India, Oct. 13 -- Twenty-one years ago, on October 12, 2005, the Right to Information (RTI) Act came into force, giving every Indian citizen the legal right to question the state. The law grew out of a movement that began in the villages of Rajasthan, where the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS) held public hearings to compare official records with what villagers knew from the ground.

Two decades on, the law is under strain. The 2019 amendments gave the Centre control over the tenure and salaries of information commissioners. Several commissions have faced vacancies and backlogs, and activists say the Digital Personal Data Protection Act (DPDA) threatens the transparency regime.

In an interview with HT, RTI activist and MKSS co-found...