The Sanchar Saathi fiasco

The order on app was N Korea style overreach, should never have been issued

Alok Tiwari

Indian citizens can be excused if each day they wake up with a feeling of an unseen noose being tightened around their neck. The latest assault on their civil liberties came through a government order to mobile phone makers and importers to ensure that an app made by the government was pre-installed on all new phones sold in India. The existing phones and those in distribution pipeline will have the app pushed over the air through software update. The order clearly stated that the app cannot in anyway be disabled or its functions restricted. Two days of push back by users and phone makers saw government come to its senses and roll it back. But the damage to India’s reputation has been done, not for the first time by its own government.

Sanchar Saathi, the app in question, is ostensibly meant to protect the user from cyber fraud and help recover the phone in case it is lost or stolen. The nature of the order and the history of Modi government regarding respect for civil rights, however, immediately raised alarm bells. India became only the third country in the world, after North Korea and Russia, to mandate installation of any app on all mobile phones. Even China, with its openly authoritarian government does not do something like this.

When the issue exploded in its face as a blatant invasion of individual’s privacy, government initially backtracked partially. Communications minister Jyotiraditya Scindia assured the user will be able to disable or delete the app altogether. Apple, now having significant production capacity in India and with plans for more, demurred. Other makers too expressed concern. Cyber law experts were appalled at what appeared a brazen overreach. Yet, the Nov 28 order remained in place for another 24 hours.

Maybe, the move was just what the government said it was, an attempt to check cyber frauds and phone thefts. Maybe, it was done at bureaucratic level without top level approval. But the track record of Modi government made it a lot more sinister. It came barely a month after the government issued a SIM binding order to all messenger apps. This means the apps like WhatsApp will not be able to run on other devices independent of the SIM. You are in trouble if you use WhatsApp Web in office on your laptop and your phone is not nearby because you will be logged out of the web every few hours. You will also probably not be able to use the messenger while travelling abroad if the SIM is not active on that device.

Government has been trying to end social media privacy for some time. Remember how top functionaries in ruling establishment once promoted Koo as desi alternative to Twitter (now X). That attempt ended in a shambles. Just a couple of months back, a similar push was made for Arattai, a messenger, and email service offered by Indian company Zoho. Even home minister Amit Shah announced switching to the indigenous email service. The move was wrapped in nationalist colours but what everyone was conveniently silent about was privacy levels offered in them. Zoho never declared the level of encryption, storage policy, or whether it would provide access to the data if the government asked.

Most international social media apps are big on privacy. They are end-to-end encrypted, meaning even the service provider cannot read or see messages and they are not stored on the servers for a long time. They also are wary of allowing any government access to information. India has long sought to end this. Of course, the overt reason to do this is to check crime. But frequently it has been done to muzzle inconvenient voices.

Indian government has sent the largest number of requests to platforms like X and YouTube to take down content and block channels. It also has laws in the pipeline that would give it more authority to regulate content on the social media. So, privacy advocates and independent journalists were quite justified in seeing red over the government move to have a software embedded in every phone in the country. Sanchar Saathi demands access to call data, text messages, camera, location, etc. There is no clear information or guarantee about storage and use of this data for purposes other than what it was being collected. Even if the guarantees are given how reliable they are from a government that used Pegasus on friends and foes alike?

The BJP government seems to have trouble understanding the concept of privacy as well as freedom. To it imposing order seems to be bigger priority than ensuring freedom of citizens. That is why none of the laws it enacted expanded liberty while many narrowed it. Unfortunately, many Indians also seem to subscribe to this idea. Why is privacy needed if someone is doing no wrong, is how the argument goes. They fail to appreciate that freedom and privacy are essential for citizens to participate in the democratic process. There cannot be intellectual growth in an atmosphere of suspicion and fear. Even our Supreme Court recognized privacy as inseparable part of the fundamental right to life. The right to disagree and protest is basic to functioning of a free society. Without that people become politically passive and governments grow dictatorial.

Though government reasons for rolling back its Sanchar Saathi order appears less to do with these lofty ideals. It probably did not want to spook the smartphone industry. Had it remained in place, it would have derailed the growing phone manufacturing industry that government projects as centrepiece of its success. The fiasco tarnished the country’s image as another autocracy in the making. Will it make the government more sensitive about preserving freedom and civil rights of citizens rather than constantly trying to abridge them? I would not bet on it, but one lives in hope.

This column appeared in Lokmat Times on Dec 4, 2025