Sunshine legislation

The freedom to question the government about its actions is the hallmark of a democracy. The Right to Information Act, passed in 2005, guarantees the citizens of India the right to question their government, and ensures that people no longer have to rely solely on elections to hold public functionaries accountable.

Every year, nearly 6 million information applications are filed across the country, making the RTI Act the most extensively used transparency legislation globally. National assessments have shown that a large proportion of these applications are filed by the poorest and the most marginalised. This is perhaps because they have understood the tremendous potential of the RTI law to empower them to access their basic rights and entitlements, especially in the absence of effective grievance redress mechanisms to address service delivery failures. For instance, when