The meaning of political science is often restricted to the state, government, and everyday politics. However, it goes beyond that. We as humans share various relationships. What do we do when conflicts arise in these relationships? How do we resolve them? The Socratic dialectical method or Habermas’ idea of deliberation provides a solution. It says conflicts are better resolved through dialogue rather than domination. Hence, it tells us how to talk in a dialectical manner. It is the process of reasoning together. For instance, when your father asks you to aim for a government job, but you want to become a content creator, you do not totally oppose each other. Instead, you engage rationally: Why is a government job important? Maybe because it provides security and financial stability. But being a content creator might give you creative freedom. So you decide to take a government job but also start your creator journey simultaneously — maybe by vlogging your day as a government employee...
Abstract
Democracy and technology must go together but the reality is the other way around. Technology is evolving faster than democracy. Democracy is getting subordinated to it. Technology has facilitated democracy to an extent but it has thrown some never-heard challenges like cyber-attack, deepfake, cheapfake misuse of individuals’ digital footprints, fake news, online advertisement, and easy manipulation techniques, which are very much new to India. It is high time that we assess its impact on Indian democracy.
Technology is evolving very rapidly. Democracies around the world are not able to move as fast as technology, making democracies subordinate to it. After a lifelong struggle, India has achieved this democracy. We must take technology seriously as it has both the capacity to improve the functioning of democracy as well as to destroy it. Therefore technology can either make democracies more democratic or create a surveillance state.
It is high time that we start evaluating the impact of technology on democracy before it is too late.
We will first see the emergence of technology in India then assess its impact thoroughly.
Indian technological revolution
‘A nightmare of pulsing, twitching, flashing, complexity,’ was how one intimidated journalist chose to describe a computer in 1954.1 It was by the 1980s, under the leadership of Rajiv Gandhi that the Indian government started considering technology as a means which has the potential to solve major problems of the society. Much of the initial hostility towards IT was from unfamiliarity.2 From burning the edifice of the computer by the bank employees and celebrating the anti-computer day by Bhartiya Mazdoor Sangh in 1984 to the whole banking system gradually depending upon the technology, it has been a surprising journey. Post-1991 reforms saw a surge in technology. Aadhaar and digital banking are some of the greatest achievements of information and communication technology in India. A great push has been given to technology again this time by the current prime minister Narendra Modi in the form of a digital India mission. Other major technological achievements can be direct benefit transfer and UPI etc.
Internet penetration in India
The latest report by the Internet & Mobile Association and Nielsen showed rural India had 227 million active internet users, 10% more than urban India’s about 205 million, as of November 2019.3 Reason being the cheapest internet connection in the world and this number has gone up because of the 2020 nationwide lockdown due to covid-19. According to the world bank, 34.45% of India’s population was using the internet in 2019.
The number of internet users in India increased by 128 million (+23%) between 2019 and 2020.4 Internet penetration in India stood at 45.0% in January 2021.5 There were 448.0 million social media users in India in January 2021.6
The number of social media users in India was equivalent to 32.3% of the total population in January 2021.7
Fig.1 Source: World Bank
Democracy
From a backward state with more than half of the population in poverty and literacy rate at 12% at the time of independence to a significantly developing state with a literacy rate at 74.04% in 2011 and copious gross domestic product, Indian democracy has been through many ups and downs. But it never escalated to the path of authoritarianism. Leaving aside the one case of the emergency declared by Indira Gandhi.
Indian democracy can be called liberal democracy, especially taking inspiration from the Lockean tradition. To assess the impact of technology on Indian democracy it is imperative to figure out the broad elements of Indian democracy. Components of any liberal democracy are government by consent, public accountability, majority rule, recognition of minority rights, and constitutional government.8 We will look at the impact of technology on some of its elements.
Components of democracy and the impact of technology
Government by consent
To understand government by consent we must understand what is government by the people? Because ultimately it is the people who give their consent to be ruled. When we say government by the people we are saying that there is an established process in which people participate and elect their leaders or governments. This established process in a democratic process in the election. Ours is not the Athenian democracy where people would come together and make the decisions. It is a country of more than 1.3 billion people. We have an indirect form of democracy where we elect our representatives and they work on our behalf. People directly vote and elect the government. Earlier people used to vote through ballot paper. But it was in 1982 when electronic voting machines were first used in a bye-election to the North Paravur Assembly. After that, with EVM being used on a trial basis it was rolled out for the whole country in the general elections of 2004. EVM has solved the problem of storage, printing, and spending huge expenditures on the logistics of the ballot paper. As a result of this more than lakhs of trees are saved which would have been cut for the sake of ballot paper. This shows such a positive role technology has played in smoothening the democratic process of election. It, now has become an easier process where people just need to press a button and their vote is cast. Elections are contested on issues and every political party has to reach out to the people and tell them as to what they would deliver if they win. They tell people what their plans are for their constituency/state/country, which requires advertisement. The traditional way of advertisement is by posting banners on walls, installing big hoardings, and through the print media. But now, with the help of technology, a new method has emerged which is online advertisement.
Online advertisement
fig.2 Source: https://ad.watch/
fig.3 Source: https://ad.watch/
Online advertisement has become a new medium to reach out to the masses.
Different social media platforms define political ads differently. For example, FACEBOOK Inc. refers to such ads as related to “social issues, elections or politics”, Snapchat refers to such ads as “Political and Advocacy Ads” and so on.9 The spending on online ads by the political parties has increased significantly. In 2019 general elections between 1 January 2019 and 18 July 2019 BJP spent 40,717,927 INR on 2,651 ads and Indian National Congress spent 24,026,808 INR on 3,684 online ads.10 Some chose to spend less and advertise more number of ads while some advertised less number of ads but spend more money which means the same ads were being shown again and again to capture the minds. For example, 1366 ads of BJP were shown on #PhirEkBaarModiSarkaar alone. This is one of the many online advertisement strategies adopted by political parties, to capture the mind of the masses. This is what Noam Chomsky calls manufacturing consent. This has made democracy vulnerable because the people are not able to think freely. They are being manipulated.
Now that it has been established that a vast number of people have an internet connection (fig.1) and most of the people today in India are dependent on the internet. People use the internet to share their views, to see what others are doing, and to interact among themselves. Our day starts with the internet, checking our emails, and ends with watching videos on YouTube or by sending goodnight texts. The Internet has taken a very special place in our lives. The use of the internet has increased significantly in the last one year because of the 2020 lockdown. We have become dependent on technology for organizing protests and expressing our dissent also. As a result, when we speak against the authority or show any form of dissent for example the protests like farmers protests, online protests like students voicing against the authority for jobs, the dissent is being killed and crushed by the shutting down of the internet or by targeting the dissenting people through personal attacks or by blocking the accounts through section 69A of the IT act. According to the data compiled by the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC), a Delhi-based digital rights group, show that the number of internet shutdowns has jumped from three in 2012 to five in 2013, six in 2014, 14 in 2015, 31 in 2016, 79 in 2017, 134 in 2018, 106 in 2019 and 132 in 2020.17 This indicates that dissent in being killed by shutting down the internet which is perilous for Indian democracy.
Public accountability
There is not an iota of doubt that technology has empowered us enormously. It has done what is generally called the democratization of knowledge. The whole world is in front of us on a small screen. Through social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook direct connectivity is being made between the people and their leaders. So the gap between the government and the people has drastically reduced. This has facilitated the direct accountability of the people in authority. There are 4,79,525 resources and 175 departments on the data.gov.in website of the central government and they have already been viewed 20 million times. It couldn’t have been possible without technology. The level of ease it has given to the people is something which was never thought before. Through various initiatives under a broad Digital India scheme, a lot of emphases is being put on digitizing India. For example, earlier when direct cash was given as compensation or for any other government scheme there were a lot of chances of corruption but it isn’t the case anymore, through direct benefit transfer (DBT) directly money is being transferred to the beneficiaries’ account. Government apps like UMANG, IRCTC, MyGov, etc are making it easier for people to utilize the benefits of government policies. It also ensures transparency as well as accountability.
According to the report from Statista as of January 2021, the number of Facebook users in India is 320 million and it is expected to go up to 444.2 million by 2023.11 Almost every Member of Parliament and every Member of State legislature I.e. every public figure is on at least one of the many social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
fig.4 Source: Statista
So the gap between the people and the government has significantly reduced. It has made people more aware of the policies, decision making and flagship programs by the government. But the problem here is that it is a top to down information flow, not bottom-to-top. This means if normal people want their ideas, views or problems to be heard by their representative on those same social media platforms there are fewer chances that it would be heard. So it is a one-way channel.
Majority rule
In a democratic setup, numbers decide who is going to win the elections. We have first past the post system in general elections which means those who get the most numbers of votes win. Technology has made it easier for political parties to reach out to the majority of the people to garner support. It hasn’t affected majority rule but it has affected the outcome of a majority rule as well as the means to achieve the support of the majority of the people to win the election. The political behavior of India is well known, people get attracted to identity-based issues more than other important issues. Indians vote on the grounds of religion, region, sex, and caste, etc.
Social media has empowered people in a negative sense also. It has become very easy to polarize the atmosphere just by one post. Our social reach has empowered us to tell our views to thousands of people with a single click. To win an election by majority vote many leaders today escalate to the path of majoritarianism. This escalation has been smoothened by social media platforms. This is one of the worst impacts of technology. It has provided a platform through which polarizing the atmosphere, spreading fake news, and fear-mongering have become very easy and these platforms are still not reacting to this problem proactively. This creates an unhealthy environment in the country, as a result, destroying communal harmony. How can a democracy function when there is no fraternity amongst fellow citizens? There isn’t enough digital literacy amongst the people to understand the hidden and complex terms and conditions of the apps which are in most cases written in a very small font. They are written because it is binding. They are not meant to be understood. So we accept those conditions without knowing how our data will be used. This can slide to the surveillance of the people, destroying the core principle of democracy, to be free.
Major threats
There are two major threats which democracy is facing because of technology:
Cyberattack
A cyber attack can be called a new form of attack where humans don’t fight. Malwares fight on their behalf. It is fought through computers. No battlefield is required. Cisco data shows according to the recent study, 73% of organizations in the country have experienced a 25% or more jump in either cyber threats or alerts since the start of covid-19.12 Cisco 2018 Annual Cybersecurity report said. Cyber attacks in the country caused financial damages to the tune of about $500,000 to Indian companies in the last 12-18 months13
According to Noah Feldman, “cyberwar takes place largely in secret, unknown to the general public on both sides.” This is so true for example recently Chinese organizations have attacked the Indian power sector and IT infrastructure of India’s leading covid-19 vaccine makers but no one knows that. Recently the Ministry of Power had also confirmed that Red Echo (a Chinese organization) used malware called ShadowPad that had attacked “a large swathe” of India’s power sector. Goldman Sachs-backed cyber intelligence firm Cyfirma said a Chinese hacker group known as Stone Panda had “identified gaps and vulnerabilities in the IT infrastructure and supply chain software of Bharat Biotech and the Serum Institute of India”,14 Zhenhua Data Information Technology Co, with links to the Chinese government and the Chinese Communist Party, was monitoring over 10,000 Indian individuals and organizations.15 Not only cyber-attacks which tell us one of the worst use cases of technology but also deepfakes and cheapfakes are the latest threats which are hollowing the democracy.
Fake News
Fake news has emerged as a new weapon to achieve the gains, thanks to technology. Fake news is news that is false in nature and deliberately created to achieve the intended goals. Fake news is often used to tarnish the reputation of an individual, community, and even a state. Truthful and independent journalism has been a thing of the past. We don’t see the news anymore, we see the perspective. The perspective of those who have created it makes us think what they believe. News is being manufactured. Jonathan Morgan, senior design researcher with the Wikimedia Foundation remarks, “the growing role of surveillance by digital platform owners (and other economic actors that collect and transact digital trace data) as well as by state actors, and the increasing power of machine learning-powered surveillance technologies for capturing and analyzing data, threaten the public’s ability to engage safely and equitably in civic discussions.”16
We are being deliberately misinformed to act in an intended manner. We have become a mere commodity. So it is better to be not informed than misinformed. Fake news is increasing social tensions, polarizing the atmosphere, and making individuals chauvinistic. Fake news is creating a fake society. How can democracy function in a fake and manipulative atmosphere?
ASSESSMENT
The relationship of technology and state in today’s world can be compared with what has been the relationship between state and church in the medieval West. The major concern for everyone is big tech companies. Big tech companies have become more powerful than some of the states. Their annual turnover is more than the GDP of some states. If there is a conflict between the big tech and the state then that is a piece of good news because that would eventually put the big tech companies under the purview of the state but if the state and big tech agree to cooperate and indulge in any kind of nexus then nothing can be more dangerous to that. Our digital footprints, collected by these companies will be used by the state. Establishing a surveillance state. It is good to know that the conflict between big tech and the state has increased in the last 4-5 years. Recently lawsuits have been filed against Facebook and Google in the United States and Australia making google pay for the news as well as the strict EU laws give some hope for controlling these big tech. Though the government has come up with some provisions recently, a comprehensive Indian Digital Code is still awaited. Hope that brings something good and not transfers the mischiefs done by these companies to the government. This whole debate takes us to an old essay topic we used to write in our high school: science is a boon or curse?
Technology is just like many other threats that democracy always faces. Ultimately we have to come up with the proper mechanism to ensure humans are not reduced merely as a commodity and technology is being exploited rather than technology exploiting us. This is how we evolve and this is how the relationship between technology and democracy would evolve into a healthy relationship. It must be seen as a positive-sum game and shouldn’t be a zero-sum game.
References:
1. Nilekani, Nandan. Imagining India: Ideas for the New Century. Penguin, 2009. Pg104
2. Nilekani, Nandan. Imagining India: Ideas for the New Century. Penguin, 2009. Pg104
4. Hootsuite & We Are Social (2021), DIGITAL 2021: INDIA, retrieved from https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2021-india
5. Hootsuite & We Are Social (2021), DIGITAL 2021: INDIA, retrieved from https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2021-india
6. Hootsuite & We Are Social (2021), DIGITAL 2021: INDIA, retrieved from https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2021-india
7. Hootsuite & We Are Social (2021), DIGITAL 2021: INDIA, retrieved from https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2021-india
8. Gauba, O.P. An Introduction to Political Theory. 7th ed., Mayur, 2018. Pg 572
9. https://ad.watch/counterpublics.html
10. Data retrieved from https://ad.watch/story/story5.html
11.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/268136/top-15-countries-based-on-number-of-facebook-users/
12.
13.
14. https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/explained-chinas-cyber-eye-and-india-7211655/
15. https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/explained-chinas-cyber-eye-and-india-7211655/
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