By all accounts, Varun Nath was mildly inconvenienced for a few minutes. At around 7 am on August 30, Nath was stuck in a lift in his posh Gurgaon highrise for 3-4 minutes. When the lift operator, accompanied by a security guard got him out, he proceeded to slap them both. The CCTV footage that caught him in the act does not have sound. But it appears from the video that while his victims were trying to speak, Nath’s first response was the violence of the entitled. Earlier this month, Bhavya Roy was caught on camera, with audio, abusing security guards at a Noida condominium. Unfortunately, both incidents are not infrequent. What has changed is that with the ubiquity of the camera — CCTVs, cellphones — the entitlement and casual violence that marks Indian society is now there for all to see.
Is the camera, then, so often seen as an instrument of “Big Brother”, a way to bring to light daily injustices that are otherwise ignored? It is easy to imagine how — given the relative privilege and power of the residents of a high-rise vis-a-vis the staff — incidents like the ones involving Roy and Nath would be brushed under the carpet had it not been for the “viral videos”. Yet, as with all era-defining technology, the assessment of mass surveillance and recording needs a nuanced approach.
