State Transparency after the Neoliberal Turn: The Politics, Limits, and Paradoxes of India’s Right to Information Law

Aradhana Sharma

doi:10.5771/0506-7286-2017-4-390

Contents
- Chapter Expand | CollapseAuthorsPage
- 329–331 Titelei/Inhaltsverzeichnis 329–331
- 332–434 Abhandlungen / Articles 332–434
  - 332–366 Access to Information as a Human Right and Constitutional Guarantee. A Comparative Perspective Michael Riegner Michael Riegner 332–366
  - 367–389 Access to Information and Constitutional Accountability: Ruffling Feathers in South Africa Richard Calland Richard Calland 367–389
  - 390–411 State Transparency after the Neoliberal Turn: The Politics, Limits, and Paradoxes of India’s Right to Information Law Aradhana Sharma Aradhana Sharma 390–411
  - 412–434 The Right to Information System in Brazil: Tensions between Transparency and Control of Information Marcio Camargo Cunha Filho Marcio Camargo Cunha Filho 412–434
- 435–450 Berichte / Reports 435–450
  - Access to Environmental Information in the Context of Development Activities in the Legal Framework of Cameroon Jean-Claude N. Ashukem Jean-Claude N. Ashukem
- 451–464 Buchbesprechungen / Book Reviews 451–464
- 465–478 Bibliographie / Bibliography 465–478
  - 465–465 RECHT UND ENTWICKLUNG ALLGEMEIN / LAW AND DEVELOPMENT IN GENERAL 465–465
  - 465–469 AFRIKA /AFRICA 465–469
  - 469–471 ASIEN /ASIA 469–471
  - 471–474 LATEINAMERIKA / LATIN AMERICA 471–474
  - 474–478 NAHER UND MITTLERER OSTEN / NEAR AND MIDDLE EAST 474–478
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VRÜ Verfassung und Recht in Übersee , page 390 - 411

State Transparency after the Neoliberal Turn: The Politics, Limits, and Paradoxes of India’s Right to Information Law

Autoren

Aradhana Sharma

DOI
- doi.org/10.5771/0506-7286-2017-4-390
- ISSN: 0506-7286
- ISSN online: 2941-9603
Abstract

In 2005, the Indian government passed the Right to Information or RTI Act, which is hailed for inaugurating an era of open, accountable and truly postcolonial democracy. This article focuses on how the RTI law is being both implemented and subverted in India through ordinary bureaucratic proceduralism and what this tells us about the limits and contrary logic of state transparency in the neoliberal age. India’s information freedom law has moorings in local grassroots movements that fought long and hard for its passage, but it also articulates with the global neoliberal development regime’s discourse on good governance. I consider how dominant transnational meanings of state transparency crosscut and color popular mobilizations of the RTI law in India. My contention is that the technocratic casting of transparent and good governance under neoliberalism lends a formalized and procedural hue to the ground-level workings of Indian law, which bureaucratizes social life, hems-in activist aspirations for fundamental changes in democratic governance and, paradoxically, reinforces state opacity. On the one hand, citizens and activists are compelled to become proficient in bureaucratic literacy in order to audit and petition the state. On the other hand, officials strategically alter the language and procedures of administration, shifting the interplay between writing and orality in their daily work and changing what they record and how they do so to avert scrutiny and preserve state secrecy in the age of transparency.
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