What happens when a government uses schools as a proxy to monitor whether parents and teachers are downloading government’s apps or not? On Sunday, April 5, a parent whose child studies in Delhi's Mother’s International School, shared a link to a Google Form that the school had sent them with MediaNama. The form, which we saw, sought the name of the child, and which of the two parents had downloaded the Aarogya Setu app. It is a COVID-19 contact tracing app developed by the National Informatics Centre that uses Bluetooth and location services to identify who has been in contact with a COVID-19 positive person. When we revisited the link yesterday morning, the Google form had been closed. [caption id="attachment_212829" align="aligncenter" width="1440"] The form by The Mother's International School has now been closed.[/caption] Despite repeated attempts to get in touch with the school, both via landline and email, we have not received a response. However, Hanika Aggarwal, the parents’ representative at the school, confirmed the authenticity of the form and shared the email that the school had sent out on April 3. She said that it wasn’t clear if this was a mandatory form or not, and “lots of parents [including her] didn’t fill it”. [caption id="attachment_212830" align="aligncenter" width="1046"] Email sent to parents of students at The Mother's International School on April 3[/caption] The Mother’s International wasn’t the only one promoting the Aarogya Setu app. Sardar Patel Vidyalaya (SPV), too, had sent communication to parents through its own app on…
