2019-08-11_Business_Today

may summarily dismiss it as it works within the consent
paradigm, but this will at least force policymakers out of
their stupor to come up with suitable solutions.
The author has worked with policymakers, and
his experience feeds the part of the book (Privacy 2.0)
dealing with policy debates around privacy in India and
elsewhere. This is a terrific account of Indian realpolitik
that characterises law-making in our country. The need
for privacy, Matthan writes, was recognised early on by
then UIDAI Chairman Nandan Nilekani who set the
wheels in motion to implement the first-ever privacy
law in India. But there were wheels within wheels, and
the attempt to draft a privacy law ran aground very
soon. This part of the book is as much an account of the
balance that must be struck between privacy and other
values necessary for a developing India as it is about
India’s opaque pre-legislative process.
Throughout the book, Matthan astutely balances
the clamour for privacy with the need for efficiency.
But his argument falls short when he tries to trace the
roots of privacy (or its absence) in ancient societies. The
writer dons the combined hats of an anthropologist, a
philosopher and a historian and argues in the first part
of the book (Privacy 1.0) that privacy is a construct,
both born out of and threatened by technological
development. The narrative is compelling, but the
argument puts Matthan in a double bind. If his initial
observation is right, privacy may not be considered
a fundamental human right and, consequently, less
critical than he assumes it to be. If privacy is essential,
as he appears to treat it in the rest of the book, his
account must be partially wrong in the beginning.
In pre-privacy societies, complex rules safeguarded
individual privacy and dignity, although it was not so
apparent. In the ancient Roman society, well-known
for its communal toilets where men chatted while
emptying their bowels, they wore togas which protected
their privacy. To state that privacy is an unnatural
development on the basis that older societies were
fundamentally communal is a tad simplistic. Also, to
assume that the growth of privacy was only a response
following technology growth of various kinds over time
means privacy is important only because technology is
capable of revealing something which we would have
liked to hide. This is more like Privacy 0.0, a retrograde
view of privacy sceptics. Luckily, for Matthan and the
readers, this is just a minor footnote in an otherwise
breezy book that makes the philosophically slippery
concept of privacy and the jargon-filled world of
technology both accessible and understandable. In an
otherwise shrill public discourse dominated by privacy
advocates and their adversaries, this is a balanced book
that deserves to be widely read.

The writer is Research Director, Vidhi Centre for

Legal Policy; views are personal

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