The Battle for a Right to Privacy Has a Long Way to Go

[Excerpt] Because of its disjointed development, the constitutional basis of the right to privacy in India remains muddy. Indian courts have yet to craft a privacy rights jurisprudence that responds to surveillance, morals-based denials of personal choices, and forcible collections of bodily information. There are wide gaps in the right to privacy through which the collection of biometric information for the Aadhar project could easily slip through, perhaps even be made compulsory.

The Four Parts of Privacy in India

[Summary] Because privacy enjoys an abundance of meanings, it is claimed in diverse situations every day by everyone against other people, society, and the state. Traditionally traced to classical liberalism’s public/private divide, there are now several theoretical conceptions of privacy that collaborate and sometimes contend. Indian privacy law is evolving in response to four types of privacy claims: against the press, against state surveillance, for decisional autonomy, and in relation to personal information. The Indian Supreme Court has selectively borrowed competing foreign privacy norms, primarily American, to create an unconvincing pastiche of privacy law in India. These developments are undermined by a lack of theoretical clarity and the continuing tension between individual freedoms and communitarian values.