The article reads three developments of 2026 — facial recognition at a protest site, the doxxing of women protesters, and the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls — as one pattern. It argues that India’s privacy law is built to check an identifiable State actor, while surveillance today is diffuse.

The author identifies three distinct modes by which individuals are made visible and identifiable. Each is carried out by a different actor and governed by a different legal regime.

• The State watches in public: a petition before the Supreme Court alleges that police used facial recognition, AI-enabled smart glasses, drones and a mobile command vehicle at protests at Jantar Mantar, with the data hosted by two private firms.
• Networks expose: women who took part in the protests were later doxxed — their personal details published online alongside threats. In March 2020, the Allahabad High Court ordered the removal of Lucknow hoardings displaying photographs and addresses of anti-CAA protesters, holding them an unwarranted invasion of privacy. Today, identification and amplification can happen within hours.
• Records sort: the SIR uses identity checks to determine who remains on the electoral roll. In Bihar, the roll moved from about 7.89 crore electors to a final 7.42 crore — a net reduction of about 47 lakh. The Supreme Court upheld the exercise in May 2026, holding that the Election Commission may examine citizenship for this limited purpose but cannot itself decide citizenship.
• The legal gap: Puttaswamy’s test is framed around State action, the DPDP Act permits exemptions for State agencies, and the Pegasus inquiry remained inconclusive. Consequently, no single safeguard follows a person’s data as it passes from camera to vendor to social media.
• Historical continuity: the State’s drive to make populations identifiable is old. The novelty lies in its scale and speed, and in the involvement of private and foreign vendors.

• 1858: William Herschel, a British magistrate at Jungipur (Bengal), began taking handprints on contracts.
• 1897: the Calcutta Fingerprint Bureau — the first in the world — adopted the Henry classification system, largely devised by Azizul Haque and Hem Chandra Bose.
• Criminal Tribes Act, 1871: brought entire communities under registration and surveillance. They were “denotified” in 1952, but the stigma persisted through Habitual Offenders laws.
• Lesson: identification technologies have historically fallen hardest on marginal and dissenting groups. This is why proportionality and oversight matter more than the technology itself.

The article’s principal contribution is conceptual: it shifts the question from “who is watching?” to “who is accountable when watching is shared?”. However, a balanced assessment must weigh several counter-considerations.

• Jurisprudence is less State-bound than suggested: Kaushal Kishor (2023) opens the door to enforcing Article 21 against private actors. The difficulty lies more in remedies and enforcement than in doctrine.
• Legitimate State interests: facial recognition has been used to trace missing children and to solve crimes. Electoral-roll purification — removing dead, duplicate and shifted entries — is itself a democratic value. The debate is about proportionality, not prohibition.
• Conflating distinct harms: doxxing is a crime by private individuals; roll revision is a statutory administrative process with notice and appeal. Grouping them together clarifies the pattern but may blur the different remedies each needs.
• The real vacuum is statutory: India has no specific law governing facial recognition, and no independent oversight of interception beyond executive review committees.

• A surveillance statute: legislative authorisation for FRT and biometric surveillance, with purpose limitation, retention limits and judicial or parliamentary oversight, as recommended by the Justice B.N. Srikrishna Committee (2018).
• Narrow the DPDP exemptions: subject Section 17 notifications to the Puttaswamy proportionality test and to publication and periodic review.
• Vendor accountability: police contracts with private firms should mandate data localisation, audit, deletion and liability for breaches.
• Platform duty against doxxing: fast-track takedown, preservation of evidence, and possibly a specific offence for malicious publication of personal information.
• Due process in roll revision: transparent reasons for deletion, individual notice and accessible appeals under the RPA, 1950. Lal Babu Hussein (1995) requires due inquiry before deleting names on citizenship grounds.
• Global benchmarks: the EU AI Act (2024) largely prohibits real-time remote biometric identification in public spaces for law enforcement, subject to narrow exceptions.

As the 81st UN General Assembly convenes under the theme “Restoring Trust, Managing Transformation: a UN that delivers for all”, the article argues that the UN, once a builder of trust between nations, must now rebuild trust in itself. It identifies four structural causes of the decline.

• Security Council deadlock: repeated vetoes have eroded the GA’s confidence in the Council. Resolution A/RES/76/262 (April 2022) — the “veto initiative” — requires the GA to meet within 10 working days of any veto, with the vetoing member given priority to explain its vote.
• Weak internal accountability: controversies over procurement (Afghanistan, 2013), sexual exploitation and abuse by peacekeepers (2017) and contracts for non-existent housing projects (2021) were blamed on individuals, while systemic accountability was rarely addressed.
• Financial muscle: major donors shape the system through earmarked funding and sponsored staff. This raises doubts about the neutrality of advice to beneficiary countries and makes the bureaucracy risk-averse in conflict prevention.
• Global South under-representation: most UN programmes are delivered in the Global South, where trust in the UN is also higher, yet decision-making power lies largely elsewhere.
• Missed openings for peace: the UN achieved tactical successes — the Black Sea Grain Initiative (2022) and the FSO Safer operation off Yemen (2023), which averted a Red Sea oil spill — but could not convert that goodwill into talks between belligerents. Peacemaking initiative has become overly centralised.

The article is persuasive on internal governance, an area often neglected in UN-reform debates that focus narrowly on Council seats. Its analysis nonetheless needs to be balanced against the constraints under which the Secretariat operates.

• Member States, not the Secretariat, cause deadlock: the UN can only be as effective as its members allow. Paralysis on major conflicts reflects great-power rivalry more than bureaucratic failure.
• Money and trust are linked: arrears and reduced contributions have forced cuts under the UN80 Initiative (2025). A weaker UN delivers less, which in turn erodes trust further.
• Competing forums: the rise of minilateral and plurilateral groupings (G20, BRICS, Quad) offers alternatives. Some complement the UN, but they also dilute its centrality.
• Reform is structurally hard: Article 108 gives the P5 a veto over Charter amendment. The Intergovernmental Negotiations (IGN) on Council reform, under way since 2009, have yet to produce an agreed negotiating text.
• Norms still matter: as a former Secretary-General put it, the UN was created not to take humanity to heaven but to save it from hell. Its value lies partly in preventing worse outcomes.

• Reformed multilateralism: India seeks permanent membership of an expanded Council through the G4 (India, Brazil, Germany, Japan, 2005). It supports Africa’s Ezulwini Consensus, while the Uniting for Consensus group opposes new permanent seats.
• Council record: India has served eight non-permanent terms, the latest in 2021–22, and is a candidate for 2028–29.
• Peacekeeping: among the largest cumulative troop contributors. India was the first country to contribute to the UN Trust Fund for victims of sexual exploitation and abuse.
• Voice of the Global South: India hosted the Voice of the Global South Summits (from 2023), and the African Union became a permanent G20 member during India’s presidency (2023). Both reflect the same representational argument that the article makes about the UN.
• Pact for the Future (2024): adopted at the Summit of the Future, it commits members to making the Council more representative. India has pressed for time-bound outcomes.

• Council reform through text-based IGN negotiations; wider adherence to the ACT Code of Conduct (2015) against vetoes in mass-atrocity situations.
• Institutional accountability: strengthen the independence of OIOS; apply consequences at the managerial and system level, not only to individuals.
• Funding reform: timely payment of assessed dues and a higher share of flexible core funding to reduce donor capture.
• Representation: apply Article 101(3) — recruitment “on as wide a geographical basis as possible” — to senior posts, and locate hubs in the Global South.
• People-centred transparency: report programme spending to the publics of beneficiary countries, not just to donor governments; decentralise peacemaking initiative to the field.