A lie can run around the world before the truth has got its boots on, wrote Terry Pratchett in one of the books in the Discworld series. Today, with technology at the tip of anyone’s finger, the speed with which lies are circulated is scary and even scarier are the devastating consequences.

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Rumours spread through the messaging app ‘WhatsApp’ that has led to several cases of lynching in various parts of the country has again revealed the dark side of growing informational connectivity. Lynchings have taken place in Maharashtra, Gujarat, Tripura, Assam and West Bengal, which showcases how easily rumours can cut across language barriers. The message that is being forwarded contains a vague warning about a number of strangers entering the locality and abducting children for organ theft. This accompanied by a video, which seems to be of a child abduction from Karachi creates enough panic among people that they not only organise themselves into groups but hunt strangers who might be involved in such crimes.

A lynch mob is not something new to history and while there is some temptation to compare lynchings happening in India today to the lynchings that took place on racial and gender lines especially in the west, it would be an exaggeration to club them in the same box. The victims of these rumour fueled lynchings are often people belonging to a minority religion or an oppressed caste which goes on to highlight how marginalised and vulnerable people belonging to these groups are, with neither state nor society ready to give them their basic right to life.

While cheap smartphones and even cheaper data packs have made communication accessible to vast sections of society, it has done little to curb the insecurities that exist within a society. In fact, they have only brought out the hidden anxiety among people. As they sit on their phones and receive communal, casteist messages and fake news without any additional cost, it becomes easier for them to accept the fears and tensions within themselves after finding that there is someone out there, in fact many others who suffer from this shared psychosis.

While people have access to smartphones, they have received little if any information on how to make the best use of that technology. Now, if you are a libertarian, you might argue that he is free to do whatever he wants to do with technology and no one has any business to teach him on how to use it. That argument would sound convincing if this information didn’t have any negative consequences on others. Here, in this case, the use of technology has resulted in a threat to other people’s right to life and a threat to life and liberty of an individual has no place in any society or within any philosophical framework.

What these lynchings reveal is the insecurity within people and how they don’t trust the state from protecting them from prospective crimes. Their distrust of the system results in assertive action, in taking law into their own hands as opposed to calling to police or appealing the state machinery to prevent such incidents. Their distrust of others is Hobbesian in some sense and they choose to take matters into their hands and pursue collective action, rather than trusting the social contract they signed up for while creating the state.

It also reflects how deeply divided we are as a society. Social media, instead of bridging that divide, has been used to deepen that divide. Every day, misinformation and propaganda are circulated as facts and that influences everything we do. Our political leanings, our ideology, our attitude towards the state, everything is influenced by what we read or hear on messaging apps and an increasing number of Indians depend on social media for their daily dose of information.

While these lynchings bring out the worst of humanity, there are a number of examples of people using technology and social media for benefit of individuals and collectives of human beings. Social media has also helped many disenfranchised, disadvantaged people across the world to assert themselves. In the end, it’s about the society that we have created and live in. The character of that society often decides how people react to social media. In India, we are going through a phase of social turmoil right now. The idea of social cohesion is crumbling, with rifts on religious or caste lines becoming an everyday occurrence.

The governments (both centre and state) must take steps to inform citizens about these rumours through counter-information. Messaging apps must devise ways to stop spread of information which can lead to violent incidents and deaths. This might seem to be a foolish thing to say but technology has come a long way in the last two decades and one is hopeful that it will find solutions to the problems that it has created. But most importantly, we need more trustworthy state machinery; more responsive police system, better crime prevention and judicial system and governance that can win the trust of the people. So that even in the worst of times, people decide to call the police before taking law into their own hands.

The author is a poet and activist based in Delhi. Views are personal.