📰 All-women crew of MT Swarna Krishna makes history
This is the first time in the world maritime history that a ship is being sailed by all women officers
•In an attempt to acknowledge the efforts of women in breaking down the stereotypes in erstwhile male-dominated maritime sector, Union Minister Mansukh Mandaviya has flagged off an all-women crew onboard Shipping Corporation of India (SCI) vessel MT Swarna Krishna, the Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways said on Sunday.
•The vessel was virtually flagged off by the Ports, Shipping and Waterways Minister on March 6, it said.
•"The Shipping Corporation of India, as a part of its ongoing Diamond Jubilee celebrations and also to commemorate the International Women’s Day on March 8, 2021, achieved another feat when Mansukh Mandaviya, Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Ports, Shipping & Waterways, virtually flagged off the 'All Women Officers’ Sailing' on MT Swarna Krishna – SCI’s product carrier from JNPT Liquid Berth Jetty on March 6, 2021," the Ministry statement said.
•This is the first time in the world maritime history that a ship is being sailed by all women officers, it added.
•Mr Mandaviya acknowledged the contribution and sacrifice of the women seafarers who acted as the Indian ambassadors to the global maritime community and had made the nation proud, it said.
•HK Joshi, CMD, SCI, spoke of the unabated and relentless pursuit of SCI to realise the ‘paradigm shift’ in the maritime sector which has recognized and honoured the ‘empowered womanhood’ in seafaring women who have dared, endeavoured and sacrificed to achieve it.
•Secretary Shipping Sanjeev Ranjan, Chairman JNPT Sanjay Sethi, Chairman, Mumbai Port Trust, Rajiv Jalota, and DG Shipping Amitabh Kumar attended the ceremony virtually and commended the efforts of the women seafarers.
•"The move demonstrated the gradual shift in the perception of seafaring as a male-oriented profession and the principles of Diversity & Inclusion that SCI upholds. SCI has been a pioneer in employing women seafarers onboard its vessels and has implemented various initiatives including age relaxations and fee concessions to aspiring female cadets through its Maritime Training Institute to promote their integration into the maritime sector," the statement said.
Nod in new five-year-plan for hydroprojects near border with India
•A draft of China’s new Five-Year Plan (2021-2025), which is set to be formally approved on March 11, has given the green light for the first dams to be built on the lower reaches of Yarlung Zangbo river, as the Brahmaputra is known in Tibet, before it flows into India.
•The draft outline of the new Five-Year Plan (FYP) for 2025 and “long range objectives through the year 2035”, submitted before the National People’s Congress (NPC), China’s ceremonial legislature, on March 5, specifically mentions the building of hydropower bases on the lower reaches of the river as among the priority energy projects to be undertaken in the next five years.
•The lower reaches refer to the sections of the river in Tibet before it flows into India.
Fresh exploitation
•The inclusion of the projects in the draft plan suggests the authorities have given the go-ahead to begin tapping the lower reaches for the first time, which marks a new chapter in the hydropower exploitation of the river.
•The FYP’s backing for the projects also suggests that a number of long-pending proposals from Chinese hydropower companies to build dams on the lower reaches, including near the border with India, may be given the green light.
•The draft plan will be formally approved before the NPC session ends on Thursday. The final version is unlikely to have major changes as the largely ceremonial and Communist Party-controlled legislature rarely overhauls the proposals sent before it.
•On the top of a list of energy construction projects for the next five years, mentioned on page 30 of the 142-page draft document in Mandarin — it has not yet been published in English — calls for “building a hydropower base on the lower reaches of Yarlung Zangbo river”, along with “clean energy bases” in the upper and lower reaches of Jinsha river (the upper course of Yangtze river in western China).
•Other major projects include the construction of coastal nuclear power plants and power transmission channels.
Infrastructure strategy
•The high importance given to building dams on the “lower reaches” of the Yarlung Zangbo is underlined in the plan, where it is also mentioned on page 38 of the document among significant planned investments in infrastructure that serve major national strategies.
•The project is also listed along with the Sichuan-Tibet railway and the national water network.
•China’s media reported in November that State-owned hydropower company POWERCHINA had signed “a strategic cooperation agreement” with the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) government to “implement hydropower exploitation in the downstream of the Yarlung Zangbo River”.
•In 2015 China operationalised its first hydropower project at Zangmu in Tibet, while three other dams at Dagu, Jiexu and Jiacha are being developed, all on the upper and middle reaches of the river. While POWERCHINA is not the first hydropower company to push for dams downstream and previous plans did not pass technical feasibility studies because of concerns over the environmental impact, the inclusion of the projects in the draft FYP suggests a high-level sanction has been given.
•Yan Zhiyong, POWERCHINA’s chairman, told a conference of the China Society for Hydropower Engineering last year “there is no parallel in history” to the plans and the downstream reaches of the river offered “a historic opportunity for the Chinese hydropower industry”. Mr. Yan did not mention the location of the planned project but spoke about the particular potential offered at the “Great Bend” of the Brahmaputra and at the Yarlung Zangbo Grand Canyon in Medog county, where the river falls over a 2,000 metre-drop and turns sharply to flow across the border into Arunachal Pradesh.
•India has expressed concerns to China over the four planned dams on the upper and middle reaches, though Indian officials have said the dams are not likely to greatly impact the quantity of the Brahmaputra’s flows in India because they are only storing water for power generation, and the Brahmaputra is not entirely dependent on upstream flows with an estimated 35% of its basin in India. Dams on the lower reaches and at the Great Bend would, however, raise fresh concerns because of the location across the border from Arunachal Pradesh and the potential impact downstream.
•Mr. Yan said the 50-km section at the Great Bend alone offered the potential of 70 million kWh “which equals more than three Three Gorges power stations” and “will play a significant role in realising China’s goal of reaching a carbon emissions peak before 2030 and carbon neutrality in 2060”, a target mentioned by Premier Li Keqiang on Friday at the opening of the NPC and also highlighted in the draft outline.
📰 Misplaced concern: On Supreme Court and OTT regulation
SC should not allow outrage industry to shape moves to tighten OTT content regulation
•It is a matter of concern that the Supreme Court chose to convert a routine hearing on a petition for anticipatory bail from an executive of the Amazon Prime Video into an occasion to call for tightening the regulatory norms for over-the-top streaming services in the country. Aparna Purohit, India Commercial Head of the content streaming platform, sought advance bail after the Allahabad High Court denied her the relief with a sweeping declaration that some offending scenes on a new series, now deleted, constituted punishable offences. Accused of hurting religious sentiments by allowing the streaming of Tandav , Ms. Purohit did get protection from arrest, but what is disconcerting is that the Court went through the recently notified rules for digital media and intermediaries and observed that these lacked teeth. It is quite unusual and, in fact, gratuitous, that a constitutional court should push for more stringent rules after finding that the Information Technology (Guidelines for Intermediaries and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, did not provide for punishment and fine. The Court’s very approach is way out of line. The new rules are essentially restrictions on free speech and expression through digital media. Courts generally examine the validity of such curbs on free speech and decide whether they are reasonable or too restrictive. It is unusual that the apex court should seek to go beyond what the executive describes as ‘soft-touch monitoring’, and press for inclusion of punishment clauses.
•The Court seems to be concerned about obscenity and uncensored content on streaming services, the ostensible reason for its incursion into regulatory territory, when there was no challenge to the new rules before it. When the matter is taken up again, the Court should bestow attention on the High Court order that gave rise to the proceedings, an order that shows extraordinary zeal to protect religious sentiment. While refusing pre-arrest bail, the High Court has made an unusual claim that the title ‘ Tandav’ itself could hurt the sentiments of a majority of Indians because it is associated with Lord Shiva. It has observed that alluding to Lord Ram gaining popularity on social media is a reference to the Ayodhya dispute, and, therefore, offensive. It has a sweeping claim that the Hindi film industry, in contrast to its southern counterparts, was generally disrespectful to the Hindu religion. It would be unfortunate if the judiciary lets itself be seen as departing from its record of protecting individuals harassed by those claiming that their religious or cultural sentiments have been hurt by some work of art, or even remarks or gestures by celebrities. The new norms for regulation of online content have their origin in the Supreme Court voicing concern about child pornography and content that could provoke sectarian violence. While that was a justified concern, the tendency to allow anyone professing a sense of hurt to prosecute anyone anywhere in the country should not be encouraged. The higher judiciary is expected to clamp down on the ‘marketplace of outrage’, not join it.
📰 Commemorating change, changing commemoration
With more awareness of other histories of struggle, India needs to ask what it wants to celebrate, on March 8 or 10
•Among the many “international days” initiated by the United Nations, the best known is the one for women. Given its widespread institutionalisation by nation-states as well as private corporations targeting the woman consumer, many may now know something about its history. It began over a century ago as a commemoration of the struggles of women factory workers and was first organised by socialist movements as “international women’s day”.
•From the 1920s onwards, it began to be celebrated annually by communist parties, first in the Soviet Union and then in China. Much later, the United Nations “established” International Women’s Day in 1977 in the wake of the International Women’s Year in 1975. In India, as elsewhere, movement-led campaigns and gatherings on March 8 spread from the 1980s.
Savitribai Phule’s legacy
•In the last few years, Dalit and Bahujan feminists in India have been issuing a call to use this occasion to celebrate a different legacy, that of Savitribai Phule, long ignored by upper caste histories of women’s rights. Savitribai’s own biography is now being gradually recovered, rescuing her from being restricted to the role of the intrepid wife of Jyotiba Phule, who is himself celebrated for his dedication to the cause of “social justice” against women’s caste-differentiated enslavement. Born in 1831, Savitribai was colonial India’s first woman teacher. Her death on March 10, 1897 has made it possible to commemorate her life and legacy as “our” International Women’s Day. The Bahujan-feminist perspective emphasises the central importance of access to a non-Brahmin form of education for the larger agenda of transforming the gender, caste and labour structures in our society.
Shaheen Bagh, the lockdown
•As we educate ourselves about alternate histories of struggle, we must also ask what it is we would want to celebrate in 2021, whether on March 8 or March 10? What has the last year given us? A year ago, the city of Delhi (where I live) was witness to horrific riots mainly targeting Muslim property and lives. Its purpose was to bring months of peaceful protests against the discriminatory Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) to a violent end, protests that had been led by Muslim women. A series of sit-ins in parks and public places in several cities, most famously on the highway abutting Shaheen Bagh, during the cold winter months from December 2019 to February 2020, were brought to a sudden halt. This was followed by the even more shocking spate of arrests of those alleged to have been the leaders of these peaceful protests, many of them young women and students, on the charges of having incited the very riots that ended the protests.
•Then in March came the state’s policy response to the COVID-19 pandemic — the world’s largest and strictest country-wide lockdown announced with four hours’ notice. The planet was eerily drawn together by the very isolation created by efforts to control the pandemic’s spread. We were treated to silent, empty streets, images of sparkling blue rivers, the smell of clean air, loud birdsong, and animals emerging from their hidden habitats. Indians glued to their screens soon received another shock as they witnessed hitherto invisible city-dwellers — migrant workers and their families — forced to walk hundreds of kilometres to their rural homes in search of food, shelter and care. Videos of women carrying bundles and small children along deserted highways and railway tracks were headline material. Everyday life became unviable for vast numbers and relief workers were hard pressed to meet their basic survival needs.
The home in focus
•In the months that have elapsed since, there has been an unprecedented outpouring of writings about the effects of the pandemic and lockdown across the world. Much has been said about the “inequality virus”, even though its worst victims have been elderly men living in some of the richest countries of the world.
•One sphere in particular has come into sharp focus in these pandemic discourses, that of the home. Being “locked down” meant being “locked in” — workers who could do so had to work from home, children had to study from home, and even people who had lost their jobs had to stay at home. Overnight, the home became the centre of attention — the very sphere that feminists have long been struggling to make visible. In “normal” times, the home silently houses the labour, work and care responsible for the reproduction of society without due recognition. Many men forced to work from home by the pandemic were seeing for the first time the other kinds of “home work” that they had always taken for granted. Some were more ready to condemn domestic violence — another kind of “home work” that had been going on for ages.
•Women figured prominently in the attention the home was now receiving. New questions were being asked: Would the absence of paid domestic workers in middle-class families make the men of these families more willing to take on domestic responsibilities? Would the institutions of the state finally give care work and housework the recognition due to them? Unfortunately, as life limps back to a strange new “normal”, the answer appears to be no. Although women took on the greatest burdens when life was in crisis, they should not expect recognition of any kind.
•But violence against women was not confined to women’s homes even during the pandemic.
New movements
•From the State of Uttar Pradesh in particular, came many reports of extreme sexual assaults on, and even the murder of, Dalit girls who stepped out to work. The accounts are numbing, regardless of whether they also include information about the arrest of perpetrators. The only silver lining here (as with the Hathras rape case) has been the leadership of a new generation of Dalit women demanding accountability from the state.
•This winter also witnessed the birth of a new social movement near the borders of Delhi, as farmers brushed aside pandemic protocols and arrived en masse to protest against the new farm laws. While media images focused on the weather-beaten faces of older men, there were also women who spoke out about their rights as women farmers. These protests are showing no sign of abating while they offer new lessons about the worlds that make possible the food we eat.
•We cannot know what Savitribai would have said on March 10, 2021 to the Shaheen Bagh dadis, to students, mothers and farmers, to the families of the victims of violation. But we do know that nothing stopped her and her comrades — not being thrown out of the family home for breaking caste codes, nor the widespread enmity they encountered — from working for the new Satyashodhak Samaj of their dreams.
📰 Health first, fiscal prudence later
The government can balance LPG subsidies and ensure clean fuel consumption in poorer households
•Subsidised LPG prices have increased by a massive 50% in this financial year alone, consistently capturing headlines. What would be the impact of this in sustaining the gains of the government’s flagship scheme, the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY)?
•Since 2016, PMUY has provided LPG connections to 8 million poor households to reduce women’s drudgery and indoor air pollution. Providing an upfront connection subsidy of ₹1,600, PMUY helped expand LPG coverage to more than 85% of households. In comparison, less than a third of Indian households used LPG as their main cooking fuel in 2011.
•However, multiple studies assessing PMUY concluded that while access has increased, many new beneficiaries are not consuming LPG in a sustained manner. Large-scale primary surveys by the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) suggest that, on average, recent PMUY beneficiaries consumed only about half the LPG compared to long-standing regular consumers. Limited uptake of LPG among poor households has two main reasons. First, the effective price of LPG is not affordable for such households, despite the subsidy. Second, many rural consumers have access to freely available biomass, making it difficult for LPG to displace it. Beyond causing indoor air pollution, biomass use for cooking contributes up to 30% to the ambient PM2.5 at the national level, more than the contribution of transport, crop residue or coal burning.
Changing prices
•The recent increases in the subsidised LPG price have made it more difficult for the poor to sustain LPG use. India determines domestic LPG prices based on imported LPG price (we import more than 50% of our consumption). As the pandemic set in, the LPG subsidised price began to rise, even when global LPG prices plummeted, contributing to the refiners’ margins and government finances. However, now with LPG prices rising globally, a 50% reduction in the LPG subsidy budget for FY22 (versus FY21) does not bode well. The government is either banking on low global prices (wishful thinking) or reducing its subsidy burden significantly, even while offering 1 crore new connections under Ujjwala 2.0 in FY22. The government’s lack of transparency in the pricing of subsidised LPG adds further to the citizen's plight. The information about LPG price build-up and subsidy has become more difficult to obtain in recent years. As a consumer, one is no more aware of whether the subsidy reduction or global price changes are changing the subsidised LPG prices.
Better targeting
•So, can the Central government tread a tight rope to balance LPG subsidies and ensure sustained clean fuel consumption in poorer households? The answer lies in better targeting of subsidy. Currently, the government provides a uniform subsidy per cylinder to all LPG consumers (PMUY or otherwise). Many long-term LPG users, who are also middle- and higher-income households, will continue to use LPG even at a (higher) unsubsidised price. In contrast, economically poor households need a greater subsidy to make it affordable for them to use LPG as their main cooking fuel.
•One approach for such targeting is to rely on the existing LPG consumption patterns of consumers. Provide households exhibiting low consumption or a decline in LPG consumption over time with greater subsidy per cylinder to sustain health gains. Further, the subsidy levels could be dynamic with different slabs reflecting the previous year’s consumption. Alongside, the de-duplication efforts to weed out households with multiple LPG connections must continue to avoid subsidy leakages.
•In the post-pandemic rebuilding, the continued support to the economically poor for sustaining LPG use is not merely a fiscal subsidy but also a social investment to free-up women’s productive time and reduce India’s public health burden. This social investment will yield rich dividends in the years ahead through a healthier and productive population.
📰 Railways and a question of transparency
They are in the midst of a financial distress and are faced with fundamental organisational issues
•A surprising feature of the post-Budget discourse in Parliament and in the media these past few weeks has been the total absence of one topic: Railways. Apparently, the understated objective of doing away with a separate Budget for the Railways, namely, shifting the spotlight away from it, has been handsomely achieved. However, sweeping under the carpet the serious problems of viability facing the country’s largest and most crucial transport organisation, by taking cover behind the diversions provided by other, more topical issues thrown up by the Union Budget, will not make them disappear.
Finances are out of whack
•Recent public statements about the performance of the Railways on the freight front seem to suggest that all is well with the Railways. In a recent interview, the CEO and Chairman of the Railway Board highlighted the fact that freight loading in January 2021 was the highest ever. A recent press report says that the freight earnings in 2020-21 are likely to be more than in 2019-20 despite the COVID-19 pandemic.
•Both these achievements are commendable by themselves but need to be seen in proper perspective. About the record-breaking loading in January 2021, what is relevant is the freight earnings, which during the entire year are projected to be ₹1,24,184.00 crore in the Revised Estimates for 2020-21. This is, in fact, lower than what was achieved in 2018-19 (₹1,27,432.72 crore). As for the freight revenues going past that of the last financial year, that was only to be expected, with freight traffic having a relatively free run due to cancellation of most regular passenger services due to COVID-19.
•Meanwhile, an important financial performance index has been airbrushed to project a picture totally removed from reality. The Operating Ratio (OR), which is broadly the ratio of working expenses to revenues, has been artificially kept below 100% by making less-than-required provision for pension payments during 2019-20 and 2020-21. While the official figures of OR are 98.36% for 2019-20 and 96.96% for 2020-21, the actual OR works out to 114.19% and 131.49%, respectively, if the required provision is made for pension payments. The purpose of indulging in this self- delusional exercise is not clear. Technically, the Indian Railways are well and truly in the red. Tinkering with statistics cannot alter that reality.
•Perhaps for the first time ever, the Indian Railways were unable to adequately provide for the Pension Fund, both for 2019-20 and 2020-21, totalling ₹78,119 crore. The Railway Ministry has reportedly sought a loan from the Central Exchequer to meet this shortfall. While the under-provisioning for 2020-21 can be explained by the shortfall in revenues due to the pandemic, the shortfall amounting to ₹27,642 crore even during 2019-20 (when there was no COVID-19) should be a cause for serious concern. In fact, the passenger and freight earnings in 2019-20 were less than in 2018-19, indicating that a downslide had started even before the outbreak of COVID-19, probably due to the economic slowdown. Railway finances are out of whack. And COVID-19 has nothing to do with it.
Immediate challenges
•It is not as though all this has happened suddenly. The fact is, over the years, traffic revenues have been unable to keep pace with the increase in staff costs and pension payments. While the passenger and freight revenues increased by 84.8 % from 2010-11 to 2019-20, the staff and pension costs raced ahead at almost double that rate, by 157%, in the same period. Further, while in 2010-11, the staff plus pension costs formed 55.7% of the traffic earnings, by 2019-20, they had shot up to 77.5% of the traffic earnings. This, despite the fact that there has been a reduction of about one lakh staff on roll during this period. The spike in the staff and pension costs is largely attributable to the implementation of the Central Pay Commission recommendations, a 10-yearly feature. Being a Ministry of the Government of India, the Indian Railway’s finances are bound to be subjected to another fatal body blow by the next (Eighth) Pay Commission around 2025-26. Therefore, the immediate challenges are achieving a quantum jump in the revenues, particularly on the freight front, and a drastic reduction in the number of employees, there being no way to reduce the number of pensioners in the short run.
•It is in this context that the full commissioning of the two Dedicated Freight Corridors (DFCs), slated to be operational by 2022, assumes great urgency and importance. A related aspect is the product mix of freight that will be carried in the near future. A disturbing feature of freight traffic is the overwhelming dependence on one commodity: coal. Despite all the marketing efforts over the years, almost 50% of freight earnings are contributed by the transport of coal. With the availability of alternative sources of renewable energy such as solar at competitive prices, the dependence on coal-based thermal power plants is bound to reduce to meet the incremental energy needs. Even these are likely to be set up at the pitheads, requiring no substantial movement over the Railways system. Also, India is a signatory to the 2015 Paris Agreement, committed to achieving targeted reductions in carbon emissions in a time-bound manner. The Railways have to therefore think seriously of a life after coal. An option that merits consideration is the adoption of the roll-on roll-off model of transporting loaded trucks on rail on the DFCs, which apart from boosting revenues has the added advantage of reducing the overall carbon footprint.
•The other major challenge facing the Railways is the burgeoning staff costs including pension. At this juncture, the reported move to go in for recruitment of 1.5 lakh staff is simply baffling. There have been suggestions to corporatise the Railways’s Production Units and outsource the medical services. The government needs to firm up its policies on these crucial issues after discussions with all stakeholders. More than a year ago, a grand proposal to merge all cadres and have a single Indian Railways management cadre was announced to eliminate “departmentalism”. This implies that the existing organisational set up will continue, because it will take at least 25-30 years for any beneficial impact to be felt. On the other hand, moves are afoot to invite private players to operate passenger and freight services. These are conflicting moves, akin to driving a car with one foot on the accelerator and the other on the brakes.
Need for public scrutiny
•A separate Railway Budget has passed irrevocably into history. However, the need for a detailed public scrutiny of the affairs of one of the largest undertakings in the country, public or private, at least once a year has not gone away. As suggested earlier by this writer in these columns, an annual report called ‘Indian Railways Report’ on the lines of the annual Economic Survey should be placed in Parliament every year detailing the physical and financial performance of the Railways, identifying the challenges and plans for the future to meet the country’s rail transport needs. The Railways are in the midst of an unprecedented financial distress and are faced with fundamental organisational issues. This is no time for evasiveness and obfuscation but for clarity and transparency. It is also time to confront reality.
📰 Now, an expanded horizon of surveillance
‘Citizen watch’ gets a new meaning after the notification on the IT Rules, 2021 — the promotion of lateral surveillance
•This year, the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C), under the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), launched the Cyber Crime Volunteers Programme with the aim to allow citizens to register themselves as “Cyber Crime Volunteers’’ in the role of “Unlawful Content Flaggers”. As per the official website of the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal, the programme will help law enforcement agencies in identifying, reporting and in the removal of illegal/unlawful online content. The programme, which will be launched all over the country, is going to have its test run in Jammu and Kashmir and Tripura.
An explainer
•This form of surveillance, which enables citizens to “watch over” one another is called lateral surveillance. The conventional understanding of the term, surveillance, is its use in the hierarchical sense, i.e. the vertical relationship between the person watching and the person being watched, which is usually the state and its citizenry. Lateral or social or peer-to-peer surveillance differs from typical surveillance.
•While surveillance of any kind shows an imbalance of power between the person who surveils, and the one under surveillance, lateral surveillance specifically ensures that the imbalance of power no longer exists. Informal watching of communities by their members has been an age-old part of society, and its members view it as a harmless activity. The problem arises when it is organised and state-sponsored.
•In the 1970s, the United States had the neighborhood watch schemes which increased community policing. With the introduction of technology and development of applications such as Citizen and Nextdoor, monitoring of people and their behaviour has become easier. Further, government and private sector institutions alike collect swathes of data for supposedly ‘public functions’. Specifically in the sphere of crime prevention, much like the cyber crime prevention programme, there has been a transition in the outlook from a ‘punishing state’ to a ‘preventive state’.
Its extent in India
•This is not the first time state-sponsored lateral surveillance has been implemented in India. For example, the C-Plan App in Uttar Pradesh launched for keeping a tab on anti-social elements, is designed to receive inputs from certain identified individuals in villages across the State. These individuals have been given the responsibility to solve local problems such as providing information about simmering communal tensions or land disputes taking place in their respective villages through the mobile application.
•The scope of lateral surveillance was greatly expanded during the pandemic lockdown, both with and without the introduction of technology. The Karnataka government released a PDF with the names and addresses of around 19,000 international passengers who were quarantined in Bengaluru while in the North, a woman was harassed and boycotted by her neighbours after the Delhi government marked her house with a quarantine sticker.
Tool for exclusion, suspicion
•If a pattern were to be drawn, one notices that lateral surveillance is used to further emotional objectives such as community building and strengthening relationships with neighbours where emotional and social factors act as a driving force, thus creating a situation where privacy may be undermined for the betterment of the community.
•However, surveillance technologies not only act as a tool for social control but also as a tool for social exclusion. Lateral surveillance thus makes it easier to discriminate between those who conform to the social norms of the majority. For example, the LGBT community in South Korea came under the scanner after a cluster of novel coronavirus cases were reported from a particular area which had resulted in large-scale circulation of homophobic content and comments against the patients who tested positive from the community. This not only made it difficult for authorities to collect information but also increased troubles for the people belonging to the sexual minority in getting themselves tested.
•State-sponsored lateral surveillance is harmful as it creates a culture of ‘hate’, ‘fear’ and ‘constant suspicion’ against an ‘enemy’. Wherever the state identifies that it “cannot be everywhere”, it deploys this mechanism. This culture places a duty on people to ‘keep an eye out’ for ‘their own safety’ and this heightens the fear of crime in society.
•Such perceived threats have a tendency to increase intolerance, prejudice, xenophobia and casteism in our society, while also violating the fundamental right to privacy, and, consequently, the unfettered expression of free speech and behaviour.
In policy
•Despite the potential harm, the government, on February 25, notified the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 which intends to expand “due diligence” obligations by intermediaries. However, this not only substantially increases surveillance but also promotes lateral surveillance. For example provisions pertaining to user directed take downs of non-consensual sexually explicit content or ‘any other matters’ and even the harsh content take down/data sharing timelines will enable intermediaries to remove or disable access to information within a short period of time of being notified by users, circumventing the “actual knowledge” doctrine given in Shreya Singhal vs Union of India. This will further create an incentive to take down content and share user data without sufficient due process safeguards, violating the fundamental right to privacy and freedom of expression. One wonders how long it would be before a neighbour with a “passion to serve the nation on a single platform and contribute in [the] fight against cybercrime in the country” reports you or me on a social media platform or otherwise.
