People first, safety always

This article is authored by Ranjana Kumari, director, Centre for Social Research.

My grandmother once told me how people in her village reacted when they saw a railway engine for the first time. A huge black machine, roaring and throwing smoke into the air, came rushing past at a speed no bullock cart, bicycle or other familiar form of transport could match. The sight did not inspire excitement. It caused fear.

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Villagers ran to the temple, offered flowers and prayed for protection. They feared that cattle would be crushed, people would be killed and village life would be destroyed by this frightening machine. In the story she told, some even began pulling at the railway tracks, believing that removing them would keep the community safe.

Today, that fear appears almost unimaginable. Railways became the arteries of modern India, carrying people, food, raw materials and manufactured goods across a vast country. They connected villages with cities, expanded markets, enabled mobility and transformed communication and trade. We now discuss high-speed trains and freight corridors with pride. The technology that once appeared to threaten society became indispensable to its progress.

The arrival of computers produced a similar anxiety. When Prime Minister (PM) Rajiv Gandhi championed computerisation, many feared that machines would take away jobs and leave little for human beings to do. Decades later, computers have not eliminated human endeavour. They have reshaped it, creating new professions, expanding access to knowledge and becoming integral to governance, education, health, commerce and everyday life.

This reactive cycle is no longer sustainable. We cannot future-proof every technology. We can, however, build more future-proof approaches to protecting people.

Trust and safety are still too often organised around the technology of the moment. If policies are tied too closely to a particular platform, product or innovation, they become obsolete almost as soon as they are adopted. A durable approach must instead ask what technology does to human dignity, equality, autonomy and wellbeing. Who benefits? Who bears the risk? Whose voice shapes its design? Who can seek help when something goes wrong?

These questions are especially urgent for women, children, persons with disabilities, older people and marginalised communities. Technology enters societies already marked by unequal power. It can reproduce those inequalities at speed and scale: an abusive image crosses borders in seconds, an algorithm amplifies misogyny to millions, and an automated decision may deny an opportunity without explanation or appeal. The harms may be technologically new, but the power relations beneath them are familiar.

A people-first approach, therefore, cannot be reduced to content moderation or compliance. Safety is a condition of meaningful participation. Users should not have to choose between access and abuse, visibility and harassment, or innovation and privacy. For industry, safety by design must be an institutional obligation. Foreseeable risks should be assessed before deployment, products tested across gender, age, language, disability and geography, and reporting and appeal mechanisms made accessible to ordinary people.

For governments, the challenge is to regulate with clarity while preserving rights and innovation. Laws must be technologically informed but not technologically captive. Principles such as human dignity, non-discrimination, privacy, transparency, proportionality, accountability and access to remedy can endure even as technologies change. Regulation should define responsibilities and outcomes, require meaningful risk assessment and enable independent scrutiny. At the same time, it must guard against safety becoming a convenient justification for censorship, surveillance or excessive State control.

Human rights and safety should never be placed in opposition. Rights-respecting systems are safer systems.

Civil society often encounters harm before institutions recognise it. Women’s organisations, child-rights groups, disability advocates and survivor networks understand how policies work—or fail—outside a boardroom. Yet they are too often invited only after decisions have been made. Consultation is not shared problem-solving. We need sustained structures through which governments, companies, researchers, civil society and affected communities can identify risks, test interventions and evaluate outcomes together.

Independent research is equally essential. Safety cannot be measured only by the amount of content removed or the speed of automated detection. We must ask whether abuse has decreased, victims received meaningful support, vulnerable groups can participate freely and systems of accountability have become easier to access.

This also requires us to broaden the geography of technology governance. Too many global policies are designed around assumptions that do not reflect how people use technology in much of the world. In India, for example, devices may be shared among family members; digital literacy varies widely; content circulates across many languages; and online risks are deeply connected to caste, class, gender, religion and location. A safety feature designed for an individual device, an English-speaking user or a digitally confident parent may fail entirely in this context.

Local knowledge is, therefore, not an optional addition to global policy. It is essential evidence.

A future-ready trust and safety system should rest on a few enduring commitments: Anticipate foreseeable risks; place human rights and wellbeing at the centre of design; involve affected communities early and continuously; establish clear institutional responsibility; provide accessible remedy; enable independent research and oversight; and revise interventions as evidence evolves.

None of this means slowing innovation to a halt. It means recognising that innovation without trust is fragile. Products that people fear, institutions they cannot question and systems that do not respond to harm will eventually lose legitimacy. Safety is not a barrier to progress. It is part of the infrastructure that makes progress socially sustainable.

This is the premise behind the Trust and Safety India Festival 2026 and its theme, “People First. Safety Always.” The phrase is not a slogan for one event or one technological moment. It is a governance principle. It asks every institution involved in the digital ecosystem to begin with the person whose life will be shaped by its decisions.

We do not know precisely what technology will come next. But we already know what must remain constant: Dignity, agency, equality, accountability and the right to participate without fear. Technologies will continue to change. Our commitment to protecting people must not.

(The views expressed are personal)

This article is authored by Ranjana Kumari, director, Centre for Social Research.