The Telecommunications Act, 2023: Solidarity Between Democracy and Totalitarianism

Abstract

ABSTRACT With the coming of a surveillance culture, even minute aspects of human life are being observed, collected, analyzed, and stored by institutions in charge of surveillance. On the other hand, the same does not apply to the institutions which are surveillant of the lives of individuals. Such phenomenon can be observed via various technologies of power prevalent in societies. One such technology of power is legislation passed by the State to access, control, analyze, disseminate, or store the personal information of citizens. This article analyses the Telecommunications Act, 2023 which has been hailed as a move towards decolonization by repealing the former colonial laws over telecom services. The article discusses various attributes of the 2023 Act to analyze the means through which the usage of biometric systems of identification leads to violation of the fundamental right to privacy, as envisaged by the apex court of India in the landmark judgment of Justice K S Puttaswamy (Retd) v Union of India and other judgments before and after. The article also argues how the works of Giorgio Agamben and Didier Bigo on a permanent state of emergency being materialized through surveillance of minute aspects of human life and consequently marks a shift towards totalitarian tendencies of governance.