August 24 has passed, marking five years since a nine-judge Bench of the Supreme Court of India delivered a crucial judgment in the case of Justice K.S. Puttaswamy (retd.) vs Union of India. The judgment delivered on that date formally recognised the right to privacy as being a fundamental right stemming from the right to life and personal liberty, guaranteed under Article 21 of the Indian Constitution. The Bench also held that while the right to privacy is intrinsic to an individual’s ability to exercise bodily autonomy, it is still not an “absolute right” in and of itself, placing limitations in a manner similar to those placed on the right to free speech and expression.
An erosion
Five years later, however, the once eventual-beneficiaries of the agency that the recognition of the fundamental right had promised may realise that the order delivered as part of the judgment has not been upheld in letter or in practice. For example, one can consider the nature of the relationship that is currently shared among consumers and companies. If one looks at how the negotiation of privacy is placed now, they would realise that not much changed following the formal recognition of the right to privacy. The Personal Data Protection Bill, 2021, which had been in the offing for quite some time now (despite how flawed it may have been) was withdrawn earlier this month after an unnecessarily long period of stagnation.
