inaugurating the 13th annual convention of the Central Information Commission on the 13th anniversary of RTI's inception, President Kovind also pitched for the need to modernise protocols for declassification of government and archival documents.

He said, "There is also need to look at our declassification protocols for government and archival documents and see how we can modernise these. Open government and the pursuit of legitimate public oversight are a desirable and a dynamic process. We can never do enough; we can never aim too high." At a time when India has slipped in the global RTI rankings to the sixth spot behind Sri Lanka, Mexico and Afghanistan, the President said RTI is part of a theme that makes for greater efficiency in both delivering services to a citizen as well as using public resources and finances, adding that this improves transparency and removes doubts that may arise about favouritism and misappropriation.

He also emphasised the fine balance between RTI and the right to privacy. "I commend the CIC for upholding the RTI's basic charter that public records, with some exceptions for subjects such as national security, are open to public scrutiny - but private records of individual citizens are protected from intrusive third party curiosity. We must be cautious against fringe cases that try to use the RTI mechanism to settle personal scores. Especially in an age when privacy has become a matter of such intense debate, it is crucial to maintain this balance," he said.

He also said the Right to Information is about nurturing the social contract of trust between the citizen and the state - where both must have faith in each other.