📰India’s Surveillance Program Ends As Soon As It Starts | Daily India Briefing

Today, we breakdown India’s announcement for all smartphones to include a mandatory tracking app, which was reversed soon after.

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Macro

• FM Sitharaman says the IMF C rating is due to the old base year used for comparisons. The year of 2012-13 is used for inflation and GDP comparisons which Sitharaman said was the root cause of the low rating. She also praised the rest of the IMF’s rating at a B level for India.  

• Rashi Bhatia's Ashmore Fund is betting on working women spending more. Bhatia says that the growing women workforce reminds her of the US feminist movement in the 1960s and she is now buying shares in firms that benefit from higher female spending. Ashmore manages $2.3 billion (₹207 billion) worth of Indian stocks and has outperformed 96 percent of its peers this year. 

• A trade stalemate and increasing Russian meeting risks lead to the rupee falling past 90.The RBI sold a small amount of dollars but speculative bets are rising after the 90 mental barrier just broke. The rupee has fallen 5 percent this year, the worst of all in Asia.

Equities

• IndiGo canceled more than 70 flights due to pilot issues and technical glitches. There is a cockpit crew shortage due to new flight duty limitations; small adverse conditions and technological glitches due to the winter season caused other cancellations.  

• ICICI Prudential AMC is launching a $1.2 billion (₹108 billion) IPO next week. The asset manager would be valued at around $12 billion (₹1.1 trillion). 

• Meesho, an e-commerce firm, was fully subscribed for its $603 million (₹54.2 billion) IPO. The firm connects small manufacturers with value-conscious shoppers across India. Several funds walked away from the deal yesterday after getting under-allocated what they asked for, but the IPO still outperformed. 

• Manipal Hospitals is filing a $1 billion (₹90 billion) IPO in January.The hospital chain would be valued at $13 billion (₹1.2 trillion) after the fresh and secondary issues. Manipal is backed by KKR and is part of a conglomerate spanning healthcare, education, and insurance.

Alts

• Japan's JFE Steel is forming a $1.7 billion (₹157.5 billion) JV with JSW Steel. The goal is to meet India’s growing demand by increasing production capacity at the JSW plant in Bhushan to 10 million tons by 2030, more than double current limits. JFE is looking to participate in the Indian growth story, without having to go through complicated legal hurdles singlehandedly. 

• Japan's Daiwa is taking a minority stake in wealth manager Ambit with $32 million (₹2.9 billion). While the stake amount is unclear, Ambit has more than $9 billion (₹810 billion) under management this year.

• Coal plants are being asked to work at lower capacity to make way for solar. India’s grid can only handle a limited amount of electricity generation, meaning something has to give away. If fossil power can be more flexible, India can increase clean energy production.

Policy

• New Delhi is eliminating gas-powered buses, taxis, and delivery vehicles to reduce smog. Other solutions have included induced rain and pollution reduction towers, but data from 2019 shows little improvement in 6 years. The regulation on gas-powered public transport kicks in by 2030, which should show more significant improvements. 

• Putin is set to discuss increasing bilateral trade to $100 billion (₹9 trillion) from $68 billion (₹6.1 trillion) by 2030.The meeting in New Delhi is coming right after the US envoy to Russia, Steve Witkoff, visited Moscow. India is going to discuss new weapons purchases as well as energy, even with US sanctions and tariffs looming over the country.

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India’s Surveillance Program Ends As Soon As It Starts

India’s attempt to force a government-developed tracking and anti-fraud app onto every newly manufactured or imported smartphone triggered one of the strongest public privacy backlashes the country has seen in years, causing the policy to collapse faster than it was announced.

The original order gave companies like Apple, Samsung, and Xiaomi ninety days to ensure “Sanchar Saathi,” developed by the Indian government’s Dept of Telecommunications, was preinstalled. This made it clear the government wanted the app embedded at the operating-system layer, not as a regular deletable app. That level of access is significant because Sanchar Saathi has permissions far beyond theft-prevention tools: it can make and manage phone calls, send messages, access data logs, read files, use the camera, and check locations. Critics immediately framed the requirement as a mass-surveillance tool disguised as a cybersecurity measure.

Opposition leaders like Priyanka Gandhi accused the government of using fraud prevention as a pretext to monitor citizens’ digital lives. Digital-rights advocates noted that since the government exempted itself from India’s 2023 Data Protection Act, nothing in law prevents the state from collecting or linking the extremely sensitive data the app could potentially access. Civil society groups warned that a mandated, high-privilege app installed on every device created a single point of failure from a cybersecurity perspective, especially in a country where the government has already been criticized for building vast, unsegmented data linkages between databases.

Compounding the uproar was historical memory. India’s Pegasus scandal (where journalists, opposition politicians, activists, and the ruling party were targeted) has made trust in state digital surveillance almost nonexistent. Apple has clashed with Delhi before over alleged state-sponsored intrusion attempts. Against that backdrop, the idea of a compulsory government app with deep device permissions was politically toxic.

Within a day, the Modi government began backpedaling. Communications Minister Scindia insisted the app could be removed at any time, despite the original order contradicting that claim. By Wednesday, the mandate was formally withdrawn. Officials justified the reversal by pointing to the app’s rising popularity (14 million downloads, 2,000 frauds reported daily, and 600,000 new users in one day), arguing that voluntary uptake made compulsion unnecessary.

Digital-rights organizations called the withdrawal a positive step but stressed that the government has not yet published the revised legal order or clarified whether new directions under the Cyber Security Rules will replace the original mandate. For them, this is not closure but a temporary pause; the structural concerns about unchecked state access to personal data remain unresolved.

While the misstep has ended, it reveals internal ambitions within the Indian government to better track citizens. How this comes to fruition in other ways will be worth keeping a close eye on.

See you tomorrow.

Written by Yash Tibrewal. Edited by Shreyas Sinha.

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