‘For Your Own Safety’: The Soft Push of Surveillance by the Private Sector in India

The private sector currently holds the reins when it comes to governance in India as all digital and electronic processes and transactions are handled by and through private companies. The deep involvement has given rise to a surveillance industrial complex as these private sector companies also have a say in the policymaking regarding digital governance and surveillance in India. This stage in Indian governance did not come by accident. In this chapter, I look at the ways in which the private surveillance industry advocates for the use of its products with the help of social and cultural tropes of family solidarity, child safety and the unbiased and neutral nature of technology, while at the same time claiming to remain outside the domain of social and claiming to merely being a provider of market needs. Using the case of India and demonstrating this contrast, this chapter interrogates the private surveillance industry and highlights its contribution in the push for surveillance in Indian society today.