For generations of students in Bengal, Calcutta University has been like the Goddess Fortuna — imperiously and inscrutably ruinous. Thousands of lives have had to drastically change their desired paths in helpless acceptance of the university’s often criminally unreliable handling of examination scripts from the time they are submitted to the examining authorities. But the Right to Information Act, if firmly and scrupulously implemented, will change this, and therefore a lot else in the university. A B.Com honours student has persevered in the courts to have one of his Part-II answer-scripts shown him after he suspected some error in its evaluation. He is yet to see the script though, even after the state information commission has directed the university to show it to him. What is most telling in the student’s experience with the university is the latter’s resistance to making itself more transparent and accountable. Calcutta University had agreed to a scrutiny of the paper, but had initially disagreed to showing him the paper. He then had to move court once, in vain, and then the state information commission had to intervene twice before the university finally agreed to show the student his paper.

Universities like this one — and there must be plenty in India operating on similar lines — will have to make radical changes in their administration as well as work ethic in order to adapt to the standards and demands of the new RTI. But the state information commissions, together with NGOs and ordinary citizens, should keep the pressure up, quite relentlessly, in order to reap the full benefits of this excellent law. This is not going to be easy. Ineptitude, callousness and corruption are endemic to many public institutions in the country, together with a passive fatalism in those whose lives are affected by them.