Invasion of privacy must stop

When Samajwadi party MP Amar Singh claimed in early January that his phone was being tapped and accused the Congress party president Sonia Gandhi of having ordered it, many thought it was a stunt meant to score political points over a rival. The story died down after the initial burst of sensation, only to come back in a big way last week when newspapers and channels received CDs purporting to contain parts of Singh’s conversations with other politicians, industrialists and even film stars.

This raises critical questions which are of great significance in a democratic country like India. Phone tapping is not unknown in most countries, even in democracies. But there are a set of regulations and processes to be followed before a person’s phone conversation can be intercepted. It is not as if such rules do not exist here, but there are sufficient indications that these are often breached.

Take the current case, for example. Three persons have been arrested, one running a private detective agency and the other an employee of a telecom firm which provided the phone line at Singh’s residence. The implications are extremely sinister. If an MP’s phone can be tapped, how vulnerable is the common citizen? The danger of invasion of privacy by the state as well as by, say, business rivals, has now multiplied several-fold because of the increase in the number of private telecom providers.

But let us also not lose sight of another aspect of this episode. If indeed these conversations are of the persons they are purported to be,—and we do not know yet for certain, whether they are—they show a cavalier manner in which public policy is discussed and formulated. The transcripts published in this paper on Sunday are just part of the scores of other conversations that have been recorded (and distributed) and they are about business deals, sugar pricing, the judiciary and much else, including a few with film actors which do not leave much to the imagination. The public is entitled to ask if this is how people in high places take decisions and behave.

The government has announced its intention to set up a stiffer set of rules for phone tapping. That is welcome. But investigators must first get to the bottom of this episode and bring the guilty—people and organisations—to book. Singh, by raising this issue openly, has set off a welcome debate on this important issue.