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When the Supreme Court of India, while deliberating upon the case of Justice K.S. Puttaswamy (Retd.) v. Union of India in 2017, declared privacy to be a fundamental right enshrined under Article 21, it was celebrated as a landmark affirmation of individual dignity. In the succeeding years, this constitutional promise has been eroded quietly-not by overt state action alone but by ourselves through an uncritical surrender to technology. In the digital age, privacy is no longer a natural condition of life. It has become a luxury that one has to fight for.

The average person of today carries a surveillance device in their pocket and calls it a phone, feeling incomplete without it. Every app we download, every click we make, and every conversation we have leaves a trail of data that is collected, analyzed, and monetized. Tech corporations know more about us than our closest companions do-our habits, insecurities, and even our moral boundaries. The trade-off is subtle: in exchange for convenience, we barter away autonomy.

But this is not a problem confined to consumer technology. The state has also reconceptualized surveillance as governance. From Aadhaar and digital ID databases to facial recognition systems, all are justified as aspects of administration, but they end up having an overall chilling effect on dissent and individuality. India's push toward "Digital India" has achieved unprecedented efficiencies, but at what price? When information regarding the location, health, and financial records of a citizen becomes available via centralized systems, privacy can hardly be relegated to being an individual issue-it's a political one.

In the West, the Cambridge Analytica scandal revealed how psychological profiling using social media may work to affect electoral outcomes. In India, similar digital manipulation has been routinized as “targeted communication.” Political campaigns mine the personal data of voters and create messages with emotional rather than rational appeals. It forms a subtle invasion of mental privacy in subliminal ways. What we imagine as “free thought” turns out to be actually deliberate algorithmic work.

The impact of this digital colonization is unequal. The aware and equipped urban elite can sometimes shield themselves, but for the poor and most marginalised, whose very interaction with the state is increasingly being reduced to digits-from welfare schemes to biometric attendance-the invasion is absolute. Consent means little when one has no choice. How 'voluntary' is the Aadhaar authentication by an agricultural labourer whose rations depend on it? In this manner, privacy stops being a right; it turns into a privilege.

Legal frameworks fall behind the speed of technological incursions. The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, was supposed to offer a level of protection to citizens. But its provisions demonstrate disturbing ambiguities. For one, the Act exempts the state from compliance on the pretext of “national security,” a term so vague it can swallow up the very right it promises to defend. Equally perturbing, the absence of an independent data protection authority puts citizens at the mercy of arbitrary collection and misuse of information. This is in sharp contrast to the European Union’s GDPR, which ensures clearly demarcated lines of accountability and allows an individual the right to be forgotten. The Indian model is toothless in comparison.

The philosophical aspect of privacy is no less significant. It is not merely concealing secrets but maintaining the area where identity forms. Privacy allows for experimentation, mistakes, and development without the concern of someone watching or judging. As Michel Foucault so eloquently metaphorized with the “panopticon,” constant observation enforces discipline and eventual conformity among individuals. In digital societies, this panopticon has no walls; it is an invisible architecture of code and connectivity. When people know they are always being watched, they internalize control and self-censor even before expressing dissent.

For queer people, survivors of violence, and political dissidents, privacy is not a matter of comfort; it is a question of survival. The outing of queer people due to data leaks or exposure on social media has resulted in harassment and violence. The mobile phones of journalists and activists have been found infected with Pegasus spyware less than less-than-reassuring hint that mass surveillance is no dystopian fiction but a functioning reality. The digital state does not, like its colonial predecessor, have to break down doors; it is already inside.

The way forward has to be more than legislation. There has to be a cultural shift in how we value privacy. It means citizens developing what Shoshana Zuboff calls "digital consciousness"-an awareness of how data economies exploit behavioral information for profit. Educational institutions, civil society organizations, and media outlets should actively advance digital literacy that goes beyond the basic use of the internet to an understanding of rights and risks.

Policymakers must, therefore, take a rights-based approach to data governance. Privacy should not be framed as an obstacle to innovation but as its ethical foundation. The Supreme Court’s judgment in Puttaswamy rightly observed that privacy is the “constitutional core of human dignity.” Upholding it, therefore, is not merely a legal duty but a moral one. A transparent and accountable data ecosystem—where collection is minimal, consent is informed, and redressal mechanisms are real—can coexist with technological advancement.

Ultimately, the question is not whether we can live without technology, but whether we can live freely with it. The digital revolution has blurred the boundaries between the public and the private, the personal and the political. Yet, the essence of democracy rests on the ability of the individual to maintain certain spaces untouched-where one's thoughts, faith, and identity remain one's own. To protect privacy, we must reclaim such spaces from corporate greed no less than from state control.

As citizens of a constitutional democracy, we owe it to ourselves to remember that the right to privacy is not a relic of liberal idealism; it is the quiet guarantee that allows every other freedom-speech, faith, and association to exist. Without it, liberty becomes performative, and individuality dissolves into data. The struggle, therefore, is not against technology itself, but against the complacency with which we accept its domination.

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