Simply Speaking: Sanchar Saathi and the Mood Around India’s Digital State

Alas, the debate around Sanchar Saathi is louder than the app itself. A tool meant to curb SIM fraud and protect users has ended up provoking unease about the direction of India’s digital state. That reaction is revealing and reassuring. It tells us that questions once confined to experts have now entered everyday conversation. Citizens instinctively ask who holds their data, what it is used for and how much choice they truly have.

When a public system touches personal information, people no longer take its intent for granted. They want to understand the trade-offs clearly. On the other hand, amusingly almost every store selling you medicine, coffee or apparel mandates you tell them your number before they can generate a bill. Almost all of us do.

A familiar anxiety

Much of the discomfort comes from the sense of soft compulsion. When an app is pre-installed or appears to be unavoidable, it feels less like a service and more like infrastructure that arrives without invitation. Even if its current function is modest, people worry about what future updates may enable and whether those changes will ever be meaningfully debated. This is not paranoia. It is a natural response in a country where digital identity and transaction systems have become central to daily life.

Aadhaar, UPI, FASTag and DigiLocker have all brought immense convenience. They have also created a dense digital layer that most citizens cannot opt out of without real cost. Against this background, each new platform is read as another stitch binding people to the architecture of the state. What might have once been viewed as a useful utility can now be viewed through a more cautious lens. The question becomes whether a system remains a choice or quietly becomes an obligation.

The public value at stake

Sanchar Saathi is not another behavioural tracking system or a commercial data engine. Its goal is more straightforward. India faces a persistent problem of SIM misuse, cloned IMEI numbers and identity fraud spread across millions of devices. Criminal networks exploit gaps between operators and jurisdictions. People lose money, and the system loses integrity. A central verification backbone can make a difference by shutting down dubious connections, identifying anomalies and cleaning up telecom registries.

Read More: Government says Sanchar Saathi mandate aims to curb fake handsets and cyber fraud

No private entity has the mandate or systemic visibility to do this work. When designed with care, such a backbone looks less like surveillance and more like safety infrastructure, similar to fraud detection in banking or the automated filters that shield users from spam. If anything, the absence of such a system would leave citizens more vulnerable, not less.

What tracking means in this context

It is therefore important to distinguish between different kinds of tracking. The worry many people carry comes from experiences with platforms that monitor behaviour in order to influence it. Sanchar Saathi is not built on that logic. The value it creates lies in reducing risk, not predicting preferences. It identifies irregular devices rather than mapping habits. It looks for signs of misuse rather than building profiles.

Even so, the concern is very understandable. People fear the asymmetry of data flowing upward without sufficient oversight or transparency coming back down. The same dataset can be protective when used narrowly and problematic when repurposed or expanded. In the end, the issue is not whether the state collects any information. The issue is the terms on which it does so and the guarantees that surround those terms.

Legitimacy must be earned, not assumed

For any public-facing digital system, trust comes from clarity, restraint and visible safeguards. The state has to explain what is collected, why it is necessary, how long it is retained and who can access it. Mere communication is not enough. The architecture must reflect the promise. Data should be minimised. Logs should be auditable. Purposes should be narrow and legally anchored. And above all, participation should feel voluntary in practice, not just in press statements.

A tool like Sanchar Saathi will work best when people choose it because it solves a real problem. It should be easy to install, easy to remove and valuable enough that users decide it belongs on their phone. A system that relies on demand rather than pressure not only earns legitimacy but sustains it.

A clearer story for the digital state

India’s earlier digital successes did well because they were framed as enabling layers that expanded opportunity. Where discomfort emerged, it came less from the core technology and more from how it was used at the edges. Sanchar Saathi sits within this evolving story. If it is governed with restraint and communicated with clarity, it can strengthen trust rather than strain it.

The task ahead is to articulate a simple doctrine for state data. Track devices, not personal behaviour. Track fraud signals, not social patterns. Make the limits visible in law, technology and enforcement so that they remain limits in practice.

If this is done well, a volitional adoption of Sanchar Saathi can stand not as an example of creeping surveillance but as a demonstration of how a home-grown digital system can protect users without compromising their autonomy.

Read More: Jyotiraditya Scindia defends Sanchar Saathi as voluntary amid backlash over pre-installation order

Shubhranshu’s Singh is a business leader, cultural strategist, and columnist. He was honoured as one of the 50 most influential global CMOs for 2025 by Forbes and serves on the board of the Effie LIONS Foundation.