These fears are hypothetical. There are more than 65 countries in the world, which have RTI laws. There are nine states in India, who had RTI laws, before this law was passed by the Parliament. None of these Governments were flooded with applications. Such fear emanates from an assumption that the people do not have anything to do and are totally free. Filing an RTI application and pursuing it takes time, energies and resources. Unless a person really wants any information, he/she does not file it.
Let us consider some statistics. In Delhi, 14000 applications have been filed in 120 departments in more than 60 months. This means less than 2 applications per Department per month. Can we say that Delhi Government got flooded with RTI applications? In sharp contrast, US Government received 3.2 million applications under their RTI Act during 2003-04. This is despite the fact that unlike India, most of the Government information is already available on the net and there should be much less need for the people to file applications. But US Government is not contemplating scrapping the RTI Ac. On the contrary they are setting aside more and more resources to implement it. During the same year, they spent $ 32 million to implement it.
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