The Big Story: Watching you

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal threatens to bring to fruition a long-cherished dream: close circuit television cameras in the class rooms of government schools so that parents can monitor their children in real time. The plan was first mentioned when the Aam Aadmi Party made a budgetary allocation for education in 2015. It has sprung to life now, after the murder of a student in a Gurugram school in November sparked concerns about safety. What started as a plan to police teachers seemed to have mutated into an oppressive project to monitor students in general.

There are several problems with the proposal, both practical and otherwise. Who will monitor the thousands of camera feeds that would presumably be installed across government school classrooms? The school system would need a massive injection of manpower. What of places that must necessarily be left out of view: bathrooms, for instance, where the Gugugram murder seems to have taken place? Even if dutiful parents are to download the app that will give them access to real-time footage of their children, will they be glued to their mobile screens all day?

More importantly, the proposal fundamentally misunderstands the nature of childhood and school life, the stresses and scoldings that cannot always be revealed, the games and clandestine notes that are a necessary rite of passage. It fails to recognise schools as a place where children can grow and express their creativity in a different context from home, learn to cope with situations independently of parents. It also creates a mistrust of teachers, who must now second guess their every move as they are monitored by unseen watchers.

Such a solution is perhaps typical of the Aam Aadmi Party government, which has always placed emphasis on surveillance to ensure public safety. Earlier, Kejriwal had promised to instal lakhs of CCTVs across Delhi, panic buttons in mobile phones and bus guards to ensure the safety of women. Now, he is asking parents across the city to participate in the culture of surveillance. On the face of it, this may be in keeping with the Aam Aadmi Party’s original vision of “participatory governance”, the kind that sought to empower resident’s welfare associations and involve them in local decisionmaking, for instance.

But this essentially radical vision could also be regressive: the party seemed to imagine militant, hyper-engaged citizens who would be keepers of public order and morality. It was a short step away from moral policing, which became apparent when party legislators launched raids on the houses of Nigerian women in Khirki extension and took part in “sting journalism” to sniff out errant government employees. This new proposal is a fresh invitation to vigilantism, as it tries to turn parents into police.

Punditry

  1. In the Indian Express, Sanjib Baruah writes that the thousands of citizens potentially rendered stateless by Assam’s National Register of Citizens cannot be deported, so the focus will be on a detention policy.
  2. In the Hindu, Akeel Bilgrami indicts liberalism for generating a noxious populism.
  3. In the Telegraph, Prabhat Patnaik makes a case for publicly funded universal healthcare.

Giggles

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