Tools of surveillance include Central Monitoring System (CMS), Network Traffic Analysis (NETRA), CCTV Surveillance, Facial Recognition Technology, and legal frameworks like Indian Telegraph Act, Information Technology Act, the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, Aadhar and Data Collection, lack of accountability. These laws lack provisions for independent oversight. CMS allows the government to intercept and monitor communications across various platforms, including mobile, landline and Internet without requiring service provider authorization. NETRA, developed by DRDO (Defence Research & Development Organisation), analyses Internet traffic to identify suspicious keywords and patterns, potentially flagging individuals for surveillance. Facial Recognition Technology, used by law enforcement agencies, is on the rise, further expanding the scope for surveillance. Aadhar and Data Collection, while intended initially to streamline access to public services, has also led to the collection and aggregation of vast amounts of personal data, exposing people to state surveillance.

There are other devices for mass surveillance in the country. At the macro level the state uses tools like CCTVs and facial recognition cameras to track the actions of the citizens as a mass. Recently, India got top rankings in Forbes list of the most surveilled cities in the world where Delhi stood at rank one with 1826.6 cameras per square mile beating Chinese cities like Beijing, Wuhan, Xiamen and London. Chennai ranked three with 609.9 cameras per square miles and Mumbai at rank 18 with 157.4 cameras per square miles. The Delhi government has restarted phase 2 of their CCTV project to install 140,000 more CCTVs. Besides; the state has been incentivizing lateral surveillance to encourage citizens to monitor others for unlawful activities and report to the authority. Recently Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre under the Union Ministry of Home Affairs launched the cyber volunteers’ programme enabling citizens to report unlawful activities on the Internet and social media. The state is also empowered to perform targeted surveillance based interception. There are various interception systems available, which are installed into the networks of telecom services and Internet services by the government through the licence agreement

Interception is legal in India on specific legal grounds, hacking is a punishable offence under the Information Technology Act as amended to date. However, the Pegasus spyware snoop gate revealed that hacking operations might take place without even targets possessing any knowledge of the said infringement. Pegasus spyware is an Israeli device, which was used by the RSS Pariwar union government to surveill serving ministers, journalists, opposition leaders, judges, business men, lawyers, activists, academics etc. in India. In addition, there are fears that surveillance technologies could be used to target specific communities, groups or individuals, leading to discrimination and social exclusion. The expansion of surveillance capabilities clashes with the growing recognition of the fundamental right to privacy. The project revolves around striking a balance between national security concerns and the protection of individual liberties and privacy rights.

However, there is a need for greater transparency and accountability in surveillance practices to ensure that they are not misused and that affected individuals have recourse to redressal mechanism in case of abuse. After all, we are a democratic nation wherein people elect the government by the transient majority of legislators who are accountable to their electors, the people of India as the sovereign masters of the government. The surveillance system lacks robust oversight mechanisms that raise concerns about misuse or abuse of personal surveillance data for political purposes or to suppress dissents or targeted adversaries. India’s surveillance state is a complex issue with significant implications for individual rights, freedoms and privacy. For government, surveillance is valuable tools for law enforcement and national security. For people, it is crucial to ensure that surveillance mechanisms are used responsibly and transparently, with adequate safeguards in place to protect the people against potential arbitrary misuse.

However, presently India is witnessing a wave of far right movements bearing unmistakably fascist traits, attacks on democratic norms and institutions, a reinvigorated nationalism laced with racist rhetoric, authoritarian impulses, and systematic assaults on the rights of those who do not fit a manufactured make-believe traditional authority, rooted in religious, sexual and gender normative. At this juncture, the country is rife with widespread dissatisfaction with political failure to address mounting inequalities and social exclusion being exploited by the authoritarian leader. True to the old fascist script, under the guise of popular mandate, such process is now accelerating, as dissent is increasingly suppressed through arbitrary detentions, threats of violence, unrelenting campaign of disinformation and propaganda, operated with the support of traditional and social media barons, some merely complacent, others openly techno-fascist enthusiasts.

At the current critical times, such a mass scales of surveillance in India makes the democratic ambience suffocating that instills widespread fear and insecurity among people killing their privacy, civil liberties, freedom of speech and all the guaranteed fundamental human rights in our constitutional democratic governance!