These days, India seems to be in a tearing hurry to throw constitutional propriety to the winds. Going by the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) logic, citizens can now freely approach the chief political executive of a province to have their loved ones stalked.
As the BJP claims, the state police can immediately initiate surveillance — monitored at the highest political level — merely on verbal request. At a time when many police stations in India refuses to register formal complaints of harassment against women, BJP’s prime ministerial candidate and Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi has indeed revolutionized the concept of policing.
Consequently, we have the entire Gujarat police machinery snooping on a Bangalore-based lady architect on the basis of an anxious fathers’ appeal even at the cost of violating the well-established constitutional procedures. And this hide-and-seek drama was going on presumably with the victim’s consent though she is yet to speak out in favor of stalking. Worst still, Amit Shah, the ex-deputy home minister of Gujarat was himself orchestrating the surveillance round-the-clock to satisfy his master — Modi. Perhaps, this is precisely how Modi proposes to reform a fragile policing system that has been squarely responsible for a rising graph of crime against women. Hence, India under Modi will turn into a worst form of Orwellian democracy where the government will not only control citizens’ data but also their private lives. As the state of affairs in Gujarat reveals, there will be several eyes on the prowl, effectively snooping on the citizenry everywhere. Yes, the Indian state under Modi will virtually breathe down every Indian’s neck, day in and day out, given his penchant for extra-constitutional activities.
Psychologists believe that a stalker’s state of mind can vary from obsessive love to hatred. It would be interesting to know what was going through Modi and his man Friday Amit Shah’s mind when officials of the anti-terrorist squad, intelligence wing and crime control unit of the Gujarat police were ordered to monitor every movement and conversation of an adult woman for no credible security reason. The victim of state-sponsored stalking, reportedly known to Modi, was neither a terror-mastermind nor a foot soldier. Nor did she lodge any formal police complaint about any threat perception anywhere. Interestingly, the law enforcement machinery was even authorized by Amit Shah to throw the associates of the stalking victim into prison without any tangible proof of guilt.
So far, mainly the Muslims in Gujarat bore the brunt of Modi’s authoritarianism and now it is the turn of his friend’s daughter. Worst still, the poor father is reportedly under extreme duress to act according to Modi’s script. Above everything, the BJP has now come out with a bizarre explanation of stalking being part of a set-procedure for providing physical protection to an individual.
Even the “blue book” of the specialized agencies responsible for protecting dignitaries in India does not corroborate BJP’s ingenious theory. It seems that the BJP having criticized Congress since the seventies for imposition of emergency has acquired this habit of selectively justifying state invasion of individual privacy as long as their top leaders are immune from such trespassing.
Those who heard the BJP spokeswoman dishing out vexatious arguments in favor of the Gujarat administration’s unconstitutional act would find it difficult to believe that it is the same party which resorted to scathing verbal attacks and boycott of parliament over a phone-tapping incident involving their eloquent leader Arun Jaitley. Very rightly, the Congress has been opposing any illegal state-sponsored surveillance. But then, is the Congress-led UPA government also not guilty of trying to employ a radical surveillance program called the “Central Monitoring System (CMS)” secretly? Though monitoring of communications has been an integral part of sovereign function for ages to preserve territorial integrity of a nation state, CMS gives security agencies and the tax department an overarching right to tap directly into private telephonic conversations and electronic communications without parliamentary or judicial oversight.
Transparency seems to be the biggest looser as the government started rolling out CMS in a hush-hush manner despite knowing that such a system is amenable to potential abuse and misuse in the absence of an inbuilt remedial mechanism. Yet, no rules have been framed to stop such illegalities till date. Perhaps, none in the system realizes that unrestrained intrusive surveillance creates a fear psychosis in society apart from inciting negative feelings about the state and its system.
Wittingly or unwittingly, the government is inflicting serious injury on the country’s democratic plinth by allowing omnipotent state machineries to breach the invaluable private space of human beings. Any individual would cling onto privacy at any cost because it is important, necessary and above all extremely precious. Hence, there is an imperative need to keep a judicious balance between privacy and indiscriminate surveillance. It is therefore time for the UPA government to fast track the enactment of an efficacious individual privacy law, in tune with Justice AP Shah Committee recommendation, for protecting the sanctity of personal freedom guaranteed by the Indian Constitution.
- Seema Sengupta is a Kolkata-based journalist and columnist.
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