Decoding the Public interest of Aarogya Setu, contact tracing app for managing the COVID19 pandemic in India

Abstract

At the time of the writing of this paper, India is the country worldwide with more COVI19 new cases, more new deaths and the second just after the United States for total deaths. In 2020 India followed its Asian and Western peers in relying on mobile apps to operate one of the pandemics and epidemics management strategies: contact tracing. Contact tracing apps have been a widespread tool adopted by national governments across the world to aid in the COVID19 pandemic management. As these apps function by creating the trace of individuals who have been in physical contact with a person tested as positive to inform the possibility of spreading, possible misuse or secondary uses have raised concern More than situating the app in two binary points, this paper seeks to respond to the question of how the use of this app delivers public interest in India. Results show that to do this a definition of what Public Interest could mean in India should happen first and further research to assess the app in these terms can take place after.