The Indian Consulate in Sydney has refused to make public records related to alleged fake passport issued to Chhota Rajan which enabled his stay in Australia, citing four exemption clauses from the RTI Act without giving any reason to substantiate them.
Venkatesh Nayak of Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative had sought from the Indian High Commission in Australia details of the passport issued to Rajan on the basis of forged identity.
The application was forwarded to the mission in Sydney where the travel document was issued to Rajan.
The Mission refused to divulge the details citing Sections 8(1)(a), (e), (g) and (h) of the RTI Act.
"... The First Appellate Authority has sent the email that the CPIO rejected my RTI application under Sections 8A, 8E, 8G and 8H. There is no attachment or email form the CPIO that was supposedly sent to me. To which email address, I am not sure," Nayak claimed.
Section 8(1)(a) alone covers seven grounds to deny information -- sovereignty and integrity, defence, strategic, scientific, economic interests and foreign relations of the state and incitement to commission of crimes. Section 8(1)(e) relates to fiduciary relationship, 8(1)(g) exempts information from disclosure which may endanger the life and safety of any person and 8(1)(h) the disclosure impede the investigation, prosecution process or arrest of the offenders.
Several high courts have given orders that mere invoking exemptions is not enough and the public authority must give sufficient reasons to justify denial of information.
"This reply from the Sydney Consulate amounts to shielding officers who may have issued the passport without due diligence or perhaps even through corrupt means. The CBI has already registered an FIR under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 against unnamed officials in this case. So there is a great amount of public interest in making the identity of these officials public instead of protecting them," Nayak alleged.
All monetary policies have external "spillover" effects,
Rajan said, adding circumstances today are, however, not normal and domestic demand may not respond to unconventional policy.
"To use a traffic analogy, policies with few adverse spillovers should be rated "green"; those that should be used temporarily could be rated "orange"; and policies that should be avoided at all times would be "red".
He said globally countries are far from having clear agreement on the colour of policies today, even with the best data, models, and empirical work.
"So we must begin a discussion. We could start with background papers from eminent academics and move on to multilateral institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the G-20.
"There will be a lot of fuzziness initially, but discussion will lead in time to better models and data - and will push policymakers to stay out of the clearly red," he said.
Central bankers face a different problem: inflation that is flirting with the lower bound of their mandate.
"With interest rates already very low, advanced economies' central bankers know that they must go beyond ordinary monetary policy - or lose credibility on inflation. They feel that they cannot claim to be out of tools.
"If all else fails, there is always the 'helicopter drop' whereby the central bank prints money and sprays it on the streets to create inflation," he added.
He admitted that setting such a rule will take time. "But the international community has a choice. We can pretend all is well with the global monetary non-system and hope that nothing goes spectacularly wrong. Or we can start building a system fit for the integrated world of the 21st century".
