Friday, August 21, 2026

I would If I could 37: Agnostic Transparency

 Almost all transparency acts, departments come under politicians, government, bureaucrats who in some or the other way are incentivized to cripple it, protect their own and themselves and then slowly weaken such a process and make it toothless.

It is irrefutable fact that there is no testament to patriotism, conviction, discipline & sacrifice than being a service man in the army/navy/air force (defense) sector. One shall move something like RTI (Right To Information) departments under the defense who are authorized to release all information requested by citizens if they don't see it as a threat to national security. Who better can judge if an information is safe or not for the national security than those who can lose their lives and the lives of their friends and family if they make a wrong decision. A politician if takes a wrong decision may lose his power which can gain in the next election, a bureaucrat may lose his job but a defense personal has the highest and unique stake in nation's security. Such a transparency department should have absolute authority to request, demand and command any information from any department unless explicitly stopped by the president with a public order for that one incident, it cannot be used as a blanket shield for future queries in perpetuity.

One should start with low hanging fruits like these

  1. A portal will be maintained where only via api (no UI, to ensure those who aren't serious about that information aren't just looking) where the following the wealth, net worth are tracked forever of the following as long as they are in those positions
    1. members of the judiciary
    2. elected officials (MLA, MP etc.,)
    3. All bureaucrats who have to write 
    4. IAS/IFS/IPS etc.,
  2. Most store their wealth in the name of their direct relatives, so not only should defense have such data about those, but also their direct blood relatives (parents, siblings, children and spouse). This enforces an unsaid rule where corrupt would rather have their relatives not join such departments or become a politician where as currently corrupts try to install one of their relative as a puppet in one of those positions to exploit power.

Pay-as-you-go pricing for API usage, the charges should be such that they are used to meet the CAPEX and OPEX of the blockchain based, auto scaling infrastructure for this. Banks, Income tax departments, PAN card departments should automatically populate their monthly data towards this api. Slowly this should move towards a system where citizens spy on government more than the government spying on people.

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I would If I could 37: Agnostic Transparency

 Almost all transparency acts, departments come under politicians, government, bureaucrats who in some or the other way are incentivized to ...