For Americans, privacy stands at the cornerstone of one’s rights as a citizen. In India, however, their Supreme Court has only recently ruled privacy as a freedom. According to Deepak Kumar Pandey, an influential Indian writer, this issue has been developing for about 60 years and began when the government collected biometric data of citizens for Aadhaar, India’s personal identity system. The country’s leaders have pushed off the issue for a while, but now that Aadhaar may be eliminated, privacy has become more of a focus.

“Privacy advocates are strongly against [it] and see it as too invasive,” said social studies teacher Mr. Cory Jensen.
The effects of the new right will domestically and internationally range from laws on homosexuality being struck down to creating a more secure social security system with all the citizens. Other effects include the sovereignty and integrity of India alongside relations with other countries. Two more domestic effects could be interference with technology and people’s businesses. Technology allows anyone to access private information about others, while businesses can only keep so much information about customers.

Indian citizens question whether or not to include this in the Constitution, and citizens believe that collecting biometric data was unacceptable and a violation of their privacy. This issue was also discussed thoroughly in 2012 when M.P. Sharma, a member of British parliament and politics, stated that the right to privacy was never going to be given to the people. As the right has been argued about several times over the last 10 years, the conclusion is that there will be more privacy granted to the citizens of India.

“Privacy is something that is fundamental,” said sophomore Abbey Bonanotte. “It should be incorporated in everything that you do, [from] government organizations to credit card readers.”
As the privacy issue is discussed, there are many questions such as how much, when or what type of privacy will be given. Regardless of the exact changes, there will still be a change in the private lives of all the citizens of India.