What can you accomplish in 1 hour and 59 minutes?

What can you accomplish in 1 hour and 59 minutes? If your reading speed is below average like mine, you can read around 70 pages of Mother Mary Comes To Me by Arundhati Roy in 1 hour and 59 minutes. If you are a good runner, you can finish a half-marathon in 1 hour and 59 minutes. If you prefer Taylor Swift’s latest, The Life of a Showgirl, you can listen to the album twice and the first 10 tracks a third time in 1 hour and 59 minutes. If you travel by the Vande Bharat train in Kerala, you can cover around 140km in 1 hour and 59 minutes. You can also torpedo the Right to Information (RTI) law, inarguably one of the most significant rights-based laws promulgated in India and a direct outcome of a grassroots campaign launched by the people to empower themselves.

One hour and 59 minutes or 119 minutes or 7,140 seconds were all it took for Parliament to pass the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act in 2023. Couched in the Act is Section 44(3) which can potentially arm reluctant bureaucrats and their elected masters with the excuse of “personal information” to deny citizens many segments of information. The unremarkable piece of statistics — 1 hour and 59 minutes — has been available in public domain since August 10, 2023, a day after Parliament passed the DPDP Act, thanks to the Internet Freedom Foundation.

Personally, the duration came back to bite me on the 20th anniversary of the passage of the RTI law when I found myself amidst a vast group of enthusiastic RTI campaigners in Thrissur, central Kerala. Under the genial but gimlet eyes of Abey George, the Desheeya Vivaravakasha Koottayma (also known as the Kerala RTI Movement) had organised a two-day event at the Kerala Sahitya Akademi. Much of this column is based on my conversation and interaction with the audience there on October 11.

The DPDP bill, which has been passed but the rules of which have not been notified till October 18, 2025, poses multiple problems but this column is confining itself to the threat to the RTI law because of its 20th anniversary. When the DPDP Act was passed in August 2023, it also incorporated an amendment (Section 44-3) to undermine an important section in the RTI law, called Section 8.1 (j) by removing many exemptions under which personal information could be disclosed.

As with the drafting of most impenetrable official prose, the sweep of the change will not be readily apparent. Section 44(3) of the DPDP Act merely states: “In section 8 of the Right to Information Act, 2005, in sub-section (1), for clause (j), the following clause shall be substituted, namely:— “(j) information which relates to personal information;”.

Before the amendment, Section 8.1 (j) of the RTI Act read thus: “Information which relates to personal information the disclosure of which has no relationship to any public activity or interest, or which would cause unwarranted invasion of the privacy of the individual unless the Central Public Information Officer or the State Public Information Officer or the appellate authority, as the case may be, is satisfied that the larger public interest justifies the disclosure of such information: Provided that the information which cannot be denied to the Parliament or a State Legislature shall not be denied to any person.” In the above-mentioned 88 words, just six words (“information which relates to personal information”) were retained through the amendment (Section 44-3) in the DPDP Act. This can lead to three sweeping changes.

Before the DPDP Act, disclosure of information could be denied only if the information had no public interest or information caused unwarranted invasion of privacy. After the DPDP Act, many segments of information could be potentially exempt as there is no effective test of public interest. Before the DPDP Act, a public information officer (PIO) or the appellate authority could allow disclosure if public interest is justified. After the DPDP Act, such discretion is unlikely to be in play.

The DPDP Act appears to have deleted in its entirety a crucial provision that said “provided that the information which cannot be denied to the Parliament or a State Legislature shall not be denied to any person”. As far as the RTI Act was concerned, this proviso was a reassuring armour because it ensured that citizens could not be denied information that the legislature itself could access. Needless to say, the now-buried proviso captured the essence of democracy by explicitly putting the citizens on a par with their elected representatives.

Such a glorious tool of empowerment was derailed literally with the stroke of a pen. The removal of the 82 words that made a difference was sanctioned by the Lok Sabha on August 7, 2023, after a debate that lasted 52 minutes. Two days later on August 9, the Rajya Sabha endorsed the change after discussing the bill for 1 hour and 7 minutes. The cumulative duration in both the Houses was 1 hour and 59 minutes.

The timeframe confronted me at the Thrissur venue because it struck me that I was editor of The Telegraph newspaper based in Calcutta in August 2023 when the DPDP bill was passed. Two years down the line, I found myself asking: What did I do then as a journalist?

Frantically searching the archives online, I confirmed my worst fear. The report on the passage of the DPDP bill in the Lok Sabha did not find a place on Page 1 in the next day’s edition. A brief report was tucked away in the business page. I checked two other English dailies — none mentioned the passage of the DPDP bill in their front pages. Some media outlets had already flagged the dangers of the bill but I — shamefully in hindsight — was not aware of the full impact of the data protection bill until later. The media, which would be among the worst hit if some of the provisions of the DPDP bill are enforced without revisions, would eventually step up its objections.

I had to record my mea culpa because of what follows. The first question that the lightning speed at which the DPDP bill was passed might throw up is: what was the Opposition doing then?

In a laudable post titled Dialogue, Drama & Discourse and drafted with painstaking research and data, Tejasi Panjiar and Prateek Waghre wrote for the Internet Freedom Foundation: “We saw nearly 2 hours of debate across both Houses of Parliament with only 16 members contributing to the bill. While members of opposition in the Lok Sabha were asked to express their points in a matter of mere minutes, the Rajya Sabha witnessed an almost empty house due to the walk out by the opposition members, resulting in barely any debate on the bill. Notably, while many raised important concerns on the bill, owing to low attendance in the House, very few members opposed the bill and even the amendments proposed by opposition MPs in the Rajya Sabha were not put to a vote as the member proposing the amendment was not present in the House. Disappointingly, the clause by clause voting on the bill was conducted without any opposition, resulting in the Parliamentary record showing no opposition to any of the clauses in the bill.”

If the DPDP bill and its potential wide impact are seen in isolation, it will be easy to pick fault with the Opposition. But the political context then prevailed also assumes significance. The INDIA partnership was rallying around the Manipur crisis and the Prime Minister’s initial silence that went on for months.

Besides, on the very day the Lok Sabha passed the DPDP bill, the Opposition mounted a united and spirit challenge in the Rajya Sabha to the Modi regime’s attempt to tighten its control over the administration in Delhi that was then governed by Arvind Kejriwal. The Opposition, which did not have the numerical strength to block the government’s bid, pulled out all stops to underscore its unity and took the unusual step of bringing an ailing Manmohan Singh to the upper House to vote.

The unstated and perceived threat to the Constitution after the 2024 general election was hanging heavy over the republic in August 2023 and, against such a backdrop, the need to protect the entire statute by sticking together might have assumed more urgency for the Opposition than the need to flag the threat to the RTI law. The unity bid was vindicated in the elections when the Opposition succeeded in denying the BJP a majority of its own.

Of course, the electoral shock has not deterred the Modi regime from pressing ahead with its agenda wherever possible but the Constitution did survive the scare in the summer of 2024.

Nevertheless, the lesson from Parliament in August 2023 appears to be that preserving the rights hard-earned by the citizens cannot be “outsourced” to the legislature and organised parties alone. Intermediary organisations, such as the civil society groups that successfully campaigned for the RTI law, are a better bet to keep the “eternal vigil” that the American abolitionist, Wendell Philips, referred to in 1852. Needless to say, the fear of this indispensable role is what prompted the Modi regime to systematically stymie the civil society ecosystem in India through funding restrictions, regulatory overreach and administrative intimidation.

At the Thrissur venue, I was at once overwhelmed and reassured. I was daunted by the very thought of the challenges that would confront the resource-starved rights defenders in their crusade ahead to protect the RTI law (Section 44-3 is by no means the only threat to the law). But I did find hope in the zest with which I was peppered and challenged with questions — both inside and outside the venue.

Yes, the cumulative sessions in Thrissur outlasted, by far, the 1 hour and 59 minutes clocked in the monsoon of 2023.

(OBC strives to present perspectives from across the ideological and social spectrum. The views, opinions, and interpretations expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of OBC.)