How private a person are you?
Let’s do a quick privacy audit into our lives and get an answer. There are three types of people out there: private folks, open people and public personas. The first are a small niche today, the second the norm and the third are a social aberration of sorts. These are public personas who crave publicity and make a science of the process of achieving it for themselves. Again a small niche.
The biggest chunk of people out there in modern society is a reasonably open one. A large mass of open people are sandwiched between the two sliced niches of private folks and very public personas. This large chunk comprises two sets of people really. One large set that does not know the fears (real or imagined) attached to leading a very open life and a smaller chunk that just does not care. My recent research exercises in this space indicate a 91% number for those that don’t know and a smaller 9% for those that just don’t care.
Privacy, therefore, in many ways is a non-issue in India for now. The largest chunks of our populace does lead open lives, sharing data with anyone and everyone who asks for it at whim. No one really knows the risks associated with pinpointed individual data that is shared. And then of course there is that smaller 9% that believes in leading a very open life. These are the youngest of the young in our midst, whose every action and reaction is alive and open in the Instagram posts and reels of the day. Their life is an open book. Open their Facebook pages and you know their every fact and folly.
What, then, is the privacy debate all about? Is privacy a fundamental right? And do people use their own decision-making powers to decide how private or public they want to be? Is this not a right on its own? And must there be privacy laws that get tighter by the day, or looser by the hour? Or must there be a government-level policy on privacy altogether that would govern what can be asked and what can be shared? A policy that dictates what level of masked data is useful for society at large, what level of it is totally unnecessary, and a pure commercial fuel for the many entities that make money out of our lives?
The responses to these questions vary depending on who is answering and the vested interest behind it.
As society gradually understands the fact that nothing comes for free, and that data is the new oil (one that not only runs our lives, but our every move in commerce itself), people are going to get more and more wary. Data privacy and protection will become issues personal to the individual as opposed to ones that are floating in the stratosphere of niche public discussion. The privacy debate in India has had this habit of flaring up sporadically and then dying out. The debate has also remained largely a public one at the top of the pyramid of the empowered, rather than a mass debate that touches the largest numbers of people.
Privacy, to that extent, is always considered an elitist notion that lives in the minds of those with too much money and too much to hide. The privacy niche will therefore widen to embrace larger masses in the years ahead. The private people of India, as their numbers grow, will become a target audience for products and services and their brands, later than sooner. People will reach out for privacy products and services. Any app that offers it is going to be reached out to with passion. I do believe privacy is a powder-keg opportunity for those who specialise in this niche product and service space. Privacy, which remains a largely business to business (B2B) play, is slated to become more of a business to consumer (B2C) thing in this new decade.
Privacy is certainly something that you consider sensitive to yourself. And you are going to be very protective about it in the future, more than in the past. Privacy is certainly a terrain that is all about the body, mind and soul, in that order, and you will get more and more protective about each of these realms that relate to you. I do believe there have been several tectonic “big-nudge” points in our lives over the recent decades. The first such moment was when Osama bin Laden attacked on the US and indeed the entire world in a manner. This led to a complete revival of interest across the globe in the realm of security products and services in our lives.
The second big-nudge moment is a very recent one, led by the Covid-19 pandemic. This has nudged every health and hygiene product and service there is to partake into big traction. If I were to wear my Nostradamus hat and do a bit of trend-spotting for the years ahead, I do believe the third big-nudge moment will be the one that will follow a big data breach. A big data catastrophe. A data Armageddon, one which gets people scurrying to protect their data with bigger care. Privacy will therefore be the next big opportunity for all of us. An opportunity and a theme to work on. And maybe even a theme to celebrate. Let’s think this out!
Harish Bijoor (harishbijoor@hotmail.com)
Brand Guru & Founder, Harish Bijoor Consults