Surveillance of Public Spaces: The Great CCTV Rush and the Jadavpur Lessons

This week saw one of the first organised protests against the great CCTV rush that has been silently gaining momentum for the past few years in the wake of post-9/11 security concerns and the post-Mumbai blasts.

We all know that privacy and civil liberties issues never had their vocal proponents in India for the simple reason that Indian cultural mores have never accorded these issues the same sanctity and significance Western cultural environment affords. Privacy laws are non-existent and civil liberties are precariously tied to the unhealthy relationship between powerful state apparatuses and nascent civil society formations, even though Indian constitution has a very laudable section on fundamental rights.

One glaring example of the violation of privacy rights of ordinary Indians is in the nature of coverage accorded to victims of different kinds by Indian media. Just as we as Indians do not respect the privacy of our fellow citizens in public spaces, those of our ilk who are working as reporters and sub-editors in news media also do not have any concern for the privacy of the living or dead subjects in their stories. To them anything goes in the making of the story, even if the photographs show the gory details of the dead accident victims or the blood splattered bodies of victims of domestic, communal or other kinds of violence in close up and extreme close up shots.

Think of the fact that the media in USA did not show the bodies of the victims in the twin tower blasts. Think of the fact that scores of dead children's privacy were willingly violated by Indian media during their coverage of 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami. Think of the fact that thousands of crime victims' photos are freely circulated with the cooperation of the law enforcement agencies by Indian media in concocting stories that have serious implications not only for the immediate privacy related concerns of the individuals in question, but also their long term social lives.

In this context, the growing tendency on the part of the authorities of the state to employ surveillance tools such as CCTV cameras in public spaces calls for closer scrutiny of the nexus between the forces of globalisation and the post-9/11 formations of social surveillance by state agencies.

There is no denying that there is a stronger need to put in place effective surveillance of spaces in which publics move in large number such as airports, railway stations, busy thoroughfares and key government/public offices etc., But what becomes glaring and seen as questionable, as the Jadavpur University students are arguing is the relevance of $42200 worth plan to install CCTV cameras in a campus filled with students and teachers. “This is a clear infringement of our freedoms. We are not terrorists,” said one student leader. More than the concerns of privacy violations, what adds fuel to the  fire such protests are stoking is the lack of priorities authorities have in our country. We are fond of marshaling technologies to provide us a false sense of superiority as a nation or a misplaced sense of social control when the ground realities call into serious questions our lack of priorities. According to student protesters at Jadavpur University, when the campus lacks the essentials such as good food, potable water and other facilities students need, where is the need for surveillance cameras. "Why installation of cameras has gained priority when the hostel facilities, toilets and bathrooms need attention first in this centre of excellence university,'' asked a student.


There are shades of other undercurrents in the Jadavpur controversy as well. The campus has generally been perceived pro-left and the recent appearance of a pro-Maoist leader and an ex-JU student, Ms Debolina Ghosh in a meeting inside the campus is seen as the agent provocateur.


Traditional and transitional societies such as ours have a greater predilection for running amok in the face of the growing and complex webs of implications flowing from globalisation and international and intranational security concerns without a clear understanding of the various histories of the surveillance and disciplinary societies and what failed them.


There is a need for a civil-liberties and privacy rights sensitive surveillance policy of state institutions in India and not a technologically driven, insensitive and callous approach that calls into question the democractic and civil liberties moorings of world's largest democracy. The current approach which relies on trying to ban the thing that is perceived as a threat such as a mobile phone (remember the infamous Anna University ban on mobile phones in 2005?) or a blackberry or going in for heightened monitoring of the subjects who are seen as deviant (such as the students of Jadavpur students for being pro-left and pro-Maoist) misses the trees for woods as any other approach that governed the functioning of earlier control and disciplinary societies as narrated by Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze in their works.