If you have recently cleared a job interview, it is likely that someone has conducted a criminal background check on you. There is an architectural design that was created to allow for the constant surveillance of prisoners, unknown to them. It's called the Panopticon. This “ideal prison” consists of a central observation tower from which one guard can observe all the prisoners at once, while the prisoners cannot tell if they are being watched at any given moment. English reformer Jeremy Bentham proposed the concept in the 18th century. Then, the French philosopher Michel Foucault used it as a metaphor to illustrate how power and surveillance function in modern capitalism. In today’s story, my colleague Shelar explores the Panopticon that India’s corporate world has become. There has been a rise in the intensity of employee-background checks by companies in recent times due in part to the controversial and divisive issue of moonlighting that arose last year. Earlier, companies would only conduct a few basic checks and make reference calls during the hiring process. Now, they are increasing their scrutiny to monitor late credit-card payments, criminal records, employees' provident-fund data, tax-deducted-at-source trails, social-media accounts, and they are even hiring private detectives to check for alcoholism. All of this continues even long after hiring and sometimes happens as often as every six months. But to what end? In a panopticon, with extended exposure to the possibility of constant surveillance, the need for external discipline diminishes as individuals internalize the concept and become their own guard. There is a price to pay, though. The intensity of these background checks is now raising concerns about trust and privacy within the employer-employee relationship, we goes deep into the world of background checks and discovers some startling processes: ones that even run the risk of losing trust in employees.
