#secc

The Socio-Economic Caste Census (SECC)’s decade-long mutation, from a foundational census to ostensibly efficiently deliver benefits to the poor into an mass-surveillance system, reveals how the Indian government is rapidly building surveillance infrastructure under the guise of poverty alleviation and how organisations like the World Bank are happy to offer advice to developing countries building intrusive systems that may not pass muster in places like Europe. “Such an unrestrained mass surveillance system could threaten liberty like never before,” said Chinmayi Arun, Fellow of the Information Society Project at Yale Law School, who taught law in India between 2010 and 2018. “India’s safeguards for state surveillance have always been weak. But this near-complete Orwellian surveillance would overturn the balance of power between citizens and the state,” Arun said. “It may be safe to say that if the state manages successfully to watch us so closely, India’s democracy will gradually become unrecognisable.”