"All over the world today people are fighting for a right to information. The organizations that control the world today - the WTO, the IMF, the World Bank - operate in complete secrecy. Contracts that governments sign with multinationals, which affect people's lives so intimately, are secret documents. For example, I think that the contract between Enron, the giant Houston-based energy corporation, and the government of Maharashtra should be a public document. It is the biggest contract ever signed by the Indian government. It guarantees this one corporation profits that add up to more than 60 per cent of India's rural development budget. Why is it a secret document? Who is the government to sign away its public buildings as collateral? The government holds everything, whether it's the natural resources or the Rashtrapati Bhavan, the President's residence in New Delhi, in trust for the people that it represents. It cannot sign these things away. That contract must be a public document. That's one aspect of the relationship between knowledge and power."
-- Arundhati Roy, "The Shape of the Beast"
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