Informed Worries

People who know me best will know that I have a severe institutional bias, particularly when I form a part of that institution. I came across two things that got me thinking about transparency in the system and the random janta's right to accessing information.

First, I logged onto Wikileaks for the first time. I had, of course, heard about the project previously but for some reason, had never really got on to take a look myself. After a quick browse, I got to the India page and found this, which it turns out is an MoU between Kingfisher Airlines and Airbus for the purchase of 60 aircrafts. Unfortunately, there is nothing on the document which indicates who the lawyers were, but I'd be sure that there are a few ulcers going around after seeing this document out in the public domain. (Unless it was deliberately released - unlikely, no?)

The second was this - which is a letter from the Editors' Guild to the IPL. Those with strong views on the BCCI's activities and other sundry concerns will now be pleased to know that they can bomb Lalit Modi and Sharad Pawar's personal inboxes.

When the Right to Information issue blew up in India, I was more fearful than excited. I have no sympathy for bureaucratic sloth and the RTI is a good way to keep a check on that, but at the same time it often becomes impossible to efficiently run an organisation (leave alone a country) where almost everything you do is open to the scrutiny of 'busybodies, wayside interlopers....' (can't remember the quote - awful). I know...I've been there. Even the best of motives always rub some people off the wrong way and that little curtain separating what you need to tell people and what you don't is often the critical difference between being able to achieve something or not.

For the record - I was excessively opaque...