11/27/2025
The Punjab government has just approved a 124 million rupee project to monitor what people say online, what they watch, what they post and what they think. They are calling it a “media monitoring system”, under the Home Department that will continuously monitor social media, digital news outlets and mainstream media for so-called “anti-state,” “fake,” or “provocative” content, but anyone with a functioning brain can see this for what it is.
This is the oldest trick in the authoritarian playbook. When a government becomes insecure, it starts watching its own citizens instead of listening to them. This is not public safety. This is political fear dressed up as “digital management”.
When you study history even a little, this kind of move rings loud alarms. This is what N**i Germany did when it built a full apparatus to police thought. This is what the Stasi did in East Germany when it kept files on ordinary people for everyday conversations. This is what Stalin’s Soviet Union perfected, the idea that the state must know everything a citizen thinks. This is what North Korea still does today.
Now Punjab wants to join that list, spying on people because the government is terrified of free speech. When you monitor the people instead of serving them, you are not a democracy anymore. You are something else entirely.
Let us stop pretending this is about “misinformation”. If the government cared about misinformation, it would stop spreading it through state TV.
This project has one purpose. Silence critics. Silence PTI supporters. Silence anyone who questions the regime. Punjab is spending taxpayers’ money not to improve hospitals or schools, but to create an online surveillance army to shape narratives and punish dissent. This is not governance. This is paranoia. This is the behavior of a government that knows it no longer has the people on its side.