The Camera Points Down
A phone films a bribe or a beating, and within days, a constable is suspended. It looks like accountability, and at the bottom, in a narrow way, it is. But the camera only catches what stands in front of it, and the people who decide how a country is actually run have always taken care to stand somewhere else.
POLITICAL COMMUNICATIONSURVEILLANCEACCOUNTABILITYPOLICINGCORRUPTIONSTATE POWERCIVIL LIBERTIESSOCIAL MEDIADEMOCRACYTECHNOLOGYINDIAGOVERNANCEPOWER
In June this year, on a busy street in Visakhapatnam, three young men were forced to sit on the pavement while policemen beat them in front of a crowd. They were barefoot, hunched over, and had not been convicted of any crime. Someone in the crowd recorded the scene on a phone. Within hours, the video was everywhere, and people across the country debated it. Some were shocked, but many felt the boys deserved it.
For a moment, set aside what the video shows. Focus instead on the fact that a video exists at all.
For most of history, everyday abuse of power relied on one quiet assumption: no one was watching. The constable asking for a bribe, the clerk waiting for an envelope, the officer using his stick more harshly than allowed, the guard turning a family away from a hospital; all acted with the confidence that nothing would be recorded. It was always their word against a citizen's, and everyone knew whose word mattered. That belief was the real licence, not the uniform or the rulebook. It was the certainty that no one would witness it.
Now that almost everyone has a phone, that old assumption is gone everywhere in the country. For example, a revenue clerk in Odisha was suspended within days after a video showed him taking money from a contractor. Similar incidents have occurred involving constables and sub-inspectors in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, and Jammu and Kashmir. There have been cases involving a junior engineer in Maharashtra, a health officer in a district hospital, a policeman in Madhya Pradesh filmed dragging a shopkeeper by his hair, custodial beatings in Haryana and Delhi, and a constable in Bihar caught on camera firing an assault rifle at student protesters. These incidents have happened in states run by all political parties, which is important to note. This is not a problem of one government. It is what power at the ground level has always done, now finally visible.
At first, this might sound like good news. Many people say the camera is a great equaliser, a tool for citizens, and that sting operations are no longer needed because almost everyone can now record. I see why people think this. But I believe this view is mostly wrong, and the examples above show why.
Look at who falls
Look at that list again and notice something about everyone mentioned. They are all minor players in a much bigger system.
A revenue clerk. A constable. A sub-inspector. A junior engineer. A beat officer with a stick. The people caught on camera are the lowest-ranking, most exposed, and most easily replaced agents of the state. They are the ones who deal directly with the public, out in the open where a phone camera can record them. Their corruption is physical. It happens on the street or across a counter, involving cash or a stick, and it makes for a perfect short video. Because these acts are easy to watch, they are easy to punish. In this system, attention has quietly become the only form of enforcement that really works.
Now think about the kinds of corruption that really harm the country. For example, a tender written so that only one company can win; a factory getting approval even though it will pollute a river; a file moving because a minister's office called, rather than a bribe being paid; or a policy shaped to benefit a select few. None of this happens in front of a camera. It takes place in offices, through words and paperwork, among people who are never near a checkpoint. This kind of corruption is invisible and dull, and dull stories do not spread. You cannot make a viral video out of a signature on a document.
So the camera has not made things fair. Instead, it has shifted the focus. Petty corruption is now highly visible and punished, while larger corruption is safer because public anger is directed at the smaller cases. The constable loses his job, but the system that put him there, pays him too little, and takes a share of what he collects from the streets remains untouched. In fact, it is now even more hidden, because the outrage that might have reached higher levels is now directed at the person at the bottom. The camera always points at those who are easiest to see.
Not just money
And it was never just about corruption. That word is too limited for what it really reveals.
The same belief that no one was watching ran through all quiet acts of power. A police atrocity in a town with no reporters, a beating in a station at night, a caste crime in a village where cameras never went, a demolition done before anyone could protest, or a detention that lasted longer than the law allowed; all depended on the same confidence as a bribe: that there would be no record. The phone has taken that confidence away from everyday acts of authority, not just those involving money.
But the inequality remains, and it is even harsher. The three young men beaten in Visakhapatnam were filmed, and the officers might face consequences. But the system that allows such things to happen, the pressure for quick results, the culture that sees the poor and accused as already guilty, and the quiet approval of rough justice cannot be filmed. You can record the person swinging the stick, but not the order that led to it. So once again, the person at the bottom is exposed, while those above remain protected. The public may think that suspending one constable means the system has changed, but it is only a sacrifice the system can easily make.
The one thing power cannot edit
There is a complication here that works both for and against change, and it is important to be honest about it, because this is where the story becomes less hopeful.
A recording is not always the final word. It can be edited down to a few seconds, with the full story lost somewhere in between. It can be slowed down, given captions, taken out of context, or matched to the wrong place and time. More and more, recordings can even be created from scratch, with faces and voices generated by AI tools available on phones. We are quickly moving toward a world where every recording can be doubted, where accusation and evidence are the same thing and neither can be fully trusted. Now, the first reaction of anyone caught on video is to call it fake, and many people will believe them. The camera can reveal the truth, but it can also deceive, and people today understand both sides of this better than anyone before.
But one thing a phone can do can't be edited: it can broadcast live on various social media platforms. A live stream goes straight from the event to the viewers, with no chance to change or erase it. There is no time to grab the phone, remove the memory card, or bargain over the footage. What happens is seen as it happens, and it cannot be undone. This is what worries those in power most, because it takes away their ability to control the record after the fact.
So notice what happens in response. Since the state cannot edit a live stream, it targets the person streaming instead. For example, a vlogger in Kerala live-streamed his own arrest as police broke down his door and took his computers. Tax officials raid people who post online. In many states, different governments charge citizens for videos, posts, or live broadcasts that embarrass those in power. The authorities can no longer control the moment, but they can still go after the person with the phone. Now, the risk has shifted from the footage to the person making it, and that person has a home, a job, a family, and much more to lose than a video file ever could.
And the top of the system has a third option, one the constable will never have. It can rule the footage unshareable. This July, a Supreme Court bench led by the Chief Justice, whose own offhand remark had, months earlier, set off a wave of student protests, restricted the clipping, uploading and sharing of recordings of court proceedings on social media without prior permission. The petition it was ruling on cited that very remark, and the edited clips that followed it, as its example of the danger. Read one way, it is a fair answer to the problem of the decontextualised clip, the same problem described above. Read another way, it is the plainest illustration of everything in this piece. The man at the checkpoint cannot stop his two hundred rupees from going viral. The country's most powerful court can decide that its own proceedings will not.
Everyone is watched. No one is caught.
When you look at everything together, the promise fades away.
We are creating a country where everything is visible. Every checkpoint, counter, and street corner can now be broadcast. This was supposed to bring accountability, and for the constable and the clerk, in a limited way, it does. But real accountability needs two things that the camera cannot provide. It needs a record that everyone trusts, but we are moving toward a world where any video can be dismissed as fake. It also needs to reach those in power, but the camera mostly points downward, at the visible and the powerless, while decision-makers remain out of sight, in rooms no phone can enter.
So this is what the phone has really given us: spectacle at the bottom, silence at the top, and a never-ending argument about what is real. And now, since the state cannot edit the one recording it cannot control, it has started going after the person who made it.
Everyone is being watched now, but that does not mean anyone is truly being held accountable. It was never going to be, because the camera only sees what is in front of it, and the real decisions about how a country is run are always made out of sight.