India: A Surveillance State is the New Normal?

Merriam Webster defines Normal as something that conforms to a type, standard or regular pattern. In simpler words, a normal is something whose occurrence doesn’t deviate from a norm, rule or principle (Merriam Webster). In fact, these normals are so engrossed in our lives, we do not even consider questioning their occurrence.

Recently, the intensity of the debate on the new normal being created in the world around us has increased substantially, and the primary reason behind this sudden rise is the novel Coronavirus pandemic which has not only affected the medical system of almost every country in the world, but has also brought almost the entire global economy to a stand-still, drastically affecting our day-to-day lives by forcing us to maintain social distancing while doing the simplest of the works, including grocery shopping.

Governments around the world have tried to be innovative and develop various techniques to tackle the entire issue of the rapid spread of the novel coronavirus disease. India has decided to go as far as implementing a complete lockdown in the country which allows only people part of essential services to move around for work. This lockdown has forced companies which are not a part of the list of essential services exempted by the government, to move almost their entire operation online, and has led to a new system where almost all interaction happens online via Zoom, Google Meet or Microsoft Teams, and all employees work from home, which leaves offices not being required for companies to function, saving up a huge amount of fixed cost — office rent and maintenance.

An online guest lecture by Mr. Aditya Ghosh in the Creativity and Design Thinking Class at Ashoka University

During this pandemic, many such new normals have been created. Along with offices coming closer to being redundant, indulging in online multiplayer games and having classes online have also been some of the major changes that have taken place lately in the lives of many people. However, among these new normals being created because of the pandemic, is India moving towards becoming a surveillance state?

Jason Wallick, in his opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal titled How Epidemics Change Civilizations argues that pandemics require a war like response (2020). Governments all around the world have been working hard to tackle the issue of the nCoVID-19 pandemic. The Chinese government tackled the issue of the spread in Wuhan by going for a complete lockdown for over 70 days in the region. The governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, has a daily press briefing to brief the media and the world of the progress made in the fight against the virus. The Indian government as well has been working hard, with a nationwide lockdown and complete barrier on travel.

However, despite all the hard work by the state and federal governments all around the world, what makes the matter worse is the bigger problem with the virus, which is that in many cases, the disease is asymptomatic. According to a research by the Indian Council of Medical Research, 80% of the cases in India are asymptomatic, which means that there may be people who would be silent carriers of the virus without showing any kind of symptoms.

To tackle this issue, the World Health Organisation has on numerous occasions stressed the importance of Test, Isolate and Trace (Lacina, 2020). However, while it is not very difficult to test and isolate people who show the symptoms of being infected by the virus, it is extremely difficult to even identify the people who may be infected by the virus but not showing any symptoms (NEJM, 2020), let alone test and isolate them, which brings forward the problem of silent carriers that has already been spoken about.

Without any doubt, tackling this issue requires innovative thinking by the governments all around the world. And some governments, including the Indian government, were able to find and come up with a few of such innovative solutions.

The Indian government, following the example of other governments like Singapore and Israel, decided to make use of the bluetooth technology in the phones to solve the problem of tracing in order to isolate through the Aarogya Setu app. This government designed app keeps a record of all the phones a person’s phone has come in contact with, and directs the person to get tested if any of the person who they have interacted with or come in close proximity with has been tested positive of the novel coronavirus disease.

Interface of the Aarogya Setu App

Innovation, as defined by the Business Dictionary, is the process of translating an idea or invention into a good or service that creates value or for which customers will pay (Business Dictionary), and the making of the Indian Government’s Aarogya Setu app can very easily come under the purview of this definition of innovation.

While we don’t know if the designers and innovators followed the design thinking process while creating this app, empathy, the first and arguably the most important part of the Design Thinking process, is very clearly present in the idea of this application. This app helps protect the lives of people who have the potential of contracting this virus and spreading the same. Rhoda Sell, in her article titled Design Thinking: A Beginners Guide to History, Terminology and Methodologies, argues that one of the three most important themes in all design thinking models is them being Human-Centered, where discovery and inspiration phases focus on the research of the proposed user (2018), and, it cannot be denied that the entire idea of this app is human-centered, hence bringing in a very significant aspect of design thinking in the conception of this idea.

However, one important aspect that this innovative application compromises on is the privacy of an individual who decides to make use of this app in order to not only minimise their own chances of suffering because of contracting the virus, but also help the state by minimising the number of silent carriers. And privacy being forced to take the back seat in order to save lives is a new normal that is being created during the nCoVID-19 pandemic.

In the pre-CoVID era, privacy has been protested for by citizens in many countries around the world, including India. There have been marches, online campaigns, and court battles for many years, before the supreme court eventually decided to uphold privacy as a fundamental law in 2017.

The Aarogya Setu app is not mandatory for any person to download, but highly encouraged by the government. In fact, the Prime Minister, during the 40th Foundation Day of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party encouraged the party workers to spread the message of the app, and went on to emphasise that each party worker must be able to convince at least 40 others to download the app (Hindustan Times, 2020).

Some may argue that the government hasn’t made the app mandatory for any person to download, hence, in the end, leaving the choice of downloading the app and giving up their individual privacy, to the citizens. However, recently, the government started to issue curfew passes only on the Aarogya setu app (Times of India, 2020). Which means that any person getting out of their homes as a member of any essential service, needs to have this app on their devices.

Going further, the discussion need not even be about the app being indirectly mandatory, but about the fact that this app today helps people save their lives and of those around them. And hence, to take every measure possible to save their lives and stop the spread of the virus, downloading of this app becomes necessary for the citizens of the country.

In the pre-CoVID era, even the existence of such an app may have caused an uproar among the citizens of India. Not that it hasn’t caused an unrest among the people already, even during the CoVID era, with the government being forced to come out with clarifications regarding the policies of the app, the unrest would arguably have been a lot louder.

This breach of privacy through the app moves India towards becoming a surveillance society, something that the citizens have fought against since the introduction of Aadhar, and probably even before that.

But, in the current scenario, with the new normal of privacy not being of utmost importance, this app may seem necessary, with the greater good on the line. This also helps in signifying the conundrum that originates with this normal. A normal where one fundamental law in the constitution has to be kept over another fundamental law.

Moving on, it will be worth understanding what India would look like if this new normal created during the novel coronavirus pandemic would follow on into the post-CoVID era as well, where the government is even aware of the people we are interacting with, let alone our transaction details that they might get access through Aadhar, what our country will look like.

China, which is an example that almost always comes to mind when discussing surveillance states, has the concept of citizen score. An article in the Atlantic titled China’s Surveillance State Should Scare Everyone mentions that this citizen score determines your internet speed and your visa to Europe, with a higher score meaning an increased internet speed and easier access to fast-tracked visas. To calculate this score, private companies crawl through huge amounts of data obtained through people’s social media and online shopping data (Anna Mitchell, 2018).

It is highly unlikely that a democratic country like India, where elections happen every 5 years and anti-incumbency plays a very active role when people all around the country are casting their votes, would move towards becoming a state where each citizen is scored and the government services provided are determined on these scores. However, with how the previous and the current government tried to indirectly make Aadhar mandatory, by making it necessary to link the Aadhar number with bank account number and even mobile numbers, the country moving in that direction, does seem like a scary proposition.

It can again be argued that once this pandemic has passed, the app would not be required anymore, and people could go back to living their lives without this app, hence no longer compromising on their privacy. However, we do not know how long this pandemic would extend for, and how many lives it will extend. If the disease continues to spread like it has been spreading for the past few months, it can be believed that India will see many more cases, with some reports suggesting that India will see 111 crore cases by September (Ramesh, 2020), which will force more people to download this app to protect themselves from the disease. And if the disease continues for a long time, the app may provide the government with enough data to minutely understand the behaviour of the citizens.

There are many new normals being created in the world around us. Some of these normals being created are worth taking with us forward into the post-covid era, and cherish when the world has come out of this pandemic stronger. However, some normals being created, even though necessary right now, are scary and, in an ideal scenario, wouldn’t even be allowed to exist.

Government encroaching on our privacy is one such normal that is being created today, and while it is necessary today, in an ideal scenario, may appear one of the scary prepositions that the citizens of India may have to think about before taking it forward with them into the post-CoVID era, an era in which we are expected to be more aware of our surroundings.

Bibliography

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