WHEN INDIVIDUALS WIN AND INSTITUTIONS LOSE
Could it be that former holders of high constitutional office, where neutrality is a sine qua non, are unconcerned about the message their post-retirement behaviour sends out? Are they oblivious of the possibility their conduct could raise disturbing questions about the institution they used to head? Or do they simply not care?
I’m writing this with specific reference to General VK Singh, who served 42 years in the army and rose to be its chief. But, sadly, he’s not the only example. He’s just the latest.
Recently, photographs of Singh, now minister of state for external affairs, dressed in full RSS uniform and surrounded by other RSS members have been widely circulated. They came as a rude shock not just to me but many others who want to protect the secularism of our army. Alas, that’s not a principle the RSS respects.
While the RSS does not accept the separate religious identities of India’s Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, Parsis and Jains, insisting they’re all Hindus, the army has the deepest respect for every individual religion. Regiments of the Indian Army, depending on their character, have their own mandirs, masjids, gurudwaras or churches. They have regimental maulvis, pandits, granthis and priests. Indeed, I’m told if a unit has 120 soldiers of a particular religion it will automatically have a religious functionary of that faith.
Army commanding officers participate in all religious festivals. On Eid they will happily wear a topi, on Diwali a tikka and on Gurupurab a pagri. In fact, the army is the only place where a maulvi will conduct the proceedings on Janmashtami if the regimental pandit is on leave!
None of this is true of the RSS. Actu- ally, it’s perceived as the complete opposite. So what does it mean when a former chief embraces this organisation? Was he a secret RSS member during his years of military service? Was his commitment to the army’s principle of religious neutrality hypocritical? And, are there other RSS-supporters masquerading in uniform who the army is unaware of?
When a former chief allows such questions to be raised about the institution he recently served it’s more than tion age, the digital corporation finds new legitimacy in the soft diplomacy of the sustainable development goals. Partnerships (read foreign capital) are seen as key to the means of implementation, and ‘data for development’ pegged as the frontier issue.
An a priori conception of the digital as a market good lends ‘partnerships for data’ a neo-liberal validity for blatant marketisation. Smart cities are being crafted through corporate takeover of city data; a brutal regime of extraction from the poor is evident in unregulated fin-tech; bodies of migrants, women and refugees are becoming datafied points of surveillance; billionaire philanthropy is proposing remote controlled micro-chip implants as innovations in female contraception; public education systems are being sold cloud software as management suites to monitor school level performance; and agriculture input markets are being manipulated by corporate behemoths controlling micro-local data on seeds and soil.
With every new technology, narra- disillusioning. It’s distressing. It suggests he was unfit for the uniform he wore. That also means he didn’t deserve the respect he got as army chief.
However, Singh is not unique. We’ve had chief election commissioners who, on retirement, have joined politics and gone on to become Cabinet ministers. Yet MS Gill was unconcerned about the questions this raised regarding his neutrality as CEC. We’ve also had chief justices of India who’ve accepted partisan political membership of the Rajya Sabha and the party discipline that imposes on them. Yet Ranganath Misra didn’t care about the doubts this created for the judiciary.
The errant General, it seems, is part of an inglorious tradition. It also includes comptroller and auditor generals who became MPs and Supreme Court judges who became Lok Sabha speakers or governors.
In each case the individual may have benefited but the institution lost out. When propriety is ignored in the pursuit of self-interest the idea of India is diminished. And when that happens at the hands of former army chiefs or judges an apology is insufficient. But do these people even feel sorry for what they’ve done?
A NEW GLOBAL COMPACT ROOTED IN PRINCIPLES
FOR AN EGALITARIAN INTERNET, DATA JUSTICE
AND ALGORITHMIC ACCOUNTABILITY IS IN ORDER
tives of human progress have held out a new optimism. In the digital context, there is no more reason to be pessimistic than in previous technological paradigms. However, ‘data for development’ frameworks obscure the foundational question about social value: Is data partnership contributing to sustainable development in the sense of wellbeing of livelihoods? Is it delivering value for individual and collective needs and rights, rather than for public or private finance alone?
Current trajectories of the network-data world foreclose the possibility of seeing data and intelligence as non-market, social goods. The misplaced nomenclature of the ‘black box’ (in the case of algorithms), perpetuates the myth of ungovernability, making digital participation for the majority restrictive and exploitative.
Countries like China, Singapore and Canada are busying themselves with the necessary governance frameworks and investments for creating a public architecture for digital intelligence, while countries like India are yet to apply themselves in this regard. The revolution will need the future proofing of digital technology for equity and social justice. A new global compact rooted in principles for an egalitarian Internet, data justice and algorithmic accountability is in order.