Editor: Ashutosh Bharadwaj
Camera: Sumit Badola
“If there is heaven on earth, it is this, it is this, it is this.”
We’re not talking about Kashmir but a different place altogether: a once veritable ‘heaven on earth’, where people could live in a world without borders, freely share their thoughts and ideas and, were equal.
We’re talking about cyberspace.
The Centre’s revocation of the special status of Jammu & Kashmir has dominated headlines. However, in exploring the ‘hows’ and ‘whys’ of Article 370’s abrogation, a specific strategy which identically applies to the Centre’s policies and its governance of India’s cyberspace, is noticeable.
The Quint’s Editor-in-Chief Raghav Bahl, in a previous video, had assessed the government’s burial of Article 370 on the three touchstones of Mandate, Method and Morality.
This vocabulary of the 3Ms can also be used to assess the Centre’s major policies pertaining to cyberspace, specifically its policy of treating citizens’ data as a “public good”.
1. Method
What we see in both J&K and cyberspace is a method where there is no consensus-building on an agenda through a consultation with stakeholders. The entire process is shrouded in a veil of secrecy. Here’s what Bahl had to say about the method used in the abrogation of Article 370.
Raghav Bahl on J&K:
“To first dissolve the J&K Assembly, vest all powers in an appointed Governor, and use that manufactured/arrogated authority to justify the legality of your own action – prima facie, the Modi-Shah government has acted as the judge, jury, and executioner, all by itself.”
In cyberspace:
Speaking of judge, jury, and executioner, in cyberspace too, be it the decision to formulate rules on Internet shutdowns or the decision to sell our vehicle and our driving license data were taken unilaterally with zero consultation.
Even the workings of the Justice Srikrishna Committee, which was entrusted with drafting the Data Protection Bill, as well as the public comments received on the Bill, have been kept secret.
2. Morality
Here, we’re talking about the political morality of the government’s decision on J&K and cyberspace. And in both the cases, morality pertains to protecting the rights of the people.
Raghav Bahl on J&K:
“An entire population is locked up at home; leaders are arrested; communications and mobility are jammed; the whole state is put under the jackboot – and then, in the silence of this graveyard, the government passes a law which requires (under the Constitution) to be sanctioned by the will of the people!
To even think that what has happened is “politically moral” is to become complicit in a dangerous, malicious denial.”
In cyberspace:
In cyberspace, the Centre had assured the Supreme Court during the Aadhaar hearing that it would soon enact a data protection law to ensure the data privacy of citizens. Has the government even tabled the Bill in the Parliament? No.
In fact, the 2019 Economic Survey of India, even stated an outright falsehood: that a privacy bill had already been tabled in the Parliament.
It is in this context, when Indians enjoy the fundamental right to privacy, that the decision to use citizens’ data as a ‘public good’ as opposed to a private one, was developed.
3. Mandate
The question, then, is: How does the Centre justify the questionable method and dodgy morality of important decisions such as these?
The one-word answer is: Mandate.
Raghav Bahl on J&K:
“The BJP has consistently maintained, in one manifesto after another, that they would abolish Article 370 whenever they had the mandate. And since their overwhelming majority in May 2019 was democratically won, they had the Mandate to create this new law. Period.”
In cyberspace:
With cyberspace too, the government has pushed through legislation using its mandate of 303 seats in the Lok Sabha elections as a) justification ,and b) as a proxy for actual consultation.
A good example of this is what IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said during the Aadhaar Amendment Bill’s passage in Lok Sabha in July. “Now I want to ask the House a question: Privacy [of Aadhaar] is being discussed. If crores of Indians are happy with Aadhaar, what is the House’s problem?”
In conclusion, what the Centre appears to be conveying is that the end justifies the means. But go beyond the ‘what’ and question the ‘hows’ and the ‘whys’ of decisions taken and all we get is:
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