Transparency: To be or not be

UNESCO and many other smaller organisations have been advocating for the right to access information popularly known as the right to know. UNESCO has declared 28th September as the official day for the universal right to access information. Universal access to information includes the right to seek, receive and impart information. Countries around the world including India have laws that provide transparency between government bodies and the general public which helps citizens make better informed decisions.

However, there have been times when this law has been violated by governments for various reasons. Of the 42 internet shutdowns in the world, 9 of them occurred in India. Internet shut down blocks citizens from accessing the internet which in turn simply blocks their access to the outside world. While the primary purpose of this is to stop the spread of protests and aggravation of the situation, the government hardly compensates for the loss of business among e-commerce platforms and digital transactions that have occurred due to the shutdown.

While transparency between government bodies and the general public is a humanitarian issue, transparency within corporations between management and employees is a debatable topic. There are various styles of managing employees, many of which restrict information to employees keeping them in the dark. Mushroom management is one such system of management where employees are restricted information and management assigns work to employees without knowing the company's current state.

The employees often have no idea what the company's overall situation is, because the leaders tend to make all the decisions on their own, without asking anyone else to give their opinion. This problem can occur when the manager does not understand the employees' work (in a software company, for example) and therefore cannot communicate effectively with the employees.

Mushroom management can also occur during the handling of one-off, individual situations. When the RMS Titanic hit an iceberg, only a few members of the crew were aware that the ship was going to sink. Most of the crewmen were not informed about the seriousness of the situation by the captain, which resulted in chaos and disorganisation. The Captain attempted to act on his own, without incorporating the officers into his decisions.