Delhi Pollution: Mopping Floor With Tap Open!

D Raghunandan | 08 Dec 2025

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It is noticeable that no authority wants to tackle the powerful automobile or construction lobbies, both of whom deny major responsibility and point fingers elsewhere.

Image Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons

Winter is here, bringing with it a heavy pall of pollutant laden smog over Delhi, and on most of Northern India along the Indo-Gangetic plains. During October-February, and especially during the peak pollution months of November-December, governments at the Centre and in Delhi, as well as the media and even the Supreme Court, are suddenly abuzz with policy statements, articles and commentary about air pollution and what needs to be done. From time to time, different scapegoats have been targeted as being primarily responsible, and silver bullet “solutions” are offered.

The problem is, Delhi and other North Indian cities have consistently figured in the top 20 most polluted cities in the world for a long time now. Despite all the fulminations, little has changed. Except that the basic factors involved, the main pollution sources, and the long-term approach required toward a solution, are all reasonably well-known to scientists and decision-makers, but continue to evade strong targeted action due to powerful interests involved. These issues have been addressed repeatedly in these columns but are worth reiterating.

Beyond debating points and academic policy discussions, air pollution has become one of the most pressing, all-India public health crises, some would even say an emergency. About 17 lakh people are estimated to have died all over India in 2022 due to air pollution, and in Delhi, about 17,200 people are estimated to have died in 2023, about 15% of all deaths in the capital that year.

Increasing number of hospitalisations for major respiratory and related cardiac and other ailments, prolonged bouts of asthma including among children, and other serious issues including cancers have been reported in Delhi and elsewhere.

Read Also: Delhi Pollution: One-Size-Fits-All Won’t Work in Transport Sector

Obviously, outdoor workers, construction and other and informal sector workers, street vendors and delivery agents are among the worst affected. Poor and malnourished residents living in congested low-income areas with poor sanitation and hygiene are more vulnerable, along with infants, the elderly and those with pre-existing lung and heart ailments.

Air pollution clearly needs to be addressed on a priority basis. 

Delhi Alone Not Affected

While Delhi has been grabbing the headlines, air pollution is a chronic problem all over the country, to a lesser or greater extent.

Cities and towns in the Indo-Gangetic plains have higher annual average air pollution (classed as ‘Moderate’ to ‘Poor’, corresponding to the multi-parameter Air Quality Index or AQI values of 101-300) than peninsular India and along either coast (‘Satisfactory’ to ‘Moderate’ or AQI 51-200) with many more ‘good’ days than in Northern India.

The Northern plains are characterised by the winter “inversion” in which colder, heavier air laden with pollutants is trapped under a layer of warmer air, taking pollution levels to much higher, more dangerous levels. Strong winds and sea-breezes along the coasts also help blow pollutants away. So, the problem is undoubtedly more serious in the North, including cities such as Guwahati.

The point is that all cities in India have much higher air pollution than the norm, given high population density, power plants, industries and other economic activities, and burgeoning often highly polluting vehicles. Even a quick search on the internet will reveal several surprises among smaller towns and cities with high air pollution levels.

India’s air pollution standards prescribe much higher norms than those in Europe, for example, which are themselves slightly higher than World Health Organisation or WHO norms. India sets a maximum limit for PM 2.5 (particulate matter of size 2.5 microns or 1000th of a millimeter) at 60 μg/m3 (micrograms per cubic metre), usually exceeded many times over, against the European Union’s 20, set to go down to the WHO standard of 10 μg/m3 in 2030.

The EU also has tighter standards for nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and other nitrogen oxides (together NOx), sulphur dioxide (SO2), carbon dioxide and surface ozone (O3). All these latter are serious and very harmful pollutants that are rarely talked about in India, where particulate matter visibly contributing to smog, is focused on almost exclusively.

Particulate matter can be ground down to ever smaller sizes, such as by automobiles moving over road dust. The finest particles, such as PM2.5, can be absorbed into the lung and block pores impairing respiratory functions, whereas even finer particles can directly enter the bloodstream. Particulates also provide a convenient medium for other pollutants to condense around, and also for chemical reactions with gaseous pollutants to form “secondary particulates.”

The National Clean Air Mission launched in 2019 has set moderate targets of reducing PM10 levels by 40% in 131 cities (with poor air quality and one million + cities) by 2025-26,  yet the progress as of 2023 has been poor against even these modest targets. Most funds under this scheme are unused and lapse. The Mission needs complete overhaul with stiffer targets and timelines, and systematic and rigorous monitoring.

False Solutions in Delhi

Over the past several years there has been a really confusing medley of analyses, commentaries and opinions in studies by multiple authorities on pollution sources and solutions, often contradicting each other due to differences in sampling, models and methodologies. As a result, there has been a lack of clarity on major causes, strategies for mitigation, targets and institutional mechanisms. There is a bad need to cut through the confusion and arrive at a broader picture than may inform potential strategies.

The confusion has also driven false narratives, deliberate attempts at obfuscation, and silver bullet solutions that would magically obviate air pollution over Delhi.

For many years, stubble burning by farmers of Punjab and Haryana has been a favourite scapegoat for the media, the Bharatiya Janata Party central government (since both states were governed by Opposition parties) and even the Supreme Court which repeatedly demanded strict penalties and punishment for the banned practice.

Many organisations and commentators, including in these very columns, had clearly shown that stubble-burning took place only over a very short period of a few weeks in October-November to clear left-over stubble after the paddy harvest in preparation for wheat sowing. Studies had shown that even this contributed only around 10% of pollutants over Delhi at worst of times.

Efforts by both Union and state governments to assist farmers in clearing the stubble through machines have been gradually bearing fruit, although much still needs to be done. Government data now shows an almost 90% decrease in stubble burning over five years. In any case, the current severe-to-hazardous pollution levels in Delhi, much after stubble-burning has stopped, should hopefully put an end to this canard.

“Anti-smog guns”or glorified water spraying systems, which could obviously only bring down particulates over a short distance were then pushed by the Delhi government, strongly supported by the SC! Then there was artificial rain by seeding clouds to generate rain, with an estimated 2-3% success rate across all international experiments. All this amounting only to mopping the floor while the tap stays open!

Fight The Real Problem 

Cutting through the clutter, we can arrive at a broad characterisation of sources of pollution in Delhi based on considering data from all the different studies referred to above: about 40-50% vehicles, about 30% road plus construction dust, and the rest from Industries, biomass burning, brick kilns in surrounding areas etc. There could be some quibbling about these numbers, but the broad picture is not likely to change much.

If Delhi targets its vehicular or transportation sector, dust whether from construction or from ambient conditions, and industrial pollutants, coal-fired power plants and brick-kilns in neighbouring states, it would make a major dent in air pollution levels. But even today, the media reports that the Prime Minister’s Office is interested in yet another source apportionment study. There are no mystery pollutants to be unveiled!

It is noticeable that no authorities want to tackle the powerful automobile or construction lobbies, both of whom deny major responsibility and point fingers elsewhere. Press reports of a recent meeting in the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) state that discussions revolved around dust, biomass burning, industries in surrounding areas, but no mention of vehicles!

The biggest offenders in biomass burning are not neighbourhoods but the 5 big Waste-to-Energy incinerators, run by private operators on behalf of the MCD, which reportedly burn mostly unsegregated solid waste including plastics at undesirably low temperatures of around 800C and spew out massive quantities of particulates and toxic gases such as furans and dioxins. These WtE (waste to energy) plants continue to operate with “green” signals even from the National Green Tribunal and the SC!

Read Also: Gig Workers Amid Rising Air Pollution

Delhi is overrun with personal vehicles, 13 million for a population of 22 million! Obviously, pollution levels will be high, especially with almost 50% of these conforming only to obsolete BS-III or earlier pollution norms. The only answer is to massively shift passengers from personal to badly needed public mass transit systems. The Delhi Metro is a good contributor to mass transit, catering to about seven million passengers daily.  As of 2024, it is estimated to have taken over 650,000 personal vehicles off the roads. But it is highly gentrified and oriented to the middle-class as regards pricing.

A large number of common people rely on buses for public transport, but Delhi’s buses, currently having about 5300 CNG and 1700 E-buses CNG Buses (about 4000 with DTC and 3000 with cluster buses, including 1700 E-buses. Transport planners project a demand for 15,000 buses, including small E-buses to serve interior roads, with good last-mile connectivity and integration. Delhi’s highly under-utilised surface railway system also cries out for revival and modernisation. Non-motorised transport, including dedicated bicycle tracks and pedestrian walkways, are also needed.

Construction activities require to be strictly regulated to control dust pollution. Another, mostly ignored and forgotten problem is the creeping desertification around Delhi due to the rampant destruction of the Aravalli Hill range for quarrying and real estate, removing the dust-shield the hills provided Delhi and its environs. Unfortunately, even the SC recently went along with the Union government in “redefining” the Aravallis in such a way as will further encourage desertification.

There are many battles to be fought.

The writer is with the Delhi Science Forum and All India People’s Science Network. The views are personal.

Delhi Pollution: One-Size-Fits-All Won’t Work in Transport Sector

Aisha Sheikh , Owais Ibni Hassan | 04Dec 2025

Effective de-carbonisation will depend on targeting the highest-emitting segments, rather than treating all vehicles alike.

Delhi’s chronic air pollution challenges are inseparably tied to how the city moves people and goods. The transport sector is a major and growing source of CO₂ and NOₓ emissions, shaped by a highly unequal mix of vehicle types, fuel technologies, and usage patterns. On one end are high-mileage commercial and freight vehicles running largely on diesel under relaxed emission norms; on the other is a rapidly expanding but still imperfect transition toward electric mobility, especially in the last-mile delivery segment. In what follows, we explain how different vehicle categories contribute to Delhi’s emissions profile and argue that effective de-carbonisation will depend on targeting the highest-emitting segments, rather than treating all vehicles alike.

Commercial vehicles (CVs) are the dominant contributors to CO₂ emissions in Delhi, accounting for over 60–70% of annual transport-related emissions. Though they represent a smaller portion of the fleet, CVs (defined here to include tempos, trucks, mini buses, pick-up lorries, and goods carriers) operate longer hours, travel greater distances, and typically run on diesel, which has a higher emission factor than petrol. Many of these vehicles continue to operate under relaxed regulatory norms such as BS III and exhibit lower fuel efficiency. This operational profile explains their disproportionately high emissions footprint.

The Electric Vehicle Policy (2020), which mandates 100% electrification of delivery fleets by 2025, has led to a noticeable shift from petrol to electric vehicles in the two-wheelers last mile delivery segment,

Commercial vehicles are also the leading emitters of NOx, followed by diesel buses. Within the broad category of commercial vehicles (CVs), heavy-duty vehicles (HDVs) are likely the dominant contributors to NOₓ emissions. These vehicles are typically long-haul trucks powered by older diesel engines—combine high engine loads, poor real-world emission control, and long annual vehicle kilometers travelled, resulting in disproportionately high NOₓ output.

The large magnitude of freight-based truck movement in Delhi is driven by a host of geographic, infrastructural and economic reasons. Delhi is a logistics hub of North India, sitting at the intersection of a series of national highways affording fast and convenient road connectivity. It connects Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and the broader NCR region making it a transit node for goods moving across North India.

Estimates suggest that about three quarter of fruits and vegetables and almost half of fuel, iron and steel and foodgrains destined for other states traverse through Delhi (Goel and Guttikunda 2015). However the thrust for electrification of HDT (heavy duty trucks) has been neglected in policy design. For example, the Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of (Hybrid &) Electric Vehicles subsidy programme coverage in the second phase extends to two and three-wheelers, car and buses, but excludes HDT’s (Ministry of Heavy Industries 2021).

HDT’s have lagged in the transition to zero emissions both in terms of market development and policy support, leaving a significant policy gap that must be addressed. (ICCT 2024).

Emissions from private cars, by contrast, are volume-driven. Their per-vehicle emission load may be moderate, but the sheer size of the fleet, combined with rising vehicle kilometers traveled and private vehicle dependency—makes them a significant and growing contributor. This underscores the need to curtail car volumes and usage, through demand-side interventions like improved public transport and instruments like congestion pricing.

Emissions reduction strategies must prioritise high-mileage, high-emission segments, especially commercial freight and older diesel vehicles, which have a disproportionate impact on urban air quality. For Delhi to achieve sustained gains in both air quality and climate outcomes, regulation must evolve to reflect real-world vehicle usage.

The writers are researchers having interests in energy economics, transport economics and clean energy. They can be reached at: aiha2400869@st.jmi.ac.in and owaisibnihassan@gmail.com. 

Do Democracies Really Die? Lessons From a Century of Slow Unravelling

Waseem Ahmad Bhat | 13 Dec 2025

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The deeper danger today for the collapse of democracies is not authoritarianism itself, but democratic complacency.

Parliamentarians in the Lok Sabha during a special session of the Parliament, in New Delhi, Tuesday, Sept. 19, 2023. Image Courtesy: PTI (Representational Image)

Public conversation today carries a rising sense of fatalism: democracies seem to be hollowing out, institutions feel weakened, and elected strongmen appear increasingly entrenched. But democracies rarely die in a single moment. Their decay is gradual, legalistic, and often disguised by the familiar rhythms of elections and parliamentary debate. Understanding how democracies erode, and why some democracies survive deep crises is essential for citizens living through moments of democratic anxiety.

The Slow Death of Democratic Systems

When we imagine democratic collapse, we picture tanks in Santiago or stormtroopers in Berlin. These dramatic images suggest that democracy ends with a coup or a violent seizure of power. History, however, shows a more complicated reality. The Weimar Republic did not collapse overnight. Its death was preceded by years of political normalisation of extremist actors and repeated use of emergency powers that bypassed Parliament. By the time Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor in 1933, democratic institutions were already deeply corroded.

Chile’s 1973 coup, too, was the culmination of prolonged political polarisation, legislative paralysis, and economic destabilisation. Similarly, Argentina’s recurring breakdowns in the 20th century stemmed from weak civilian control over the military and long-standing legitimacy crises.

In each case, democratic death was not a sudden blow but a long illness. The final collapse was only the last symptom of deeper institutional decay. This historical pattern is echoed today. The 21st century has shown that democracies die even more quietly now. Elections continue, parliaments function, and courts operate yet the substance of democracy erodes underneath.

Hungary is a textbook example: Viktor Orbán has rewritten constitutional rules, reshaped the judiciary, and tightened control over media, all while maintaining the outward rituals of electoral democracy. Turkey under Erdoğan followed a similar trajectory after 2016: emergency decrees became tools to silence dissent, purge institutions, and remake the constitutional order.

India’s democratic concerns also fit within this global shift. The centralisation of power, weakening of autonomous institutions, shrinking civic freedoms, and the use of State agencies against political opponents reflect what scholars describe as “competitive authoritarianism.” Elections remain, but they become increasingly uneven contests.

How Democracies Erode Within

If democracies today die slowly, they do so through three interconnected mechanisms. First, elected governments increasingly rely on legal tools rather than overt force. Constitutional amendments, executive decrees, and regulatory changes are used to reshape the institutional landscape in favour of the ruling party. This “legal pathway to autocracy” is effective precisely because it appears legitimate. Citizens often struggle to discern when democratic rules are being bent beyond recognition.

Second, democracies erode when the informal norms holding them together collapse. Mutual toleration of the idea that opponents are legitimate, and institutional forbearance the restraint in using available powers excessively are essential. When these norms break down, politics becomes a zero-sum battlefield. The opposition is demonised, State institutions are politicised, and public discourse becomes corrosive. Once these norms give way, even strong constitutional systems become vulnerable.

Third, social polarisation and economic anxiety push electorates toward leaders who promise order and stability. When people begin to prioritise identity or security over democratic freedoms, the temptation to centralise power grows. Democracies rarely collapse against the will of the people; they collapse because a portion of the public becomes willing to sacrifice democratic safeguards for short-term reassurance or national pride. These mechanisms interact. Polarisation weakens norms, which makes legal autocratisation easier, which in turn deepens polarisation -- a downward spiral that has repeated across continents.

How Democracies Can Save Themselves

Despite these troubling trends, democracies are not doomed. Comparative research shows that democratic collapse is far from inevitable, countries with resilient institutions, active civil societies, and effective political gatekeeping often weather even severe crises. Strengthening independent institutions is key. Judicial autonomy, free media, and an impartial bureaucracy act as counterweights to executive overreach. Wherever these institutions remain robust, democratic backsliding slows or stalls.

Equally important is political gatekeeping. Political parties play an essential role in protecting democracy when they refuse to ally with or normalise anti-democratic actors. Weimar Germany’s fate was sealed when conservative elites believed they could “control” Hitler. Similar miscalculations have occurred in modern contexts when mainstream leaders empower extremists for short-term gain.

Civil society is another line of defence. Journalists, student movements, unions, and rights organisations often detect democratic erosion earlier than formal institutions. When civic space is vibrant, public awareness remains high; when civic space shrinks, democratic decline accelerates.

Finally, democracies must place strict limits on emergency powers. One of the clearest lessons from history is that temporary crises often become pretexts for permanent expansions of executive authority. Sunset clauses, legislative review, and judicial oversight are crucial to ensure that exceptions do not become the norm.

Vigilance, Not Fatalism

Recognising democratic erosion is not an invitation to despair. Democracies are uniquely capable of self-correction, but only if citizens and institutions mobilise early, before erosion becomes irreversible. The deeper danger today is not authoritarianism itself, but democratic complacency. The belief that “it cannot happen here” has been the final mistake of many societies. Weimar’s elites believed Hitler could be contained. Chilean politicians assumed the military would intervene only temporarily. Hungarian voters did not expect that one leader could reshape their republic so dramatically.

Democracies die not because they are attacked from without, but because those entrusted with their defence choose silence over resistance, and short-term political advantage over constitutional integrity. If there is a lesson to be drawn from a century of democratic breakdowns, it is this: Democracy rarely collapses with a loud crash. It collapses slowly, then suddenly and only if we allow it to.

The writer is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Akal University, Talwandi Sabo, Punjab. The views are personal. He can be reached at waseembhat94@gmail.com.

Indian Farmers Across Country Protest Modi Govt’s New Seed Bill

Abdul Rahman | 11 Dec 2025

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Farmer groups claim that the proposed bill is an attempt to reintroduce provisions of laws which the ultra-right-wing government was forced to withdraw after a year-long protest in Delhi in 2020-21.

Farmers organized with All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) in Rajkot, Gujarat. Photo: AIKS

Hundreds of thousands of farmers across India protested against the new draft Seed Bill 2025 on Monday, December 8, burning copies of it and demanding its immediate withdrawal. The bill will compromise the country’s food security and threaten its seed sovereignty, the farmers claimed.

The call for the protest was made by Samyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM), a collective of various farmers’ organizations formed in 2020, which includes the left-wing All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS).

Farmers gathered in their villages/towns with banners and posters and burnt copies of the seed bill. In some places, farmers also burned copies of an electricity bill calling for its withdrawal, which has been a part of the farmers’ agitation for years now.

The seed bill was announced by India’s Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare (MoAFW) on November 12, with a deadline for public comments set for December 11. The proposed bill, if passed in the parliament, will replace the existing seeds act of 1966.

The ultra-right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government, which has unleashed a series of legislation angering both the workers and farmers in the country recently, claims that the seed bill seeks to modernize seed regulations with stricter quality control and penalties for major offenses.

In a statement issued on Sunday, SKM questioned the government’s claims, calling the proposed bill a “regressive legislation” which will establish the hegemony of Multinational Corporations (MNCs) over the Indian seed sector and take away the country’s seed sovereignty.

The bill is harmful for the farmers, for India’s biodiversity, and its food security, and also an assault on Indian federal structure, as it proposes the centralization of the existing powers of the provincial/state governments, SKM claimed.

Almost half of India’s workforce is engaged in agriculture with the majority of them involved in sustenance farming. As of now, most of them source seeds from their personal storage or local links. A large section of the seed needs are also supplied by the public sector or local companies.

Bill will consolidate corporate control

The proposed bill will establish MNC control over the supply of seeds, ending the existing arrangement, which provides greater flexibility to the farmers to source the required seeds from local or public sectors.

The control of MNCs will endanger indigenous varieties, public institutions, and traditional/informal seed networks and “bring disaster for sustenance farming in India,” claims SKM in a statement.

The bill will leave the crop cycle in India at the mercy of the MNCs.

“There is no mention [in the bill] of guaranteeing the timely supply of cheap and quality seeds in the market to ensure food security and profitable farming” which should have been the main concern of the government, SKM claims.

SKM also fears that the draft seed bill will empower the MNCs so much that it will be very difficult to monitor and control their future untoward behavior as well. This may endanger India’s biodiversity and the country’s rights over its genetic resources.

In its presented form, SKM alleged, the seeds bill is an attempt to bring back the provisions of the Contract Farming Act, which the government was forced to withdraw in 2021 after a year-long farmer’s protest in and around the capital Delhi.

On November 26, farmers observed the fifth anniversary of the 2020/21 agitation by holding nationwide protests. Farmers claim that most of the promises made by the government in the agreement signed with the SKM at the time, including the legal guaranteed price for agricultural products, remain unfulfilled even after five years.

Federal structure in India undermined

The seed bill limits the powers of the state/provincial governments to regulate and control the MNCs if they violate certain laws, while local and public sector suppliers remain under strong regulatory control.

It allows the MNCs to self-validate the varieties of seeds they are supplying in the country without any local control.

“The draft bill introduces a heavily centralized and corporatized regulatory system that risks weakening farmer-centered protections and diluting India’s legal architecture for biodiversity conservation and farmers’ rights,” SKM claims.

This may put local suppliers at a disadvantage and compromise the country’s seed sovereignty, given the resources which MNCs have vis-a-vis local and public sector seed suppliers.

“There is no provision of any trial of imported seeds under the supervision of Indian authorities”, which exposes the “government’s subservience to foreign masters in handing over the sensitive seed sector to MNCs,” SKM underlines.

The ruling BJP “is betraying the interests of the people and the country at large by introducing the anti-farmer draft seed bill 2025,” SKM accused.

Courtesy: Peoples Dispatch

 INDIA

Sanchar Saathi: Cyber Security or Cyber Panopticon?

Prabir Purkayastha | 11 Dec 2025

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The problem was the expansion of the app's ambit from location-tracking for a misplaced or stolen mobile, to a full-fledged surveillance tool.

Image Courtesy: The Leaflet

After concerted pushback from users, privacy groups and mobile phone manufacturers, the Narendra Modi government has withdrawn its directive to compulsorily install its "modified" Sanchar Saathi app on all mobile phones. The app, initially intended for tracking stolen or lost phones, would have turned the mobile phone into an instrument for tracking the user and monitoring who he or she was talking to, their emails, and whatever was stored on the mobile.

In other words, a Pegasus equivalent app was to be installed on all mobile phones, with access to all data on the phone that cannot be removed or disabled by the user. Bharat Chugh, a lawyer and former civil judge, calling it Orwellian, said that a non-removable app that has access to calls, messages, and storage risks creating a permanent surveillance backdoor in our devices.

The original purpose of Sanchar Saathi—to locate a misplaced or stolen phone—was quite simple. A mobile has a device number, an International Mobile Equipment Identity number or IMEI, independent of the mobile number in your SIM. The Sanchar Saathi system tracks both the IMEI and the SIM numbers on any mobile device. If you have reported your mobile as lost or stolen, the IMEI number is immediately blacklisted in the Indian telecom network, and can be used only after the phone is recovered and restored to its owner.

This use of the Sanchar Saathi app had drawn no serious objections from users or the pro-privacy community. The app had a clear and narrowly defined purpose, and its installation and use were also voluntary. The problem was the expansion of the app's ambit from merely a location-tracking app for a misplaced or stolen mobile to a full-fledged surveillance tool. Such a tool would ensure that whatever the user did on the phone or online could be monitored: where he/she went physically or met—whether in person or online—could be tracked by the app.

Worse, users had no way to shut down or remove the app from their phones. In other words, the proposed Sanchar Saathi would transform the app's role from locating a mobile phone on the network to monitoring its location, turning it into a listening device that transmits this information to government authorities as desired. It would also monitor and allow government authorities to access all the user's communications on the phone, regardless of the app: WhatsApp, Signal, etc.

There are 10 central agencies, as well as the state government's police, that can tap your phone conversations, but only after due process and authorisation by the Central or state Home Secretary. Therefore, any person under the scanner for whatever reason can have his or her phone officially tapped.

What the new Sanchar Saathi app proposed went far beyond tapping into conversations people were having on the telephone network. It makes it possible for the authorities to even tap into the phone's camera or microphone, track its GPS location, and the presence of other phones in its vicinity, thereby creating a truly all-seeing eye of the State on any phone user.

Consent to install the app would not even be required; per the government's instructions, it would have been compulsorily pre-loaded by phone manufacturers on all phones sold in India. Bentham's Panopticon would then truly come to life in today's digital world, with all citizens continuously under the eye of the all-seeing state!

Jeremy Bentham, an English philosopher and jurist, considered how to construct a prison that would allow guards to continuously watch prisoners, thereby enforcing discipline. His concept was a panopticon, an architecture that would have all the prisoners under the gaze of the guards at all times. Interestingly, most prisons today have cameras, and even those under trial are under constant camera surveillance. So, Bentham's Panopticon has been achieved not through architecture but through advances in modern surveillance tools.

So, what does the existing Sanchar Saathi app do, and what were the new functionalities proposed by Department of Telecommunication or DoT, which, under public pressure, have now been withdrawn?

In an interview with The Wire, Apar Gupta of the Internet Freedom Foundation, says that using the current Sanchar Saathi app and the website, you "get to know who all are using a mobile number under your name or also if the handset you're using is genuine or not." The IMEI number, the unique identifier on the handset being sold to you, does it match the actual handset which is there on the Sanchar Saathi website, and therefore original, or whether, as we Indians say, it is a "duplicate".

What the new Sanchar Saathi proposed was to convert the cameras, microphones and the location of our phones themselves into tools of our surveillance. The mobile phone, as we know, is highly versatile. It works as a camera and a microphone and can track itself using the Global Positioning System (GPS). The proposed Sanchar Saathi app on the phone would have allowed it to access all permissions to any data on the phone.

Medianama writes, "The App requests excessive permissions, including access to contacts, audio, call data and storage modification. These permissions could potentially allow the app to install or delete files on the device, and the developers do not explain why the app requires them."

In other words, if the app's purpose is only to locate a missing or stolen device, or to verify the authenticity of your mobile device, does it require all the access controls that the DoT was asking mobile manufacturers to implement?

The DoT directive requires manufacturers to pre-install the app and prevent users from deleting or turning it off: users cannot delete or turn it off, even temporarily. The app effectively forces the mobile device to continuously monitor the user and send such data back to the Sanchar Saathi website. It would then allow the app installed on your phone to spy on you and send all this information to the government. The directive issued to mobile manufacturers, apparently on November 21, 2025, became public due to a Reuters report.

For reasons best known to the government, such a significant change in the rules was neither opened for public discussion nor disclosed to Parliament. We will not discuss here whether such substantial changes to the rules, impinging on users' rights, can be made by the government, that too in such a surreptitious manner. It was only when some of the manufacturers, Apple and Samsung, objected to the app being pre-installed that the issue became public.

Why did the mobile phone manufacturers object to the app? Their objections were two-fold. One was that it would degrade the performance of the mobile device significantly and also create many more security "holes", as it effectively provides an official backdoor in the device.

Two, such a notification does not account for the app's feasibility, security implications, the bandwidth required to continuously send this data, the performance loss due to the app sending data back to the website, or the battery drain that can degrade the phone's performance. As users, we also have the additional question: would we also have to pay the telecom operators for data charges for data transmitted back to the government while the phone snoops on us?

What about the security of the app itself? Who would verify that it was not easily hackable and, therefore, make it easier for cyber criminals to hack our phones? Instead of protecting us from criminals, would it actually provide a backdoor, not only for the government agencies, but also for cyber criminals?

Mishi Choudhry, an internationally known lawyer dealing with internet and telecom law, points out, "Pre-installed apps anyway present much more security risks considering the broad permissions they require." She added that this move from the government "is a very concerning move and totally alters the balance between user autonomy on what we buy, and state-imposed security."

While all the above issues are important, what is even more vital is that such a significant change in the architecture of our telecom system was sought to be carried out without even a discussion in Parliament, which would have opened it to some external scrutiny. It was simply a directive from the Ministry to all mobile manufacturers that either manufacture or sell mobile phones in India to install this app.

Similarly, the government has reportedly asked the mobile manufacturers to enable satellite-based location tracking for "better surveillance". We also need to understand the legal framework governing telecom laws and whether our privacy laws—as detailed in the Puttaswamy Judgement—permit such an invasion of our privacy.

The public outcry and pressure from phone manufacturers have led the government to withdraw its directive. The ham-handed approach, which does not even involve tech experts or manufacturers in discussions on safety, efficiency, and even practicality, may have backfired on the government. But the issue of compulsory installation of surveillance tools on our mobile phones remains on the horizon. Only a vigilant public can protect its freedom from such governmental overreach.