信息公开法：印度民众挑战政府的利器

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　　婵卡拉·黛菲一直想拥有一栋房子，一栋体面的砖瓦房，而不是她现在居住的这种泥巴堆成的棚屋。黛菲生活在印度加尔克汉德邦的一个偏远村庄，这是一个矿产丰富却腐败横行的地区。印度政府曾推出一项计划，向贫困人群提供700美元以帮助他们建造房屋。当时，黛菲一听说这个消息就立即提交了申请。
　　黛菲生活非常贫困，她属于低种姓阶层，做着按日计费的临时工。像她这样的人本应是这项政府计划的理想申请人。然而她却苦等了四年，眼看着有钱的邻居都得到了政府拨款建起了房子，而她和她的三个孩子却仍然只能睡在由树枝和破败的泥瓦搭成的漏雨的房顶下。
　　两个月前，受到印度人民狂热追捧的《信息公开法》帮了她。在当地一位政治活动家的帮助下，黛菲向当地政府办公室提交了一份申请，要求获知四年来有哪些人得到了这项政府拨款以及为何给这些人资助。几天后一位政府官员带来了好消息：黛菲的房屋拨款申请被批准，很快她就会收到这笔钱了。
　　黛菲的好运气只是横扫印度的信息公开革命的一个剪影。在这个所谓世界上最大的民主国家里，官僚统治根深蒂固。这是个建立在封建基础上的帝国大厦，在印度独立后的相当长的一段时间内，其官僚系统中是几乎没有“问责”一说的。民众获知政府信息和作为的渠道少之又少。
　　不过，现在《信息公开法》这一影响深远的法律赋予了印度12亿人民一项新的权力──他们有权从政府那里要求获知几乎任何信息。如果政府官员拒绝提供信息，他们就将面临高额的罚款，这一惩罚措施保证了这项法律的迅速实施。
　　虽然一些政治活动家希望这项法律能帮助印度减少腐败，但事实上在这方面《信息公开法》收效甚微。一般政府机构只会处理投诉者的问题，就像黛菲那样，而不是采取措施从根本上解决问题。
　　尽管如此，自5年前这项法律被通过后，它已经深深融入了印度农村居民的生活中，改变了印度官民之间长期不平衡的权力天平。
　　“一直以来，印度政府给人的感觉就是政府官员是统治者，而普通民众是被统治者，”印度中央政府首席信息专员瓦加赫特·哈比卜拉说道。“而这项法律让人们认识到，政府是要对人民负责的。”
　　印度前总理拉吉夫·甘地曾说过，印度政府在贫困问题上的拨款只有15%被真正地物尽其用，而其余的资金不是被浪费就是被人中饱私囊了。
　　几十年来，这一数字可能有所改善，但是仍有一些印度民众怀疑政府今年计划用于改善贫困的470亿美元中有很大一部分已经不知所终。
　　印度的《信息公开法》是印度贫困人民保住他们手中权利的利器。致力于在印度推进“善政”的政治活动家们为这项法律的通过努力了十多年，今天，《信息公开法》已经深入了印度民间。在法律实施的最初三年里，印度公民就提交了约200万份信息申请。
　　加尔克汉德邦位于印度东部，腐败和政府不作为的现象屡见不鲜。虽然这里矿产丰富，但自从2000年从比哈尔邦南部分割出来以后，加尔克汉德邦就一直被政治混乱所困扰。在这里，农村的穷人们正利用《信息公开法》来解决他们的基本问题。他们的成功经历看似轻微，却在很大程度上体现了印度最贫困人口生活状况的改善。
　　在班塔附近的一个村子有一家诊所，这里本应有一名工作人员负责为村民诊断疟疾和腹泻这样的普通疾病，并为婴儿和孕妇提供照护。然而多年来这家诊所的工作人员常常不见踪影。一位村民向政府提交申请要求查看这名医生的出勤记录。很快，工作人员就开始定时上班了。
　　这位工作人员名叫斯奈哈·拉塔，是一位助产士，政府每月向她支付250美元的薪水。拉塔否认她一直没来上班。她说《信息公开法》让人讨厌，“就因为这个法律，我不得不听取所有这些投诉和抱怨。”不过在村民的监督下，她不敢再缺勤了。
　　在诊所不远处的一间小棚屋里，拉曼妮·黛菲正为9天前出生的孙子织毛毯。如果是在几年前，她此时还得在田里苦苦为一点糊口的钱而干活。作为一个年迈的寡妇，她知道政府本应每个月付给她9美元的养老金。虽然这笔钱没多少，但在农村，9美元就意味着不挨饿。
　　可是政府部门的中间商要求申请者支付20美元的费用才能把养老金申请直接提交给负责养老金事务的官员，而且很多没有资格获取这项养老金的人也在申请。而拉曼妮只是一个“贱民”，贱民在印度被称为“不可触碰的人”。一名当地的活动家为此向政府申请获知究竟哪些村民拿到了养老金，此后，拉曼妮就拿到了这笔钱。现在，她能骄傲地炫耀她的银行帐本了。
　　当地的活动家们说，现在只需要提出一个简单的质询，比如质疑有遗漏的定量供应卡、随意发放的养老金或者出生证明等，就能迫使曾经死板的政府提供相关信息。
　　然而，有一个对信息申请响应更快的官僚系统并不一定意味着腐败的减少。
　　29岁的苏尼尔·库马·马哈托是加尔克汉德邦首府兰契的一名活动家。马哈托说，他很快就明白利用《信息公开法》来揭露腐败现象是徒劳的。他举了个修路工程的例子说，“钱花了，但路没建起来。”
　　当他申请要求政府查出原因后，政府划拨了一笔新的资金，很快就把路给修好了。但是没人追究原先的那笔钱到哪儿去了。
　　“政客、承包商和官僚们的关系网在这里非常强大，”马哈托解释道。“要对什么人采取措施是很难的。”
　　有批评者质疑《信息公开法》只是一个减压阀，在不危及现状的情况下满足人民最基本的需求。“这项法律在铲除小型腐败方面非常成功，”英联邦人权计划的文卡塔斯·那耶克说道。“但是我们的问责机制非常薄弱，离开了问责制，政府透明将无从谈起。”
　　但是，一名曾为这项法律的通过而付出巨大努力的活动家赦克哈·辛格说，对于一个刚刚摆脱几个世纪的殖民和封建生涯的国家来说，反腐败是次要的。
　　“我们的主要目的是赋予公民权力。”辛格说。“《信息公开法》做到了这一点──赋予人民挑战政府的权力。这非同小可。”

英文原文：


　　Right-to-Know Law Gives India's Poor a Lever
　　By LYDIA POLGREEN
　　Published: June 28, 2010
　　BANTA, India - Chanchala Devi always wanted a house. Not a mud-and-stick hut, like her current home in this desolate village in the mineral-rich, corruption-corroded state of Jharkhand, but a proper brick-and-mortar house. When she heard that a government program for the poor would give her about $700 to build that house, she applied immediately.
　　As an impoverished day laborer from a downtrodden caste, she was an ideal candidate for the grant. Yet she waited four years, watching as wealthier neighbors got grants and built sturdy houses, while she and her three children slept beneath a leaky roof of tree branches and crumbling clay tiles.

　　Two months ago she took advantage of India's powerful and wildly popular Right to Information law. With help from a local activist, she filed a request at a local government office to find out who had gotten the grants while she waited, and why. Within days a local bureaucrat had good news: Her grant had been approved, and she would soon get her check.
　　Ms. Devi's good fortune is part of an information revolution sweeping India. It may be the world's largest democracy, but a vast and powerful bureaucracy governs. It is an imperial edifice built on feudal foundations, and for much of independent India's history the bureaucracy has been largely unaccountable. Citizens had few means to demand to know what their government was doing for them.
　　But it has now become clear that India's 1.2 billion citizens have been newly empowered by the far-reaching law granting them the right to demand almost any information from the government. The law is backed by stiff fines for bureaucrats who withhold information, a penalty that appears to be ensuring speedy compliance.
　　The law has not, as some activists hoped, had a major effect on corruption. Often, as in Ms. Devi's case, the bureaucracy solves the problem for the complaining individual, but seldom undertakes a broader inquiry.
　　Still, the law has become part of the fabric of rural India in the five years since it was passed, and has clearly begun to tilt the balance of power, long skewed toward bureaucrats and politicians.
　　"The feeling in government has always been that the people working in government are the rulers, and the people are the ruled," said Wajahat Habibullah, the central government's chief information commissioner. "This law has given the people the feeling that the government is accountable to them."
　　Rajiv Gandhi, a former prime minister, once said that only 15 percent of spending on the poor actually reached them - the rest was wasted or siphoned off.
　　That figure may have changed in the decades since he uttered it, but few Indians doubt that a good chunk of the roughly $47 billion budgeted this fiscal year to help impoverished citizens is lost.
　　India's Right to Information law has given the poor a powerful tool to ensure they get their slice of that cake. The law, passed after more than a decade of agitation by good-government activists, has become embedded in Indian folklore. In the first three years the law was in effect, two million applications were filed.
　　Jharkhand is an eastern Indian state where corruption and incompetence are rife, fueled by mineral wealth and the political chaos that has gripped the state since it was carved out of the state of Bihar in 2000. Here the rural poor are using the law to solve basic problems. Their success stories seem like the most minor of triumphs, but they represent major life improvements for India's poorest.
　　In one village near Banta, a clinic that was supposed to be staffed full time by a medical worker trained to diagnose ailments like malaria and diarrhea and provide care to infants and expectant mothers had not been staffed regularly for years. A local resident filed a request to see worker attendance records. Soon the medical worker started showing up regularly.
　　The worker, Sneha Lata, an assistant midwife whose government salary is $250 a month, denied that she had been neglecting her post. She said the information law was a nuisance. "Because of this law I have to listen to all these complaints," she said. But with villagers now watching, she dares not miss work.
　　In a nearby hut, Ramani Devi sewed a blanket for a grandson born nine days earlier. In years past she would have been in the fields, toiling for a handful of change to make ends meet. As an elderly widow, Ms. Devi (no relation to Chanchala Devi) knew she was entitled to a $9 monthly government pension. That may not sound like much, but in a rural village, it is the difference between eating and starving.
　　Middlemen at the government office demand bribes of $20 to direct applications to the right bureaucrat, and many people ineligible for pensions were collecting them. When a local activist filed a request to find out which villagers were receiving pensions, Ms. Devi, who is a Dalit, formerly known as an untouchable, finally got her pension. Now she proudly shows off her savings account passbook.
　　Simply filing an inquiry about a missing ration card, a wayward pension application or a birth certificate is nowadays enough to force the once stodgy bureaucracy to deliver, activists here say.
　　But a more responsive bureaucracy is not necessarily less corrupt.
　　Sunil Kumar Mahto, 29, an activist in Ranchi, Jharkhand's capital, said he quickly learned that using the law to expose corruption was pointless. He gave the example of a road project. "The money was spent, but there was no road," Mr. Mahto said.
　　When he applied to find out what had happened, new money was allocated and the road was ultimately built. But no action was taken against whoever had pocketed the original money.
　　"The nexus of politicians, contractors and bureaucrats is very strong here," Mr. Mahto explained. "To get action against someone is very difficult."
　　Some critics wonder if the law is simply a pressure valve that allows people to get basic needs addressed without challenging the status quo. "It has been very successful in rooting out petty corruption," said Venkatesh Nayak of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative. "But our accountability mechanisms are weak, and transparency has no purpose without accountability."
　　But Shekhar Singh, an activist who fought for passage of the law, said that in a nation recovering from centuries of colonial and feudal oppression, fighting corruption was secondary.
　　"Our main objective was to empower citizens," Mr. Singh said. "This law has done that - given the people the power to challenge their government. That is no small thing."