The Public Records Act was supposed to ensure that Indian citizens eventually had access to the proceedings and files of government.  The Act is crucial to the writing of Indian history, and to all who have an interest in questions of access to political information. Though it was intended to ensure that Ministries deposit their files, once closed, in the National Archives of India, Delhi, in reality documents are usually censored prior to being sent to the Archives. Some Ministries do not send their files to the archive at all. Read civil servant, Naved Masood’s critique of this process and the working of the Act, posted earlier to this blog.

A committee set up by government reviewed the Act, and this note was circulated to members of the public by the Government of India.

See Shahid Amin’s response, also posted on this blog

The Committee has recorded the views of the few worthies who responded to their questionnaire. They seem to have gone on a tangent and have addressed certain procedural issues and recommended purely procedural matters.  To my mind, the Committee has not quite addressed the central issue regarding the real problem with the transfer of post-independence (and even pre-independence) records to the NAI.  The problem with the Archives is not that the Act comes in the way of smooth transfer of post-independence records; rather, the problem is that the Act does not really lay down any specific mechanism to ensure that such transfers become smooth affairs  — the amendments proposed do not relate to this aspect.

There are two alternative routes to tackle the issue;

A.   An essentially redrafted Act which converts NAI into a statutory body; enacts the concept of ”intermediate custody” of the specified records (i.e. create a species of record where copies reach the archives much before the record itself becomes ‘archivable’; and brings archival expertise within the Ministry;

OR

B. Draw up a scheme of Archival Reforms and implement it as an executive measure.

The problem as I see it, is that NAI having authored and got the PR Act in 1993, now feels that Archival Reforms must be woven round the statute. As it happens, the present legislation does not address the main problem, hence the disconnect (at least in my opinion)

The news of proposed revision of the PR Act, and the recent amendments in the Rules which has allowed a substantial presence of academic end-users on the Archival Advisory Board d has generated a great deal of interest and excitement among scholars in  India and abroad. The Committee has very kindly given full expression to these views.

We have a great opportunity before us, of redrawing the rules of access to public records. What is needed is an out of box approach. Once we put forward the radical importance of greater and faster accessibility to Public Records, with the NAI converted into a statutory body, incorporating the concept of ‘intermediate custody’, then purely procedural issues, such as absence of proper record room, or of adequate manpower become secondary. Without this we would succeed in only tinkering with the PR Act of 1993: the need of the hour, the  progress of scholarship on India (as also compliance with the highest internationals standards) is to make the transfer, through intermediate custody of  generated records at dd. NAI,  as much a statutory responsibility of the concerned authorities, as the creation of records  which is the sin quo non of decision making and  good governance. It is only then that good governance and transparency in governance will become the two faces of the coin of a New India. The techonology for this already exists. If the GOI can legislate to hold  personal details of  over 1 billion individual residents of the country in trust for developmental and governance purposes, and hold these in trust on behalf of the sovereign people of India, surely the chief repository of records of GoI, the new, statutorily empowered NAI, can hold records generated by the different governmental agencies, in intermediate custody till they are thrown open to public.

I suggest that all of us concerned with a change in the PR Act, relook at the novel proposals contained in the note prepared by S, Note Shri Naved Masood, IAS, as a starting point for a radical rethink, not simply about amendments to the existing PR Act, but the statutory revival of the NAI in a very different incarnation. This would involve finally ridding ourselves of the enabling clauses, as well as the fetters, on record availability laid down over a century ago by the redoubtable Lord. Curzon.

Post scriptum:

• It is well to remind ourselves of the irony that one of the primary purpose of the colonial Indian Historical Records Commission, which has seems to have gone into an advanced stage of dotage, was  to prevent the natives from accessing the records kept at the Imperial Records Rooms! That was why early Indian historians had to make do with Selections from the Records from the GoI, which the then Government, through the Commission, thought safe for the ‘native historians’ to have access to!

1. Introduction

If research in various aspects of Modern Indian History has excited so much interest among Indian and foreign scholars, the reasons have as much to do with ready availability of public records of the last couple of centuries as to the intellectually stimulating and challenging nature of problems posed by the encounter of an ancient, culturally vibrant society with an imperialist power. Material germane to the tasks available in libraries and private collections is amply supplemented by meticulously kept government and other records in the myriad archives in the country and abroad, most notably the National Archives of India (hereinafter the NAI) at New Delhi and the India Office Records U.K. There are, of course, a whole host of other archives of State Governments and other organisations containing documents relating to an era that led to the evolution of the politically integrated Indian nation and its partition and many other equally important developments. It is quite obvious that this interest survives and the near future will see continuance of similar inquiries in the more recent, post independence India if material pertaining to this era continues to be available. This note addresses the limited but no less important issue of availability and access to post independence government records useful in reconstructing important political, economic, educational, cultural and administrative aspects of the history of our country with particular reference to the role of government policies as the ‘causes’ and ‘outcomes’ of such aspects.

2. The Problem

The main repositories of government records important enough to be preserved in perpetuity are the National and State Archives for the Union and the State Governments concerned respectively. Government records are deposited in the archives after a series of ‘weeding out’ processes involving ‘sievings’ at different points of time to destroy records- mainly government files- considered to be no longer necessary. Without going into the details, it may be mentioned that records considered important enough to be preserved indefinitely are ‘consigned’ to the Record Rooms of the organisation concerned from where, after a further and supposedly detailed review, they are either weeded out or passed on to the NAI.

For every Department of the Government of India- the word Ministry was not in vogue before 1947 for obvious constitutional reasons- virtually all pre independence records of important policy decisions or issues engendering public interest/ controversy are to be found in the NAI. The situation drastically alters when it comes to the period after 1947. While the generality of the statement made in the last sentence is unlikely to be contested by many, the point may be illustrated by drawing attention to some of the records not available with reference to two randomly selected Ministries viz the Ministry of Education (since 1985, Ministry of Human Resource Development- MHRD) and the Ministry of Agriculture. The position is summarized below;

Ministry of Education[2] (now MHRD)

- Examination of the Recommendations of the University Education Commission (only intermittent records available).

- Setting up of the University Grants Commission as a statutory body (hardly ten per cent of the relevant records in the NAI).

- Records relating to the tortuous course of the ‘Three Language Formula’.

- Setting up ‘institutes of national importance’ like the Jawaharlal Nehru University, the NEHU and subsequently most of the recently established Central Universities (prior to the 42^nd Constitutional amendment, Parliament could establish only ‘institutions of national importance’)

- Evolution of policy of uniform pay structure for college and university teachers.

- Records relating to the National Education Commission (1967).

- Records relating to the formulation of National Policy on Education of 1985.

- Records relating to the politically sensitive affairs of the Aligarh Muslim University between1965 to 1981.

- Transfer of ‘education’ from List-II to List-III of the seventh schedule.

- Proposals for ‘privatization’ of higher and technical education from time to time.

- Constitution/ reconstitutions of the Central Advisory Board of Education.

- Internal discussions in the Ministry on several parliamentary debates on ‘state of education in the country’.

- Setting up separate Councils for Research in Social Sciences, History and Philosophy (after protracted controversy whether government could directly fund research institutions or whether UGC could function as the canalizing agency).

- Setting up the NCERT and NIEPA (only partial records).

- Discussion on the pros and cons of the ‘National Curriculum Framework’ and the ‘Minimum Levels of Learning”.

Ministry of Agriculture

- Establishment of separate Departments of Agriculture & Cooperation and Agricultural Education & Research.

- Formulation of plans like the IADP and the IAAP to boost agricultural production.

- Bulk of the records pertaining to ushering the “Green Revolution”.

- Setting up of the first few Agriculture Universities under the ‘land lease pattern’.

- Separation of rural development from agriculture and formation of the Ministry of Rural Development (1985).

- Records relating to management of severe droughts of 1966, 1979 and 1987.

- Transfer of work relating to ‘Scarcity relief’ from the Department of Food to the Department of Agriculture.

- Issues relating to ‘plight of farmers’.

- Evolution of ‘relief assistance norms’ for natural calamities.

- Evolution of the policy relating to ‘procurement prices’ and ‘minimum support prices’.

- Establishment of the Food Corporation of India and the policy on inter-State movement of food-grains.

- Review of land reforms policies.

- Fertilizer subsidies- evolution of policies.

(On some of these subjects, there are incomplete records).

It may be reiterated that the omissions listed here are only illustrative to bring home the point that a large corpus of important record of considerable significance to academics and policy makers is disappearing. There are no reasons to believe that the status of records is particularly dismal in case of the two Ministries discussed. If the vast machinery of the Government of India is taken into account it would seem that a considerable source material for the scholar and policy maker may have already been lost.

3. The Causes

It is necessary to briefly consider the causes of important records not finding their way in the archives as the solution to the problem would depend on its correct diagnosis. The causes can be summarized as under.

- Disinterest, or worse, indifference of the senior organizational functionaries in Ministries, Departments and executive agencies to the need to preserve important records. When the present writer first joined the Government of India as Under Secretary in 1984, record management was an important aspect of the functioning of general administration or O&M branches- this is no longer so. Ministry of External Affairs is possibly an exception in that it has created its own efficient archives but this has reportedly resulted in MEA not transferring its own records to the NIA.

-  Total neglect of the Record Rooms. In fact, in cases of the two Ministries considered above, Record Rooms are not even located in the buildings housing the ministries – in case of the MHRD it is a good 7 KMs away from Shastri Bhavan! An off-shoot of this neglect is that often personnel incapacitated for reasons of health or intemperate life styles are assigned to these dreary places.

- Disinclination to use the Record Room. Neglect results in Sections and Branches, two important functional hubs in the Secretariat, minimizing transfer of important records to the Record Room. It is not uncommon to find Sections retaining three decade old important records, lest they are needed at some point of time. It can be safely asserted that most of the records which ought to be lodged in the Record Rooms get weeded out from the Sections after their perceived utility is over.

- Lack of historical perspective even among the top management. Even at the top most level of the civil service, it is not uncommon to find that the need for preserving important records is not considered necessary except for creating more space for new records or having the ‘foresight’ to decide which record may still be needed as inputs for official work, particularly for handling future litigations.

- Neglect by professional historians and archivists. This writer had occasion to discuss the topic with some of the most respected names in Modern Indian History only to realise that these eminent persons are not sufficiently worried as their ‘research interest’ terminates before 1947; they have so far not realised the drastic drop in fresh archival accretions. Similar attitude is found among professional archivists; most of them have a genuine interest in their work which, however, revolves round catering to the needs of the scholars. This restricted perception of their role arguably comes in the way of the professionals realizing that while the reservoir under their charge is impressive; its inlets are drying up fast. There is a quaint way in which the archivist’s attitude manifests itself- one has to register as a ‘scholar’ to be able to use the Reading Room of the NAI, thus even a government functionary needing to consult archival records for official purposes, has to be registered as a scholar! There is nothing wrong with this except that it indicates a rather segmented ‘client perception’.

4. The Remedies

We may discuss the solution to the problem in two parts viz. (i) Objectives of reforms and (ii) Specific remedies.

(i) Objectives of Reforms

The following would appear to be the objectives for which specific remedies need to be tailored.

- Bring about greater clarity and professionalism to the process of records preservation.

- Removing preservation of records from the category of ‘routine’.

-  Bringing NAI and record preservation within the same Ministry.

- Changing attitudes of all role players to preservation of important public records.

(ii) Specific Remedies

It is obvious that the objectives listed above are inter-related and ways and means of addressing them have to be similarly integrated. Keeping this in view the following remedial framework may be considered.

(a) There is a strong case to introduce the concept of “preliminary custody” of records which are prima facie worth preserving. In this approach soft copies/ reprographic records could be sent to the NAI immediately after a decision is taken in a particular case- the originals may be retained in the organisation for the time being. It will be essential to identify the class of cases to be treated under this dispensation. A suggested list of such cases could be;

* Files relating to all legislations (including passage of bills through legislative committees etc) after they receive the assent of the President.

* Files relating to formulation of ‘national policies’ after these are notified in the Gazette.

* Files relating to creation of new Departments and Organisations and transfer of work from one Ministry/Department to the other after the orders are implemented.

* Files in which prosecution / defending of cases heard by constitution benches of the Supreme Court (i.e. benches consisting of five or more judges) is handled on behalf of the Union of India by the administrative Ministry after the case is finally disposed off.

* Files relating to matters referred by the President for advice of the Supreme Court under Article 143 of the Constitution.

* Files of Ministries concerning matters handled by the Public Accounts Committee of the House of People after the ‘Action Taken Report’ in the relevant matter is ‘tabled’ in Parliament.

The custody being ‘preliminary’, access to such records by the general public may be available only after the original is ripe for ‘consignment’. In case of legislations, ‘records’ will include not only the relevant files of the ‘administrative Ministry’ but also the ‘connected file’ of the Legislative Department of the Ministry of Law. In all cases under this category the administrative Ministry must certify that the papers transferred for ‘preliminary custody’ to the NAI constitute complete records of a given case. The primary responsibility of monitoring the progress of consignment and getting the originals transferred will rest with the NAI.

(b) Converting Record Rooms into ‘intermediate archives’. It would not be disputed by anybody with even nodding acquaintance with the functioning, or non- functioning, of Record Rooms, that these derelict spaces currently serve no purpose. Clearly, they need professional attention if important records are to be retained pending their transfer to the NAI or a decision about their final ‘weeding out’. Considering the small size of the average Record Room, there is a strong case for grouping Ministries / Departments for the purpose of retaining their records. These merged Record Rooms could be called “Intermediate Archives” and be managed jointly by ‘constituent Ministries’ and the NAI with a professional archivist from the latter in charge of their functioning. The broad grouping of such archives could illustratively be- Agriculture, Food, Rural Development, Consumer Affairs and Water Resources; Planning, Finance and Statistics; Education, Culture, Sports and Scientific Ministries; Infrastructural Ministries; Economic Ministries and; Defence; Home and Personnel.

Access to records could be on the existing lines. The advantages of this arrangement will be that records will be more professionally managed; NAI would be in a position to keep a watch on the state of transfer of records from ‘feeder organisations’; and users will be in a better position to know the nature of records available. Besides, once the Branches and Sections realise that retrieval and upkeep may not be difficult, there will be more ‘willing transfer’ of records.

(c) Formation of subject-matter specific Records Management Committees. While archivists know best how to preserve records and make retrieval trouble-free, it is often difficult for them to assess the future importance and ‘need to retain’ many classes of public records, particularly in cases where the issues involved may be of technical or scientific nature. With the establishment of ‘intermediate archives’ it would be practicable to set up committees comprising of experts from the relevant subjects, archivists and representatives of feeder organisations under the chairmanship of the Secretary of the ‘nodal ministry’ to take stock of the acquisition of records in the intermediate archives, the movement of ‘eligible records’ to the NAI and the working of the prescribed arrangements in the organisations to see that important records are being maintained while unnecessary papers are regularly weeded out.

(d) Designation of ‘Nodal Ministry’ for preservation of public records.

Currently, while the Department of Culture is administratively responsible for the NAI. Technically, the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (ARPG) deals with management of records in government offices. The role of ARPG is, however, notional and is confined to laying down ‘record retention schedules’ occasional reviews of ‘weeding out’ and similar peripheral matters. It is doubtful if that Department has played a pro active role in this sphere. In view of the scheme suggested above, it is logical that the Department responsible for the NAI should also become the ‘nodal department’ for preservation of important government records. While this writer has never had the opportunity to work in the Department of Culture, he had occasion to watch the affairs of that Department from the neighbouring Department of Education and would venture to submit that the top ‘culture managers’ have generally been partial to the more glamorous aspects of their work neglecting the ‘boring’ archives. A decision about the ‘nodal department’ may accordingly be taken having regard to the nexus of ‘archival affairs’ with the overall mandate of the Department.

(e) Changing attitudes towards Public Records. This might seem a rather ‘ceremonial suggestion’; it is, however, strongly submitted that as a long term measure it goes to the root of the very basis of this note- how to enlist willing cooperation of all the role players to improve the existing state of preservation of important public records. First and foremost, in an era where the right to obtain information from any ‘public authority’ is a statutory obligation, the proprietary attitude towards information contained in old public records must itself change- if public have virtually unbridled access to current information, no higher degree of segregation can be attached to information relating to decision-making in the past. The leaders of NAI must actively work towards reorienting the attitude of their cutting edge level functionaries. The requirement of being registered as a scholar to use the facilities of the archives being a manifestation of that attitude must give way to free access subject to establishment of identity- inquiry as to the ‘purpose for visiting archives’ is surely an avoidable exercise. Members of the public with a degree of curiosity, the odd government functionary keen to know what transpired in his sphere of work in the past should be as welcome as the hard-core scholar.

Equally important is the need to inculcate appreciation of the importance of public records within the officialdom, particularly at the top level. Generally, senior officials lack curiosity, let alone knowledge, of what kind of records may be available in the NAI or even their own Record Rooms. This disinterest is, arguably, the root cause of the archives not receiving fresh infusions and it needs to be dealt with by a series of pro active measures – principally by the archivists. Some of these measures could be the following;

- NAI must initiate the practice of issuing brief ‘abstracts of selections from records’ pertaining to the various ministries to acquaint the personnel of the organisations concerned of the importance of information preserved.

- List of files in the Record Rooms with a brief description of their subject-matter should be made available at all levels within the organisation. Once the ‘intermediate archives’ come into being restricted circulation of ‘selections from records may also be introduced.

- Ministries could initiate the practice of quarterly presentations of archival material pertaining to their sphere of work. Aside from inducing greater interest in preservation of records, this should also be professionally rewarding as past initiatives can have significant educational value.

5. Conclusion

There are admittedly far more important tasks before the government than preservation of important records. As this note endeavours to show, however, retaining important papers, apart from safeguarding a major source of our history for future scholars, is also helpful in improving the quality of decision-making in the government by providing useful insights in major policy making initiatives of the past. There is a clear disparity when it comes to pre and post independence government records and the reasons for historically significant records escaping the archival net must be understood and set right. While India’s colonial encounter is the subject matter of so much of research by scholars at home and abroad for its intrinsic importance, it is clear that ready availability of relevant records in archives have made research of such high quality possible. Similarly, independent India’s experiments in development, social justice and managing a truly complex and plural society within a democratic framework- despite serious doubts of the skeptics in the early post independence days- may continue to excite future students of society and policy makers the world over. Let the researcher and policy maker of tomorrow not blame the Indian establishment of the early twenty-first century for not doing enough to save much of the evidence to enable them to critically examine the role of the Indian state in grappling with massive problems of a newly independent country.

________________________________________________________________

Naved Masood can be contacted at;

naved.masood@gmail.com

Like the NAI, the Delhi archives are presently suffering from a lack of both funds and staff; the library, for instance, is in a state of complete disrepair. But we were assured by Sanjay Garg, who is in charge of the research room, that the archive itself is in good functioning order. The process of cataloguing its scattered Persian and Urdu records is underway, as are efforts to digitise the entire collection, about which I shall presently say more.  From the very beginning, one of the important mandates for the setting up of the Delhi Archives was the acquisition of material “of interest” to Delhi (although the grounds for adjudgement seem fairly unclear) from other archival collections. We were told that records are regularly acquired from the Haryana and Punjab State Archives, and from the NAI; in addition, when funds allow, a historian is dispatched to the British Library to decide on what should be acquired from there. The Acquisitions Department also sends out a call in the papers at intervals for information about personal and family collections; sadly, we could not glean more information about this process because the person in charge was away on vacation.

In 2006, the Delhi archives launched an ambitious and much heralded project to digitise its entire collection; the process was still underway in early 2009.  Documents, maps and photographs are being scanned and the visitor can access these on the two or three computers that are available for the purpose. Unfortunately, the computers are equipped with a search engine that is both difficult and cumbersome to use as well as being excruciatingly slow. This technology was developed by and borrowed from the NAI, where the online index is so ridden with misleading spellings as to make it practically unusable.  Our brief use of the search engine at the Delhi Archives did not seem to throw up any glaring mistakes here at least – or perhaps we were dazzled by the visual materials now available online. Maps, the earliest going back to 1803; photographs including those of nationalist leaders; landscapes, cityscapes and monuments shot by colonial photographers; and hilariously, photos of the archive staff posing in the library stacks and offices are now all there to view with a mere click of the mouse. For a hundred rupees apiece moreover, the user can go home with the images of her choice on a pen-drive or a CD.

It is notable that the users that the Delhi State Archives and the NAI get are extremely different, a fact that impacts the way the two places function, particularly in terms of access.  We were told at the research room at the NAI that the variety of users it gets has increased both in numbers and in diversity, so much so that a few years ago, archive officials decided that the category of “bonafide” user had to be expanded to include the non-academic user. Previously, access to the NAI was largely restricted to scholars armed with documentation proving their credentials; now, any citizen with some form of state identification is allowed access. While the bulk of users are still most certainly academics, the archive, or the idea of the archive, looms large in the public imagination. There are for instance, many novelists and film-makers who use the NAI. Not all are happy with their experience; some leave disappointed because the dry colonial records do not reveal, or immediately reveal the stories and detail they seek. The launching of state schemes – like the extension of martyrs pensions – that require written evidence from the archive also triggers off an increase in users.  As more people and events are defined as part of, and co-opted into the National Movement,  claimants to familial connections soar. We were told for example, that there was an influx of enquirers from certain villages in Haryana after a few families were able to substantiate their claims of being descendents of INA soldiers. Last year, the government agreed to grant the status of freedom fighters to the victims of the Jalliawala Bagh massacre in 1919 resulting in the arrival of those claiming to be descendents seeking evidence for the same (a complicated situation because of the vast discrepancies between the reported numbers of those killed in the British and Indian lists).

Interestingly, one case had a direct impact on the archival policy on access to documents. In the 1990s, with the increase in the number of heritage hotels in areas that included the former Princely States, claimants to land soared, with the NAI and the Home Ministry being dragged to court in several cases. As a result, the Accession Papers of the Princely States were made unviewable (a mystery was thereby solved when I repeated this information to a historian friend, frustrated that she was not allowed access to Dewas records from the ’50s for some unknown reason). Interestingly, the largest category of new users consist of descendents of indentured labourers who left India in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries to places like Mauritius, Jamaica, British Guiana, Trinidad and Fiji who want to trace their family histories. This is no easy task – these migrants appear in the lists that the colonial state kept of passages, medical examinations, births, deaths and marriages but were referred to by their first names only.

The profile of users at the Delhi Archives is quite different; most are non-academic and the number of scholars there could be as small as one or two a month. The non-academic user is also of a particular kind. Employees from various Delhi government departments are occasionally dispatched to the archive to refer to old files. But more importantly, the Delhi Archives are home to Delhi’s muncipal land records. A fifty to a hundred people a day arrive to look at, and make photo-copies of land records in order to settle disputes, make claims etc. The process is simple and routine and perhaps it is the fact of its being an everyday legal office that makes the Delhi Archives far simpler to access than a scholarly archive like the NAI. Entry to the NAI for instance, involves an arduous process of registration and verification; there is no such scrutiny at the Delhi Archives. Materials like border maps that are deemed as posing a threat to national security cannot be accessed at the NAI. Browsing through the maps at the Delhi Archives, we came across several border maps, a few of which we bought copies of that we can now presumably reproduce, disseminate or enlarge to hang on a wall.

We asked Sanjay Garg whether there was a policy at the Delhi to disallow the viewing of any of its records. Yes, he said, if the material was a threat to the nation’s safety. Had such a restriction ever been imposed? No, he answered.

This fact generates an over-hanging awareness of potential reprimands and memos that could issue from these Ministries, asking for explanations for why certain documents were released. A direct result of this is the pro-active censorship of materials such as maps of disputed territories or documents that ‘may incite communal disharmony’ by the archival staff themselves. One member of the staff, for instance, disallowed the reproduction of a map of the Tibetan region on the grounds that it would ‘jeopardise the geo-political interests of the country’, and recounts how he was responsible for withholding certain documents that were asked for in the Emergency period, that would have impacted the then office of the leader of the opposition, Charan Singh.

The NAI thus sees itself as closely wedded to the state and as a responsible guardian of potentially impactful documents that would have dire consequences in the wrong hands. No other state archive quite sees itself as the official concealer of the state’s dirty linen, and the Delhi archive, in that sense, is the apex institution in the degree to which it alone manifests emotions displayed typically by state archives across the country: secrecy, responsibility, control, paternalism, righteousness as the arbiter of access.

This is in direct contrast to the functioning and world view of many of the archivists, who in fact declare that the archives are technically open to all citizens, and are a public repository. This legal fact is predictably enough mediated through other legal qualifications about sensitivity and interests of the nation, and looped through a relay of permissions solicited from various authorities. A search for a conspiracy of concealment would draw a blank in most state archives. What works is a sort of relay of apprehensiveness and bureaucratic lag, with most staff looking over their shoulders to watch who sees them hand over any document from a list of publications available in their bookshop, to a list of documents acquired from the British Library through official exchange agreements. Save those who are higher up in the hierarchy and more secure in their positions, acquiring information could necessitate an RTI application purely to surmount the anxiety generated by informal questioning.

Archivists themselves are aware of this. They point to the fact that the maximum difficulty is encountered at the gate, where it can take a full half-hour or more to get past the security, get a daily pass issued, etc. Senior members of at least two prestigious archives in the capital pointed to the security guard’s authority at the gate as being the biggest hurdle to accessing the archives. Some point to the ‘caution exercised by the hatchet’ at the Ministry level, even before documents arrive in the public domain.

Pramod Mehra, the Assistant Director of the Archives indicates that little has changed since 1923 in the form of record-keeping, a consciousness brought in by the colonial government. The strife over public access can be recounted from the time of the colonial government with differing views exercised by changing governor-generals. The archives, he states, function as a mediator between the creating agency such as the Ministries, and scholars. But, he insists, all who carry bona fide documents proving their identity as citizens have an inalienable right to enter the archives.

Technically therefore, there seem to be sufficient spaces for intervention by users, and in fact, as the earlier post states, the increase in the number and kind of users has in itself forced an expansion in the categories of users permitted. It would appear that this is the trend everywhere. Where archival records accidentally have non-historical functions, as in the Delhi Archives, the archive alters eventually to accommodate users and it would seem that generating such users and uses is the easier way to pragmatise the question of access.

The other mechanism is to find hooks within the system through which to enable access. Take the case of the Central Secretariat Library which is housed within the Secretariat complex in New Delhi. The Library sees itself as a repository of government records and documents, open to government employees by right, for any research they may want to conduct. As a transition from the colonial period, this library stores official documents that pertain to the past of the current state. Since the library views itself as open to the public for generalised reading, there is not much anxiety over making older books and documents available. A student working on the North East, for instance, will find it cumbersome to enter the National Archives and to access maps of the region which may be far more easily traced in the Central Secretariat Library.

What is of even greater interest is that this is the library that holds any document acquired by a foreign entity in collaboration with a state institution. So, for instance, the online Digital South Asia Library, a consortium that is housed by the University of Chicago website, collected a range of literary works in Indian languages based on the compilations of a national librarian. A copy of this collection lies with the Central Secretariat, as do microfilms that have been received as part of an exchange programme with the British Library. The current director of this Library appears only too willing to encourage collaborations from historians towards the cataloguing of these collections, which once again are closed to the public merely because adequate cataloguing procedures are not in place. In an interview that appeared to open doors, he insisted that generating public pressure around the significance of the collection would work as a persuasive force, as evidence that the funds allocated for digitisation or preservation are in fact needed, and that an audience exists for such material.

It seems as though appealing to abstract principles of access, citizenship and rights calls forth nameless and immovable blocking mechanisms inbuilt in the state, whereas tinkering with minor functions that do not invoke its broader raison d’être allows one to enter unnoticed.

In a national and possibly international situation where anti-state claims on land are often non-legal (whether in the form of ethical arguments or armed rebellion) the current conflicts over land in Goa are local in the sense of having specific attributes. Special Economic Zones (as also other prior forms of transnational economic flows) propagate a  delinking of life, labour, and capital from any fixed political entity, in as far as they claim immunity from national laws. Against this, the diverse claims on land in Goa (whether as familial disputes, environmental conflicts, livelihood arguments, belongingness and historical claims of being indigenous), raise overlapping claims and arguments about the relation between legality and politics, the use of internet technology within resistance movements and rights over land that are outside the domain of private property. All of these resonate with similar conflicts ongoing in other parts of the country, with some differences in the kinds of opposition generated.

The overall thrust of the argument made here is that movements that are pitted against the state or the multinational entities it supports straddle various forms of state power. Currently, we tend to see these divided into the formal exercise of power through law, regulation, and systematization, and the exercise of power through non-legal and non-state entities and means. The widely perceived illegitimacy of the state requires it to engage in two forms of political representation – the one consolidating its use of governmentality through law, the other effecting its sovereignty through a substantive exercise and demonstration of power. The appearance of legality and the lacing through of all political processes with due procedure and due documents is important to sustain some measure of governmentality, while the domain of substantive politics requires that rule be maintained through overt coercion and expropriation. The two domains are not disconnected. The ability to amend laws by an act of government, without due discussion or consensus gives the state infinite licence to bolster its acts of violence with legality. The gap between these two domains provides an element of unpredictability and turbulence that generates the frisson of excitement for viewers (as against the sufferers) of Indian state politics. For, the sheer existence of forms of governmentality implies that those equipped to do so will demand the fulfillment of the liberal project that the state claims to be bound by. The Right to Information movement and the innumerable human rights reports and people’s courts are instances of the state being called to order within its own terms. If these calls threaten to jeopardise interests beyond a certain threshold, then substantive violence is enacted, more often than not exceeding the bounds of legality. Those who oppose the state but whose opposition is articulated within the terms of governmentality find themselves condemned to demanding justice or the restitution of truth over decades.  The success of the state however lies in its ability to negotiate both these forms of power, allowing it to insert itself into dominant global currents in politics and economy, while keeping its house in order at home. This gap and its bridging is made visible through a range of events, patterns and pronouncements. The unstable status of the document as the locus of truth and evidence, in the context of legal and political conflicts reveals this gap. Differing forms of punishment and justice are not the only markers of ill-fitting forms of power. Ethically admissible claims that are not based on rights, made by non-state entities that have no legal recognition are also caught on the side of all that lies outside the domain of modern statecraft. Internet technologies that work to make what was hitherto hidden or inaccessible more ‘public’ are necessarily inscribed within this network of quasi-legal, legitimate, illegal and illegitimate entities and practices.The working of technology then has to be understood through the idea of governmentality as a language of control and subversion. This is further qualified by the fact that the discourse around writing and regulation has always been viewed with suspicion by those who stand outside its circle of power.