Protest loudly because it’s possible to get this regime to reverse its policy

It’s hard to be the servant of a turbulent master.

When it was revealed (by Reuters, not by the government itself) that India had asked manufacturers of smart phones to preload an app that allowed authorities to track users, there was an international outcry.

 

It is always possible to think of authoritarian regimes that want to keep tabs on their citizens. But it’s very hard to think of democratic societies where such a move would be acceptable.

 

   What made it worse was that, while the app itself was already available, there had been no move to force people to use it. When the government decided that all smart phone users would have to load it on to their devices, this move was shrouded in silence. Forget about the sort of consultation that should precede any unprecedented move of this nature, there was also a complete lack of transparency. The order went out to cell phone manufacturers. And that was it. No public announcement was made. None of us was told that we would have to carry this app on our phones. If we had phones that had been purchased before this instruction went out then the app would have to be loaded on to our devices through system updates.

 

   Who could possibly justify such a measure executed with stealth?

 

   Lots of people, it turned out.

 

   After Reuters broke the story there was a justified public uproar. Was this an attempt to keep track of citizens? What would the app enable the government to do? (Judging by the permissions it demanded from users, quite a lot, apparently.)

 

   And yet, as a panicked government PR machine called out its supporters, there were many who answered the call and loyally justified the government’s actions.

 

   The excuses were as familiar as those offering them up. What was wrong with accepting such an invasive app? Did we not realise that existing commercial apps already had access to so much of our personal information? (That commercial apps required consent whereas the government was imposing this on citizens was never treated as being of any consequence.) The government’s app would not have any access to our information. (How were they so sure of that? Well, because they had been briefed by—you guessed it! — government sources.)

 

"Many phone manufacturers had leaked to the media that it would be nearly impossible to comply with the government’s directive."

   All that the government was trying to do was protect us from fraud, we were assured. Why then would the government do this without consulting us, or even asking for our consent? Why would it go behind our backs and tell phone manufacturers to install the app so that its inclusion on our phones was a fait accompli?

 

   There were no clear answers.

 

   Finally, the defenders of the move fell back on patriotism, the last refuge of the sycophant. People were only protesting, they said, because this was an Indian app. The app’s critics were happy to let foreigners have access to our data but objected to Indians doing the same.

 

   It is not my case that everyone who rallied around in support of the government’s abuse of our privacy was insincere. Perhaps some of them actually believed this nonsense. Perhaps years of practice had turned cheerleading into a reflex action for them regardless of what the facts demonstrated.

 

   But of one thing, there is no doubt. All those who hailed this action believed that the government’s position was set in stone. There was no chance that it would backtrack or that any of the many reasonable arguments against this backdoor attempt to track our phones would ever find acceptance. This is a government that never backs down, they believed.

 

   But as we do know the government did in fact back down within 24 hours of the beginning of the uproar.

 

   Why did it give in to the protests? Nobody knows for sure but I sensed that a climb down was imminent when a single minister was sent out to handle the criticism on his own. Given the centralised nature of decision making in this government it is extremely unlikely that the top leadership had not okayed the imposition of the app. Yet the leaders were content to let one ministry take the heat.

 

   The following day when most newspapers came out uncharacteristically strongly against the move I was certain that it was dead in the water.

 

   And sure enough, the official position went from “it’s a great move designed to protect the citizen” (the stand that the government’s supporters had also been instructed to take) to “no, no, we never said you could not delete the app” to “okay, we won’t ask manufacturers to preload it on phones.”

 

   What accounted for the turnaround? On X (formerly Twitter) where so many of us outraged against the imposition of the app, we like to give ourselves the credit for forcing the government to climb down. Perhaps we are right to do so but if we are then it counts as a rare victory in the face of the obstinacy that has characterised this government’s attitude to criticism from the middle class. (It pays more attention to protests from voter blocs as its about turn on the farm laws demonstrated.)

 

   Or perhaps the turnaround had nothing to do with the protests. Many phone manufacturers had leaked to the media that it would be nearly impossible to comply with the government’s directive. Crucially one of these manufacturers was Apple. At this stage, the government cannot afford to fight with Apple, not when it is encouraging the telecom giant to manufacture in India and when any negative announcement from Apple would play into the hands of India’s detractors in the Trump Administration.

 

   It’s as hard to be sure who took the decision to execute the about turn as it is to be sure whose idea it was in the first place to force the app onto our phones.

 

   But what this saga will say to critics of this government is: protest loudly because it is possible to get this regime to reverse its policy.

 

   And to those unfortunate cheerleaders who have been made to look silly now that the government has disowned them and rejected their loyal support of this discredited policy, it will send out a very different message: think carefully before you throw yourselves in the line of fire.

 

   Either way, it could turn out to be a seminal political moment.