Income Tax Bill 2025 and the Quiet Normalisation of Surveillance

When Orwell imagined Big Brother, he probably didn’t picture Instagram stories and WhatsApp groups – much less its role in tax enforcement. With Rs 250 crore in hidden assets already seized, Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman revealed that encrypted WhatsApp chats, mobile data, Google maps and even Instagram are now weapons against tax evasion. What was once hidden is now exposed – tech is the new tax enforcer. But there is a caveat. 

Sitharaman doubled down on the idea of creating a law that would empower state agencies to access and scrutinise digital platforms to uncover financial fraud and illegal activities. To this end, the Income Tax Bill 2025, already tabled by the government, includes provisions supporting this approach. 

If passed, the Bill would grant income tax officials the authority to access digital information, including emails, social media accounts and online financial platforms. 

While tackling financial fraud is a serious state endeavour, the finance minister’s call for a deeper embrace of tech-enabled scrutiny goes beyond a mere regulatory matter. If anything, the proposal tangles with a broad spectrum of state-citizen relations, altering how the dynamics of power, authority and interaction are framed and ultimately exercised. 

Power, politics and the digital state

The push to institute a law allowing state agencies to access digitally protected emails and social media accounts without a warrant or prior notice raises several critical questions. 

The proposal, framed as a reasonable solution and good policy, seems like a cover for expanding and legitimising state control.

It forces us to confront an unsettling reality: a gradual shift toward a model of governance that equates effectiveness with perpetual visibility and surveillance. Such a condition of omnipresent state oversight lays fertile ground for political misuse.

It becomes even more concerning given the already battered reputation of state agencies. The IT department and the Enforcement Directorate have been accused of wielding their power to fulfill political vendettas and punish those who oppose the government.  

Despite it all, public apathy to this Bill remains palpable. It is most evident in the absence of widespread discussion among the broader population. The lack of scrutiny reveals a passive acquiescence of policies that steadily chip away at individual rights and freedoms. 

Tellingly, this citizen complacency also paints a stark portrait of a fractured socio-political landscape, where critical issues fail to capture public attention, let alone incite meaningful response. 

It underscores that citizens are not informed digital participants, but passive data subjects with their agency diminished in an increasingly surveilled and algorithmically governed world.

In fact, the Bill which emphasises the state’s rights does not even remotely bear an imprint of individual privacy concern. Rather, it is grounded in a narrow notion of privacy that stops at the edge of the state’s efforts to promote the common good. 

The idea implicitly held here is that these efforts constitute the foundation of state legitimacy alongside the individual’s reciprocal duty to contribute to the common good – a utilitarian sensibility of maximizing benefits for the greatest number. 

Admittedly, the idea of the common good, variously expressed as national interest, national development, and other terms, has served the government as a recurring justification for several pivotal changes implemented since 2014. These include the 2014 election victory, demonetisation, the revocation of Article 370 and the widespread adoption of Aadhaar for welfare programs. 

However, the creation of this moral hierarchy renders privacy illusory, when in fact, it is not merely an individual preference, but a fundamental right that supports other freedoms such as freedom of expression and thought. 

This justificatory refuge may slip into an even more problematic refrain: ‘If you haven’t committed fraud, then why fear the law? But there is a problem with that argument. It implies that only those who are guilty need privacy or have reason to fear being watched. 

Accordingly, it shifts the burden from the state having to prove someone’s guilt, to individuals having to prove their innocence by accepting surveillance. In the process, it also reframes rights as conditional. 

Instead of enjoying rights by default, people are expected to demonstrate that they are not a threat in order to deserve them. This logic turns the fundamental principle of democratic freedom on its head. 

Instead of dwelling solely on the extent of state overreach, any discussion on these measures should also serve as a reference point to reflect on why privacy, even in the presence of a privacy law, is increasingly not guaranteed. 

This dynamic highlights how the public is being reduced into mere data subjects with minimal rights rather than digital citizens who are informed and in charge of their digital identity.

Lastly, the proposal challenges the moral imagination often linked to India’s emancipatory narrative on digital sovereignty and data decolonisation — a narrative rooted in reclaiming control over data and digital infrastructure as a means of resisting foreign domination. 

True state sovereignty, however, cannot be built on surveillance. It must rest on the consent and autonomy of the governed. The state is not defined by its flag, firewalls or domestically hosted cloud servers. It is and has always been its people. When individuals are stripped of digital privacy, they are gradually stripped of something even more fundamental: their autonomy. The result is not self-rule but managed obedience. 

Muhsin Puthan Purayil is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Manipal Law School, Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE), Bengaluru.

The Wire is now on WhatsApp. Follow our channel for sharp analysis and opinions on the latest developments.