Laws like Official Secrets Act conflate interests of particular parties with the greater good

The Official Secrets Act of 1923 (OSA) must be one of the most egregious instances of a law that infantilises common citizens through the notion that they should not question the idea of the “secret” itself. It must be contested.

secrets act, Official Secrets Act of 1923, Official Secrets Act 1923, rafale deal, supreme court, secrets act rafale deal, rafale scam — The Official Secrets Act of 1923 (OSA), even though its powers have been curtailed by past court judgments, must be one of the most egregious instances of a law that infantilises common citizens through the notion that they should not question the idea of the “secret” itself.

The greatest failing of Indian public life over the past 70 years is the manner in which the state and forms of government have become identified with the life of the people. We have come to believe that state and society are the same thing and that pronouncements about the public good that emanate from organs of the state summarise ideal citizenship. This is not actually nationalism or patriotism. It is statism and it has had (and continues to have) very significant consequences for public welfare and our inability to differentiate between the interests of a few from that of the many.

Public welfare is best served through the ability of the citizenry to constantly redefine the meaning of the term and to rescue it from the dead reason of legal and civic bureaucracies. Economic welfare, social reform, public justice and individual liberty are topics that are far too important to be left to statist thinking whose raison d’etre is the consolidation of power with those who already have it. The kinds of laws we have — and the manner in which they are used — provide a good indication of the simplistic conflation between the interests of the state and those of public welfare.