SPIR Launch Event 2023
Followed by a Lively Panel Discussion and Keynote Address
Common Cause released the Status of Policing in India Report 2023: Surveillance and the Question of Privacy (SPIR 2023) on 31 March, 2023. The report is a first of its kind, in-depth study of surveillance in India.
The report was released at a well-attended function at the India Habitat Centre in New Delhi. SPIR 2023 is the fifth consecutive annual report on policing by Common Cause, in collaboration with the Lokniti Programme at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS).
Radhika Jha, the lead researcher of SPIR, kicked off the launch with a brief introduction of the survey that undergirds the project. Next up Dr. Sanjay Kumar, Co-Director of Lokniti, which conducts the survey, provided an overview of SPIR Reports since their inception. He said that every report, going back to 2018, had broken new ground in our understanding of Indian policing. The first four reports were based primarily on surveys, but SPIR 2023 has supplemented that with interviews with police officials, focus group discussions with experts and official policing data.
Dr. Vipul Mudgal, the Director of Common Cause, made a power point presentation about SPIR 2023. Dr. Mudgal said that while the SPIR documents aimed to capture public opinions about policing, SPIR 2023 tried to fathom what people felt about surveillance and privacy and the deployment of surveillance technologies by police and the government. He also expounded on the key findings of SPIR 2023.
Justice Jasti Chelameswar, former Judge, Supreme Court of India and former Chief Justice, Kerala and Gauhati High Courts, gave the Keynote Address. Justice Chelameswar was part of the nine-judge bench that recognised the right to privacy as a fundamental right and a separate bench that affirmed in 2015 that citizens cannot be denied government services for lacking an Aadhaar number. Justice Chelameswar made a strong pitch for enacting a law to regulate data collection. Without such a law, it would be difficult to determine if citizen’s data was being scooped up for welfare or to serve the whims of the political masters, he said.
The release of the report was followed by a panel discussion on rethinking surveillance. The discussion was moderated by transparency and accountability activist Ms Anjali Bhardwaj. The speakers were Mr Prakash Singh, former DGP of Uttar Pradesh, Assam and the Border Security Force and Chairman, Indian Police Foundation, Prof. Ruchi Sinha, Associate Professor of Criminology at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, and Mr Apar Gupta, Executive Director, Internet Freedom Foundation.
The programme ended with the speakers answering a round of questions from the audience that included lawyers, academics, activists, retired and serving police officers and students. The event was live-streamed on YouTube and can be accessed at: https://bit.ly/40vOcrI
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