India election: Fighting for votes in ‘the world’s biggest data mine’

They are the apps every Indian has on their phone – the one where you order your taxi, your food, find your next date. Innocuous, everyday, unremarkable to billions around the world.

In India, these are also potentially the apps telling politicians everything they could possibly want to know about you – whether you want them to or not.

A person’s religion, mother tongue, “the way you draft a message to your friend on social media” have all become points of data politicians are keen to get their hands on, according to political strategist Rutwik Joshi, who is working with at least a dozen unnamed lawmakers on their re-election campaigns this election.

And India’s combination of high smartphone take-up and lax regulations allowing private companies to sell data mean that most political parties have gathered “the data to do everything” – even down to knowing “what you are eating today”, he claims.

The question is, why do they care?

Put simply, says Mr Joshi, this level of information can predict the vote – “and these predictions usually never go wrong”.

But perhaps the bigger question is: why should you care?

Microtargeting – described by Privacy International as the use of personal data “to target you with information and adverts to an unprecedented degree of personalisation” – is not new when it comes to elections.

But it was in the wake of former US President Donald Trump’s 2016 win that it really hit the headlines.

Back then, political consultancy Cambridge Analytica was credited with helping him to victory using data sold by Facebook to profile people and send them pro-Trump content. The firm denied these allegations but suspended its CEO, Alexander Nix.

In 2022, Meta agreed to pay $725m (£600m) to settle a class action lawsuit over a data breach linked to Cambridge Analytica.