"Yet India’s Central Monitoring System, or CMS, was not shrouded in secrecy"
Doesn't make collecting all that data ok, but the fact that it's not all cloak and dagger means that people know what the government is doing in their name and they can vote for a change if they disagree.
A lot of the unrest and anger here is because mass surveillance was approved to be carried out in secret and the companies were not even allowed to talk about what type of data they were providing to the government.
They just barely mention it in passing, is ambiguous and can be interpreted however they want it to: http://pib.nic.in/newsite/erelease.aspx?relid=70747, like: "Hey, we are going to monitor every aspect of your life, and keep the records forever, and will be used against you for the interests of various corrupt people; in effect, shutting you up. No big deal :)"
Metadata collection on massive scale is scarier IMO, but that's been in the law and case law for years as well (as 'pen traps' or whatever they call it).
AFAICS the only real 'innovative' parts are a) collecting data about a crime before the government knows the crime has happened, without so much as a specific suspicion of wrongdoing, and b) collecting all data and then grepping for the data they're legally allowed to have.
Even b) above has precedent in law enforcement though; just not at this scale.