All Prasar Bharati employees must install Aarogya Setu, the Indian government's contact tracing app, according to an office memo released by the public broadcaster on April 14. All employees, whether in office or in the field, have to mandatorily install the app. Security has been instructed to ensure that all people who enter or exit the Prasar Bharati premises have actually "activated" the app. Note that there is no way to activate/deactivate the app except for uninstalling it. The memo has been issued by Dinesh Mahur, the Additional Director General (Admin) of Prasar Bharati. This memo was released the same day Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged people to download the app in his address to the nation. The Quint had first reported this. All employees have also been "requested" to create awareness about the app and "encourage" its greater adoption and activation. It is not clear what will happen if employees refuse to install or use the app, or how Prasar Bharati will ensure that reporters on the field have downloaded the app. We also don't know if Prasar Bharati was instructed by any other authority to issue such a memo. We have reached out to Mahar for more details. Thus far, the app has 50 million users, as per a tweet by Amitabh Kant, the CEO of NITI Aayog. NITI Aayog was also involved in developing the app along with National Informatics Centre (NIC) and 20 private volunteers from the tech industry. However, digital contact tracing in general, and…
