The Indian state’s tryst with surveillance burst into the spotlight earlier this year, with the revelation that a kind of spyware—Pegasus—was used to track over 300 Indian ministers, opposition leaders, political strategists, journalists, activists, minority leaders, supreme court judges and more. And the Pegasus issue is only the latest in a larger trend of governments, both Central and State, engaging in such big-brother like activities over time; the first big instance of the same can be traced back all the way to the 1980s. 

So how and why has this been a feature of India’s governance for so long? What are some of the underlying frameworks that enable such surveillance? And will privacy matter enough for citizens to impact who they vote for? Meghna Bal, Fellow at Esya Centre, explains these questions and more, in this episode of The Impact.

About: The Impact is made in partnership with The Bastion, where we look at government policies and business decisions, or the lack of those, in a geopolitical and geoeconomics context. The idea is to understand how those decisions affect India’s role in the world both politically—if it’s a power play or a lost opportunity—and economically.