Recent investigations by The Wire into an app called “Tek Fog“, that can be used to automate hate comments on social media and hijack trends, combined with the earlier investigation into the Indian government’s use of the Pegasus spyware on Indian citizens, raises serious doubts on the state of Indian democracy and demonstrates how the ruling BJP is using sophisticated social media tools to practically rig Indian elections.
The widespread media coverage in 2021 as part of Project Pegasus, as well as an in-depth analysis of the Israeli spyware by Amnesty International, revealed that the Indian government had deployed the spyware against 174 individuals, including prominent opposition figures, academics and journalists, as well as judicial and election commission officials.
At the beginning of 2022, The Wire, which had been a part of Project Pegasus, put out an investigative story on “Tek Fog”, an app used by members of the BJPs Information Technology (IT) Cell to manipulate the online popularity of the party, as well as automate the task of harassing its critics on social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook.
The ability to manipulate social media trends, particularly on Twitter, in order to portray a party as being more popular than it is, as well as the use of the politico-media nexus by the government to disseminate misinformation about political opponents, or entirely removing news critical of the government from coverage, points towards the lack of a level playing field in Indian politics.
If one political party is able to inflate its popularity on social media, it is extremely easy for them to translate that into votes.
Because of our inherent conformity bias, people tend to behave like those they see around them rather than using their own judgment. Apps like Tek Fog harness the deep-seated need of humans to belong to a group to get political support.
At the same time, the ability to use inactive WhatsApp accounts to send pro-government messages is extremely problematic as it is basically engaging in identity theft to convince more and more people to support the BJP.
The use of this app by the BJP IT Cell is a major issue that, while helping the ruling party get significant electoral gains, deteriorates the quality of Indian democracy.
It is also important to point out how the use of surveillance against opposition figures in the run-up to elections, such as the use of Pegasus against Congress leader Rahul Gandhi before the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, effectively makes the election a farce, as one party has complete and unrestricted access to all digital communications of their rivals.
The erosion of individuals’ privacy through the government’s use of military-grade spyware is a recipe for disaster, as the information can be used for political gain in a number of ways. Pegasus provided the ruling party with power disproportionate to that of their rivals and exposed them to blackmail.
The fact that a member of the election commission was on the list of those targeted by the spyware raises even more questions on the already discredited election watchdog.
The use of applications like Tek Fog and military-grade spyware such as Pegasus against Indian citizens is in direct contravention to the law of the land, which says that hacking of computer resources is a criminal offence.
The use of such software violates the individual’s right to privacy and freedom of political expression while virtually manipulating the electoral process by using social media to gain political mileage at the cost of democracy.
Those who authorised these activities must be held accountable for their crimes, or India risks falling into the void of despotism, with an outer appearance being all that remains of the world’s largest democracy.