Sanchar Swati’ Contrary – Contrary to media reports, Mr. S.

Saathi is not a myth but a real person. Like the app he built for the government, he lurks — and works — in the background.

After much coaxing, he agreed to give me an exclusive interview. Excerpts: Q: Sir, most Indian entrepreneurs believe it is not easy to work with the government. But people like you and Mr.

Bandan Balcony have been successfully doing it for a long time. What’s your secret? A: I have a simple funda, which is also followed by every aspiring trillionaire in the country: pre-installation. Q: Pre-installation? A: Yes.

Before I started working with the government, I pre-installed my own ‘saathis’ in the root operating system of the bureaucracy. This protects my financial security the same way Sanchar Saathi would have helped billions of Indians with their cyber-security — if only the government hadn’t reversed the pre-installation mandate.

This column is a satirical take on life and society. Q: Did you anticipate this reversal? A: Of course not.

Who expects the government to actually listen to the people? Today, if you back down on privacy, next they may expect you to stop working for cronies. Then they will start demanding clean air, affordable healthcare, and living wages. There is no end to their demands! It’s dangerous to go down that road.

Q: But isn’t it good for the business ecosystem to respect privacy? A: The first principle of ease of doing business is that the government should not take policy advice from citizens. On any matter — be it about land, labour, environment or privacy – it doesn’t matter what the people want.

What matters is your true saathi — by which I mean, whoever puts their wallet where your mouth is. Q: But sir, India is a democracy. A: How old are you — 12? Democracy or no democracy, any government’s primary duty is to monitor citizens, wash their brains regularly in WhatsApp detergent, and keep them under control.

If we have to start listening to the people, what answer will we give to electoral bond donors? What are foreign consultants for? Look at me — I’m a U. K.

citizen, my wife is a Japanese citizen, my son is a French citizen, and my daughter is an Australian citizen. I have no personal stakes in the future of this country. Yet I am working 22 hours a day, seven days a week, in India’s national capital and world’s pollution capital.

Why? Because though my bank accounts are Swiss, my heart is Indian. That’s why I was shocked to see the government reversing its order based on fake news spread by privacy fundamentalists.

But this is not over. Q: But at some point, a democratically elected government should also listen to the people, right? Otherwise how will it get re-elected? A: Of course it should. That’s the whole point of Sanchar Saathi! It is custom-built to listen to people 24×7 — not only to what they are saying in their normal calls, but also over WhatsApp and Telegram.

It will also pay attention to where you are going, who you are meeting, whose pictures you are taking, and what anti-national stuff you have in your external and internal storage. All that people had to do to enjoy these benefits was to let the app be pre-installed on their phone — but such a small thing also Indians couldn’t do for the three-time elected, most corruption-free government in the history of India. Q: I apologise on behalf of all Indians.

But isn’t user consent important? A: Consent? ‘Sanchar Saathi’ literally means ‘communication partner’, not ‘sexual partner’. You are talking as if your smartphone is an innocent girl and the app is a politician heading the wrestling federation.

Q: What are your future plans? A: We are developing a constellation of apps that, after pre-installation, will work in sync with Sanchar Saathi. Currently, we are beta-testing Sanchar Swati, which will automatically purify people’s phones of all the stuff they shouldn’t have downloaded in the first place.

Then we have Sanchar Aashiq, which will alert the parents of youngsters who fall in love with the wrong person. But I am most excited about Sanchar Potty.

Q: I’m sorry? A: It’s the first such app in the world. Upload the photo of any sample, and it will use stool recognition technology to tell you what that person has been eating in the previous 24 hours.

If beef happens to be one of the items, it will automatically alert the authorities. Q: Amazing! Didn’t think such innovation was possible in a government set-up.

A: Never underestimate us. The author of this satire is Social Affairs Editor, The Hindu.