Window of Opportunity: Pre-Legislative Scrutiny and the Right to Information Act In India

Abstract

While there has been a considerable attention paid to the workings of various government committees in advanced democracies, there is scant attention paid to the nascent committee system in the parliamentary systems. One instance, where the very weaknesses that ail this nascent committee system presented a unique window of opportunity for a strong law, is the adoption of the Right to Information Act, 2005 (RTI) in India, which was then being considered by the Standing Committee on Personnel, Public Grievances, Law and Justice. While the tale of the Indian success story has been captured by recounting the popular accounts of the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sanghatan (MKSS), a grass roots movement, so far there is no thorough analysis that captures the pre-legislative consultative process, which went into the adoption of the RTI in India. This paper seeks to fill this lacuna, by tracing the process through which a weak draft law presented by the government was ultimately turned into a strong law. This will be accomplished by scrutinizing the complete minutes of the meetings of the Standing Committee, which are then corroborated by accounts from secondary sources. The contributions of the paper will be twofold: one, to present a better understanding of the nascent committee system in India, and two, to outline the opportunity structure that is available to influence the adoption of such legislations.