Panel: Bring NGOs, PPPs under RTI

Every non-government organisation (NGO) and Public-Private Partnership (PPP) project should come under purview of the Right To Information Act, a panel appointed by Prime Manmohan Singh has said. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Feb 23, 2012, 23:14:58 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Every non-government organisation (NGO) and Public-Private Partnership (PPP) project should come under purview of the Right To Information Act, a panel appointed by Prime Manmohan Singh has said.

A high-level panel on public health has told the government that RTI should be made mandatory for all NGOs and public private partnerships working in the social sector such as health to improve transparency and accountability.

The definition of the partnership involves hospitals built by a private entity but a land for which was given at a highly subsidised rate by the government. There are several such hospitals across India, which falls under this category, but they refuse to abide by the transparency law.

Transparency watchdog, the Central Information Commission (CIC), has said any project where the government provides land at a subsidised rate or provide annual financial assistance of Rs one crore or more should come under the ambit of RTI.

Planning commission deputy chairperson Montek Singh Ahluwalia had refused to bring all PPP projects under RTI saying the CIC will have to decide on individual projects.

K Srinath Reddy, who headed the PM-appointed panel, said transparency was a must to ensure accountability of PPP institutions working for national building and providing basic amenities to people.

“Many of these institutions were set up with the government’s help. We have asked the government to ensure that they come abide by RTI,” he said.

The Public Health Foundation of India, which Reddy heads, was one such PPP institution started in 2006 with Belinda and Bill Gates Foundation. It had been voluntarily providing information to citizens but from this March it will appoint a Public Information Officer (PIO) to meet the requirements of RTI on the directives of the CIC. To be first public private body to come under RTI, Reddy said they have decided to abide by the CIC decision and will not appeal against it. Reddy’s panel wants PPP under the RTI as number of schemes to provide universal access to public health to all with the help of private entities

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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