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Every year, the 3rd of May is observed as the World Press Freedom Day by UNESCO across the globe. Its objective is to have a world where people are given free access to accurate, fair and unbiased information representing a plurality of opinions and the means to actively communicate vertically and horizontally, thereby participating in the active life of the community. The day coincides with the anniversary of the world’s first freedom of information law passed in the Swedish parliament in 1776 covering both modern-day Sweden and Finland. The key achievements of the Act were the ban of political censorship and the gaining of public access to government documents. It is the 250th year since this law was passed and a clear indication that freedom of information is not a recent concept.
Freedom of the press and the freedom to information work hand in hand. Although free press is the one big tool to propagate the benefits of the freedom of information to the people, the freedom of information is the first key step required to securing true freedom of the press. It is the first step to empowerment of the Press and the people that gain access to it. With the creation of the United Nations the concept has gradually been accepted by most of the countries and the number of countries that have adopted freedom of information as a law/act has risen dramatically in the last 5 decades. The United States passed US Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in 1966. Though a little late Nagaland also came under similar freedom of information law with the rest of India through the RTI Act in 2005.
Like elsewhere, even in the typical Naga context the Right to Information is a tool that empowers citizens to take fact driven decision making else without proper information it is just an opinion driven best-speaker-gets-more-support style of decision making. Nagas are witness to many such decisions where emotions attached to social and religious affiliations have played the key role rather than factual data and historical facts. Starting from the highest law making body in the state, the Nagaland Legislative Assembly to the tinniest village committee meeting the ailment still continues today.
On the other hand the concept of recording correct and true information is still lacking in Nagaland as evident from the data kept by the government agencies. The most glaring example being the census of 2001 which had an inflated figure in the population of the state thereby resulting in negative growth in the census of 2011. Information in itself is not complete empowerment but the right method of analysing it with the correct way of interpretation makes it true empowerment. In Nagaland the practice of collecting and keeping information itself is flawed. The concept of data integrity is still not considered a virtue. Successive governments have failed to ensure the same as evident from the lack of correct data with our agencies. It is a farce when incorrect data is utilised for a state’s planning and development with progress as a key objective. So when the world is celebrating its 250th anniversary since the first freedom of information law was enacted, Nagaland has to think and act to collect and keep correct information first.