A Dappled Sun
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9283083 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Aniket Aga (0000-0003-1074-3441, corresponding author), Chitrangada Choudhury (0000-0002-4382-2069) |
| Year | 2018 |
| Volume | 38 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 540-556 |
| Publication date | 2018-12-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Comparative Studies of South Asia Africa and the Middle East (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1089-201X • E-ISSN: 1548-226X |
| Publisher | Duke University Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1215/1089201x-7208856 |
| OpenAlex | W2907372239 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 29 |
This article explores how transparency laws reconfigure work practices and relations within the bureaucracy, and between bureaucrats and citizens. In a bureaucratic setup where a culture of secrecy looms large, India’s Right to Information (RTI) Act (2005), sometimes called the “sunshine law,” promised citizens unprecedented access to information. By tracing the journeys of multiple RTI requests within the largely understudied high offices of India’s federal government, we unravel how the new demands of disclosure intersect with entrenched bureaucratic norms and practice. We find that the act allows applicants a tenuous wedge into the everyday life of the state, including its uppermost echelons, precipitating a bureaucratic encounter. These encounters disrupt habitual modes of bureaucratic functioning by (1) allowing applicants the capacity to self-represent through the RTI request, a new, unusually autonomous kind of document; (2) forcing bureaucrats, who do not ordinarily engage with the public, to interact with applicants; and (3) concentrating decision-making authority and accountability in an individual, identifiable bureaucrat. Analyzing these practical disruptions, irrespective of the information they yield, suggests that the RTI Act proliferates bureaucratic encounters and politicizes secrecy. Individual bureaucrats get pitchforked into broader political struggles through their responses to requests
Accountability · Bureaucracy · Government (linguistics · Law and economics · Open government · Political science · Politics · Public relations · Secrecy · Sociology · Transparency (behavior · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Law · Public Administration · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies · Water Governance and Infrastructure
Indian Ink
Guerrilla Auditors
Red Tape
Journalism through RTI
Paper Tiger
Document Raj
Anthropology in the margins of the state
Democracy and Transparency in the Indian State
State Transparency after the Neoliberal Turn
The Specter and Reality of Corruption in State and Civil Society
Accounts and accountability
A Great and Revolutionary Law? The First Four Years of India’s Right to Information Act
Seeing the State
Documents
Ways of Knowing
Disciplining the everyday state and society? Anti-corruption and Right to Information activism in Delhi
From Max Weber
Government of Paper
From Rules to Strategies
Guerrilla Auditors
Transparency Short-Circuited
Spatializing States
| Unique citing works | 4 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,67 |
| Citation span | 2020 - 2025 (6) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 4 |