It’s hard to be the servant of a turbulent master. When it was revealed — by Reuters, mind you, not the Narendra Modi government — that India had asked smartphone manufacturers to preload Sanchar Saathi app, which allowed authorities to track users, there was an international outcry. It is easy to imagine authoritarian regimes keeping tabs on their citizens. But it’s very hard to think that democratic societies would consider such a move acceptable.
The Sanchar Saathi app had been around since January. But it was hard to work out why the government suddenly decided to force citizens to use it. Worse still it chose the route of secrecy. Forget about the sort of consultation that should precede any unprecedented move of this nature, there was 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 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 onto our devices through system updates.
Who could possibly justify such a measure executed with stealth?
Lots of people, it turned out.
Cheerleaders responded to the call
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 dialled its supporters, many 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?’ (The fact that commercial apps required our consent while the government was imposing this app on citizens was hardly of any consequence.) ‘The government 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.)
‘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 taking our consent? Why would it go behind our backs and tell 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 their 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 Modi 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 climbdown 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” (the initial communication did say that the app cannot be removed) to “okay, we won’t ask manufacturers to preload it on phones.”
A small victory
What accounted for the turnaround? On X, where so many of us outraged against the imposition of the app, we like to give ourselves 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 demonstrated by its about-turn on the farm laws.)
Or perhaps the turnaround had nothing to do with the social media 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 know who ordered the about-turn as it is to know who first thought it was a good idea 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 administration 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.
Vir Sanghvi is a print and television journalist and talk show host. He tweets @virsanghvi. Views are personal.
(Edited by Prashant Dixit)