How India Is Offering An Interesting Opportunity To The Surveillance Industry?

Under the broad daylight or the dashing moonlight when you think you are by yourself, there emerges a blaring threat of someone keeping a close watch; you’re not so alone, after all at the end of the day, are you? When one thinks and introspects about the facial recognition systems, then one generally doesn’t picture India in the scheme of things, right? The country, even though, noted and renowned for its development in the sphere of computer engineering hasn’t really had much of a say in dictating the terms in the realm of the facial recognition systems.

Well, here’s some news. All of that could be set for some change now!

Whenever there emerges a discussion about the facial recognition systems, then one tends to picture China and the United States as the leading countries that are right at the epicenter of leading a charge. But now, in what appears to be an interesting deviation from the pre-ordained norm, it appears that India is soon going to change the context of this discussion.

A recent piece of media report concerned with the sphere of AI and allied technologies indicated that India is soon going to develop one of the world’s largest facial recognition systems.

But then, implicit in the development of a complex and sophisticated facial recognition systems stand a risk of wielding a double-edged sword. On the one hand, this can be a lucrative opportunity of the surveillance industry (whose tentacles are, but obviously, spread everywhere) and on the other, classicists feal, it might lead to the creation of a dreaded Chinese-style Orwellian state.

The reference to the context, in the latter, goes to the current Chinese government establishment which has created the world’s largest private snooping infrastructure in its territory. Imagine, for a second, the dreaded sight of everyone’s private life being stripped in front of the naked prying eye?

But nonetheless, more on the dramatic developing story from India. It appears that soon, Narendra Modi’s government is going to open bids (around the next month) to build a system which centralizes facial recognition data that is captured from Surveillance cameras across the country.

So how this system is supposed to work is pretty simple: it would link-up with the databases containing the records that pertain to pretty much everything pertaining to an individual- whether passports and fingerprints- to create a centralized repository of sorts.

And who will it help or benefit, at the end of the day? It’s believed that the upcoming change is going to benefit the country’s police forces, rather the depleted police forces that will use this priceless information to nab terror elements, chase criminals and hunt the undesirables.

Moreover, whether this is to nab the ‘missing persons’ or ‘dead bodies,’ the creation of a mass chunk of next-generation facial recognition systems will eventually prove to be a fruitful move.

The overall importance of what India is planning to develop to one of the world’s most poorly staffed police forces is immense. After all, there happens to be – mathematically- 1 officer for every 724 persons. The number stands way below the standard global norm.

But at the same time, the coming up of the said system could really extend the advantage to a slew of private companies as TechSci Research suggests that the market for facial recognition is going to literally explode- growing upto a sixfold figure, i.e., around $4.3 billion by 2024.