Telephone: From Bell to surveillance

On March 10, 1876, when Alexander Graham Bell first uttered ‘Mr Watson, come here, I want to see you’ to his assistant Thomas Watson, into his simple apparatus, it sizzled across American Continent. The device named telephone by Bell, set the world on a course that connected voices across continents. The innovative discovery meant for communication, is now used indiscriminately for surveillance and a tool of control.

Had great inventors like Bell, Thomas Alva Edison, and J. Rober Oppenheimer been alive today, they might be found sitting quietly at some isolated corner, being old, wrinkled, and unrecognized, murmuring among themselves, on their brainchildren.

Bell would sigh, ‘I invented the telephone for human connection, not for tapping secrets.’ Edison would shake his head, ‘I lit up the world, and now people waste their nights glowing in front of nonsense.’ With a heavy heart, Oppenheimer might mutter, ‘I split the atom to harness energy, and they used it to split nations.’ Just then, Isaac Newton would stroll in, pointing to a recent plane crash, and say, ‘Even gravity now could be accused of terrorism.’ They would all nod in reluctant agreement: ‘Next time, we will invent sleeping pills instead of science, manufactured as joint venture with Artificial Intelligence!”

In recent weeks, Telangana has found itself at the centre of a storm, one not driven by ideology or governance models, but by silence, suspicion, and surveillance.

The unfolding controversy dating back to the KCR days, surfaced when a senior police officer confessed accusing BRS government of using police machinery to monitor the phone conversations of leaders of opposition parties. The Special Investigation Team (SIT) has intensified its investigation, including the interrogation of former chief of the Special Intelligence Bureau.

This alleged phone-tapping has reopened a difficult conversation, not merely about political overreach, but about the fine line between state vigilance and violation of citizen rights and privacy. The democratic dilemma is, when the invisible ear of the state begins to monitor, manipulate, or muzzle private speech, what is in store next?

The issue at hand is not the mere existence of surveillance. It is about its scope, its intent, and its potential for misuse, especially when deployed against political opponents, dissidents, or even members within one’s own machinery. The controversy points to a legacy problem that India has carried from its colonial past into its digital present: an unchecked culture of interception for partisan gain or institutional insecurity.

The Telangana episode takes back into the global history of phone tapping, its justifications and distortions, and the many layers of its political, social, economic, and ethical impact.

The telephone, since its invention, has held the promise of human connectivity across distances previously unimaginable. Within a year of discovery, the ‘Bell Telephone Company’ was founded. In offices and homes of privileged few, a peculiar object began to appear: a wooden box with a mouthpiece, a crank, and wires stretching to a central exchange. People laughed aloud with joy, some cried and many simply listened, stunned, as voices leapt over silence. Next year, the first commercial telephone exchange was opened in New Haven, Connecticut.

The telephone entered the market not with thunder, but with the quiet wonder of the miraculous. It was not merely communication, but it was communion across distance, a bridge for love, business, emergency, and celebration. What the world felt in those early years of its arrival was not just utility, but awe.

The telephone invention unfolded a quiet revolution across continents that would reshape human communication. India’s tryst with the telephone began five years later, when the Oriental Telephone Company introduced services under a British government license. Calcutta hosted the country’s first telephone exchange, followed by Bombay and Madras, placing India among the earliest adopters in Asia. The service later became part of the P and T Department.

Initially, the telephone was limited to few cities in the United States and Europe, with subscribers speaking through manual exchanges operated by human switchboards.

In India, the telephone made its debut in 1882, linking Kolkata and Mumbai with rudimentary technology, before gradually extending to other cities like Chennai, Delhi, and Hyderabad. For a long time, waiting lists stretched into years, and recommendations or bribes became routine for getting telephone connections. OYT was very popular to get priority connection.

In India too, prior to automation, it was ‘Exchange through Speaking’ where operators manually connected calls. Trunk dialing, Subscriber Trunk Dialing (STD) followed. Coinciding the liberalization and with opening telecom to private players for a generation, yellow and black STD and ISD booths became symbols of distant connectivity. India's first-ever mobile phone call was made on July 31, 1995, by the then West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu to Union Telecom Minister Sukh Ram, using a Nokia handset on Modi Telstra's network. Then it came at a hefty cost of Rs 16 per minute.

Mid-1990s revolutionized the landscape. With costly cellphones becoming affordable, ordinary citizens too could carry them in their pockets. With the advent of smartphones with internet capabilities, contacts, locations, messages, finances, history, geography, what not, all migrated into one small device. But with this convenience came vulnerability.

From an elite invention to a common utility, the telephone transformed human connection, yet with it arrived the silent shadow of phone tapping.

Globally and in India, the evolution of surveillance had a genesis. During the two World Wars, and later the Cold Wars, phone tapping emerged as a state tool for national security. Governments monitored calls of suspected spies, political adversaries, and even allied leaders.

In India, the colonial state monitored freedom fighters’ telegrams and conversations. Post-Independence, this model carried over, with successive governments using wiretaps through intelligence agencies and police departments. Legal cover of Telegraph Act or Information Technology Act is just namesake. Technological developments have made surveillance easier.

As the present Telangana government investigates into, what it alleges as a systematic misuse of state apparatus to tap and track personal communications, some harsh realities surface. Truth apart, phone tapping’s consequences span many dimensions, politically and socially. People self-censor, speak in riddles, and avoid discussing sensitive matters resulting in victims being traumatized. Activists and whistleblowers feel watched, silenced, and unsafe. Who authorizes surveillance, who reviews it, and what safeguards protect citizens? Million-dolor questions.

Surveillance, once normalized without appropriate scrutiny, can infiltrate every layer of Indian democratic fabric, across states, parties, and governments. The real solution does not just lie in punishing the past, but in reforming the present, with future legal safeguards, independent audit mechanisms, and a commitment to the sacredness of personal liberty.

In a digital age where millions of phones transmit personal moments each second, the absence of robust privacy laws is glaring. Effectiveness of the Personal Data Protection Act in India hinges on several factors, including the timely notification of rules, establishment of the Data Protection Board, and the government's approach to enforcement and exemptions. Though the Supreme Court has affirmed privacy as a fundamental right, institutional safeguards lag far behind technological capabilities.

The issue is no longer whether someone is listening, it iswhether the system built for protection has become a machinery of fear. As India prepares for future waves of technological advancement, such as Artificial Intelligence, the true challenge is to balance national security with civil liberty. Listening must never replace justice; and silence must never be enforced by fear. In the end, the question is not whether the state should listen, it is whether the citizen has a right not to be overheard.

Initially, the telephone was limited to few cities in the United States and Europe, with subscribers speaking through manual exchanges operated by human switchboards. In India, the telephone made its debut in 1882, linking Kolkata and Mumbai with rudimentary technology. For a long time, waiting lists stretched into years, and recommendations or bribes became routine for getting telephone connections