India has been headed this way for a long time. They're currently on track to overtake China as the most populated country on Earth.
Given the history of rampant, blatant corruption, there are massive scaling challenges and totalitarian governmental controls are one of the easier approaches.
Note: I'm not defending their decisions at all, just offering an explanation. I think it's overall terrible and do not want to live in India.
This article is a good example of how to take innuendo and declare it as fact to bolster a narrative. It's a journalistic strategy, and it's taught in journalism school.
E.g.:
> In 2021, the Pegasus Project, an investigation by a consortium of international journalists, revealed that the Indian government had been spying on more than 300 people, including journalists, activists, and politicians.
The word: "revealed". It's all innuendo. Nothing was indisputably "revealed". A true example of "revealed" would be the video Hunter Biden filmed, of himself taking a shower with multiple prostitutes while smoking crack. But don't expect to hear about it because it doesn't suit the narrative. This, on the other hand, is innuendo being trotted out as fact.
Last word on this topic: the narrative sketched in this article is "Modi bad." But the evidence is from a state run by a staunch Modi opponent, belonging to a party that is in opposition to Modi's party.
(I think we're allowed to mock super-privileged people of the Left on HN. PG seems pretty libertarian to me. But if my comment crossed a line, I apologize in advance and will remove the offensive portions.)
> It's all innuendo. Nothing was indisputably "revealed".
I don't know what sort of evidence it would take to convince you that Modi's team was illegally spying on his political opponents, but I think I'll trust the journalists on this one.[0]
> Last word on this topic: the narrative sketched in this article is "Modi bad." But the evidence is from a state run by a staunch Modi opponent
The article doesn't even mention Modi by name, so I think you're being over-protective of him. It does say:
"The Indian government plans to implement an Automated Facial Recognition System across the country"
although it doesn't provide a source for that claim. Then there's this claim:
"The police in New Delhi used facial recognition technology to identify farmer protesters who held demonstrations against the government’s contentious agricultural laws."
which suggests that these practices are already in use elsewhere (with the current Police Commissioner of Delhi being appointed by the Modi government, if I'm not mistaken).
Why is the Pegasus reveal an innuendo? The reporting on Pegasus clearly listed the names of hundreds of Indian citizens - mostly investigative journalists and opposition leaders. Since Pegasus could only be sold to national governments, it's a logical conclusion that the Indian state was at the very least intending to spy on those individuals. [1]
The article also never even mentions Modi, and like you said, mostly talks about Telangana. I read through it and got no sense of it implying anything about him individually.
It seems you are inferring things that simply aren't there.
Given the history of rampant, blatant corruption, there are massive scaling challenges and totalitarian governmental controls are one of the easier approaches.
Note: I'm not defending their decisions at all, just offering an explanation. I think it's overall terrible and do not want to live in India.