The Humpty Dumpty of India.

Using technology, "the Chinese government has created a vast citizen surveillance complex. Using facial recognition, it assigns social scores to citizens based on their behavior in public places," wrote Siddharth Pai. Now that face masks have become mandatory because of the coronavirus epidemic the "near ubiquitous facial-recognition surveillance cameras" have become useless. "Recently, former minister of state for civil aviation, Jayant Sinha, celebrated the launch of DigiYatra, endorsing the omnipresent use of facial recognition in airports where someone's face would suffice as the boarding pass," wrote Choudhary and Prof Moglen. "In the 21st century, an Aadhaar number, a mobile handset's IMEI number, and the unique network address of a wifi adapter in smartphones, for example, can locate users in the digital world." "Once cameras are connected to the facial recognition software, citizens have no privacy anywhere. To those with power -- government or businesses -- people are seen, recognized, analysed, predicted and controlled all the time. This technology can be used to perfect despotism." Just as Aadhaar was forced on citizens, the government is preparing to index every Indian on multiple lists. It started with the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) which seeks to protect minorities escaping religious persecution in 3 Muslim nations by giving them citizenship, while Muslims without visas will be expelled. To find out who has entered illegally a National Register of Citizens (NRC) is to be compiled wherein every person will have to provide documents to prove he/she was born in India. At the same time a national census, the National Population Register (NPR), which is conducted every decade, is to start on 1 April. A survey by the National Family Health Survey 2015-16 found that one in five children under the age of five is not registered at birth, "voters enrolments among new eligible voters has been low in this country", and 20% of deaths are not registered, wrote Nikhil Srivastav. So genuine citizens are in danger of being excluded from NRC. Since 2014, the Central government has been pushing digitalization aggressively along with "an obsession with identity of Indian residents and an excessive zeal in linking almost all personal data to centralised databases administered by the Center", wrote an editorial in the Times of India. "With the burden of accountability placed squarely on the shoulders of the citizen, it lets the government of the hook ," wrote an editorial in The Indian Express. While bullying citizens, the government has weakened the Right to Information (RTI) Act so as to avoid having to answer any uncomfortable question. Surely, we have courts and judges to protect us from a predatory government? With the highest ever strength of 34 judges, the Supreme Court "has not set aside the time to hear habeas corpus cases of hundreds of Indians detained in Kashmir", wrote Prof S Rajagopalan. "Constitutional lawyer Gautam Bhatia has dubbed it an 'absentee constitutional court' that has 'dodged, ducked, evaded, and adjourned' the problem." No wonder people are taking matters into their own hands. Trust is Humpty Dumpty. Can't be put together once broken.