China is always used as the primary example of a surveillance state, people constantly talk about how dystopian it is and how everything you do in public or online is tracked. I have always been skeptical about these claims and know how hypocritical they are because of the amount of surveillance that happens in the west but I want to know if China is really that bad in regards to privacy.
I don’t think India is a surveillance state. At least it doesn’t look like one so far. The biometric data that is collected doesn’t seem to have been consolidated so far and used by the state. At least not in a way that is publicly known.
The mean reason I say this is because India is extremely lawless and this lawlessness seems to be unaffected by the existing surveillance apparatus. Only the a negligible fraction of all violent crimes committed seem to get police response or public attention.
I disagree. I put the nation wide exam as an example to show how this data is being given to a private entity. The state already has consolidated this type of data with the aadhar system they put. They even make people re submit the data in order to keep it up to date. Aadhar is linked to every thing ranging from loans or license or voter id. They even linked it to rural schemes for employment and it was collosal wreck.
Also any branch of the police or military already do surveillance on people who are deemed radical by the sangh. That is why I included the pegasus software in the comment. The surveillance apparatus is already well prepped at targeting anti hindutva sentiment and curbing it. The whole bhima koregaon affair is a good example of it.
True