India's enactment of the law may now motivate its South Asian neighbours to follow its lead. In particular, Bangladesh has yet to draft a Right to Information bill, but the government has taken small steps towards this goal, not least the publication in 2002 of the Law Commission Working Paper on the proposed national Right to Information Act.

While the Bangladesh government is currently scrutinising the Law Commission review of the draft law, it must be remembered that while even as the paper was a welcome step towards recognising the right to information for Bangladesh's citizens, the proposed draft still falls short of international best practice and needs to be revised before it is taken forward, and it is here that the civil society and the media can take the lead for the enactment of a right to information law in Bangladesh.

The need for right to information in Bangladesh has not been more compelling than before. As one of the poorest and most corrupt countries in the world, Bangladesh appears in urgent need of an effective right to information law which can help to strengthen democracy and the rule of law, improve its progress with development, and reduce endemic corruption.

Bangladesh has for long been heavily reliant on external donor aid contributions, which play a vital role in advancing the country's economic development. However, the country has struggled to end its reliance on external aid and promote self-sustaining economic growth strategies. Much of the failure of development strategies to date can partly be attributable to the fact that they were designed and implemented in a closed environment -- between governments and donors and without much input from civil society.

An effective RTI regime would oblige governments to disclose their relationships with donors and equip civil society with a compelling means to force the government to involve its citizens in formulating development strategies that determine their livelihoods. This was also one of the recommendations in the Poverty Reduction Strategy paper prepared by the government of Bangladesh in 2004 and therefore it is pertinent that development aid is linked to reduction of secrecy in governance which can happen when an access regime is in place.

An open access regime can also help promote sustainable long-term growth. RTI can help to foster good governance principles of transparency and accountability that can spread to the functioning of the Bangladeshi economy. Markets, like governments, do not function well in secret, thus the culture of openness promulgated in an effective RTI law can encourage the development of a political and economic environment more conducive to the free market principles of "perfect information" and "perfect competition."

Transparent markets can then generate greater investor confidence, bolstering both local and foreign investment in the economy, leading to stronger, more sustainable growth. Moreover, RTI can ensure that growth is equitably distributed so that it can lift people out of poverty as well as drive commercial development because it gives all citizens the recourse to access information and can thus, for example, uncover corruption which may have led to the skimming off of anti-poverty funds.

RTI can also act as a powerful tool that can be used to strengthen state stability, reduce conflict, and nurture democratic governance. More specifically, it can be a vital tool in helping reduce disillusionment among sections of society who believe that they are unable to meet their basic needs and freedoms because they have been marginalised by an unaccountable and corrupt government and political system. Openness and information sharing contribute to national stability by establishing a two-way dialogue between citizens and the state, reducing distance between government and the people and thereby combating feelings of alienation.

Although the enactment of a RTI law is the government's prerogative, as demonstrated in India's example, civil society groups must be actively involved in raising both political and public awareness at all levels of society about the benefits of such a right. In this way, they can generate substantial pressure on the government to adopt RTI legislation. Bangladesh has a thriving civil society, made up of a number of political organisations, labour unions and interest groups that operate at all levels of society. Thus, it is important for these groups to take up the RTI cause not only to promote awareness but also to ensure that when the government drafts the law, it meets international best practice and norms by incorporating the key principles as set out below.

A well crafted law should be based on the principle of maximum disclosure and minimum exceptions. This means that there should be a presumption in favour of access. Those bodies covered by the act therefore have an obligation to disclose information and every member of the public has a corresponding right to receive information. Any person at all should be able to access information under the legislation, whether a citizen or not.

The key aim of any exception from the law should be to protect and promote the public interest. The law should therefore not allow room for a refusal to disclose information that will allow the government to protect itself from embarrassment or the exposure of wrongdoing. The list of exemptions should be short and other laws should not be permitted to extend them. They should also be subject to a blanket "public interest override" -- whereby a document which is presumed exempt under the act should still be disclosed if the public interest in the specific case requires it.

In order to ensure that maximum disclosure takes place in practice, the definition of what is covered by the act should be drafted broadly. Enshrining a right to access "information" rather than only "records" or "documents" is therefore preferred. Furthermore, the act should not limit access only to information held by public bodies but should also cover private ones as is the case of South African act.

A key test of an access law's effectiveness is the ease, inexpensiveness and promptness with which people seeking information are able to obtain it. This is important because like India, a substantial part of Bangladesh's population lives below the poverty line. The law should include clear and uncomplicated procedures that ensure quick responses at affordable fees. Applications should be simple and ensure that the illiterate and/or impecunious are not dissuaded from using the law. Any fees which are imposed for gaining access should also not be so high as to deter potential applicants. Best practice requires that fees should be limited only to cost recovery, and that no charges should be imposed for applications nor for search time; the latter, in particular, could easily result in prohibitive costs and defeat the intent of the law. The law should also provide strict time limits for processing requests and these should be enforceable.

All public bodies should be required to establish open, accessible internal systems that facilitate information disclosure for the public. Likewise, provisions that mandate the need for appropriate record keeping and management systems should be included in the law so that information can easily be found.

Lastly, an effective enforcement provisions ensure the success of access legislation. Anybody denying access must provide reasons. Powerful independent and impartial bodies must be given the mandate to review refusals to disclose information and compel release. The law should impose penalties and sanctions on those who willfully obstruct access.

Since 2002, after the working paper on Right to Information was submitted and circulated, Bangladesh has failed to make any substantial inroads towards adopting a RTI law, and in the absence of any law, it has been the media that has been making the government accountable for its actions.

While the Law Minister Moudud Ahmed in a seminar on "Right to Information" organised by the Dhaka University Journalists' Association recently announced that the government was considering to amend the Official Secrets Act, 1923, as a small step towards an access regime in Bangladesh, however civil society and the media must now take up the RTI cause with vigour and create awareness about the importance of having such a law and also advocate with the policy makers for drafting a better law without which the whole idea of information seeking would be meaningless.

Aditi Datta works for Commonwealth Human rights Initative.