ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846 Despite Free and Fair Elections, Our Idea of the Republic Is at Risk VIDYA VENKAT Vidya Venkat (vidya_venkat@soas.ac.uk) is a PhD scholar at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. She tweets @vidyajourno. Vol. 54, Issue No. 3, 19 Jan, 2019 The author would like to thank her supervisors David Mosse and Subir Sinha at SOAS, University of London for commenting on an earlier draft of this paper. On the occasion of India’s 70th Republic Day, it is worth considering how the very foundational idea of a republic, in which supreme power is held by the people, is at risk despite free and fair elections. To arrive at that argument, this article delineates the historical trajectory of India’s Right to Information movement as arising out of the need to address the unfinished agenda of democratisation since independence. It then discusses how the movement has strengthened oppositional politics by expanding the terrain for political participation and has also empowered individual citizens in their struggles to claim their entitlements from the state. By resisting scrutiny under the Right to Information Act and attempting to dilute the law’s empowering potential, political representatives and bureaucrats are subverting democracy itself. “Sinhasan khaali karo, ke janata aati hai” [Abdicate the throne, for the people are coming] - Ramdhari Singh ‘Dinkar’, Sinhasan Khaali Karo, ke Janata Aati Hai, 1950