This public-private partnership? no!

One thing that differentiates the rich and not-rich-enough in this country is access to private space, a.k.a. privacy. One fallout of inequality of wealth measured in spatial terms is that the majority of people don’t care to value it. This causes a genuine misunderstanding – non-understanding, actually – of where public space ends and private space begins. Thus, litigation of the nature in which the Delhi High Court upheld on Thursday a conviction against a man charged by a trial court of voyeurism.

The accused insisted that watching a lady bathing outside a jhuggi that constituted a covered four-walled structure with a curtain (instead of a door) was not an offence under Section 354C of the Indian Penal Code – the offence of ‘any man [our italics] who watches, or captures the image of a woman engaging in a private act in circumstances where she would usually have the expectation of not being observed either by the perpetrator or by any other person at the behest of the perpetrator or disseminates such image’ – because it was an ‘open public space’. Alas, even Peeping Toms are, seemingly, using the cover(-up) of public-private partnerships these days.

Privacy, whether in an airline seat or in a makeshift bathing space, is more than just about physical space. It is about an act and intent of doing something without an audience. Simple.