DNA Edit: Kingdom of Paranoid

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s step to install CCTV cameras across all government schools in Delhi might be one such idea that has all the trappings of a surveillance disaster waiting to happen. Apparently, this initiative will allow parents to monitor their children, via live streaming, on their mobiles.

Sure, an argument can be made that the presence of CCTVs will help protect children from bullies, anti-social elements and even excesses by teachers but we must not lose sight of the fact that this method is akin to using swords to do the work of ploughshares.

If the aim is to secure the safety of our children, the first step towards it starts with schools carrying out thorough background check of their teachers and other employees. Anyone teaching or working or even studying in a school, after a reasonable amount of time, will become aware of the CCTV blind spots and will be able to mentally or physically abuse the child, away from the eyes of CCTVs.

By installing CCTVs in schools, the Delhi government has allowed government schools to throw up their hands: in case, a crime is perpetrated against a child within the school premises, the focus of the school administration will be on clinching visual evidence rather than accounting for their lax security arrangements or failing standards of background checks.

In case, there is no visual evidence for the crime, the school administration gets the leeway to claim that the crime possibly did not take place, further denting the delicate testimony of a child. What’s more, one can imagine that a move like this will most likely clip the personality of a child even before it has a healthy chance to develop.

We could have a whole generation of school children scared witless into paranoia forever operating under the perpetually watchful eye of their parents. We, the adult contributing members of the society, are not just what has been imbibed into us by our parents.

We are equal parts what has been taught to us by our families and equal parts what we have picked up from around us. Qualities like street smartness, holding one’s ground or general sociability cannot be tutored by a parent.

These are qualities that a child picks up when he learns to negotiate the everyday challenges of a school environment. With a parent constantly live-streaming any moment of a child’s life, this valuable agency of the child will be robbed, leading to a situation where the parent becomes a proxy; living and learning on behalf of the child, instead of the child drawing his own lessons. Additionally, there is the larger issue of whether government schools working with a paucity of resources will be able to secure the access to the video feed.

Can the Delhi government assure each and every one of the parents that it will put in place adequate IT infrastructure that will fortify the data from paedophiles? A failure would mean that instead of protecting children, this scheme will help facilitate access to children for these elements.