"It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself--anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face...; was itself a punishable offense. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime..."
1984, George Orwell
It was September last year when both PM and shadow PM issued the first set of UID (Unique Identification) cards to some tribal women in Tembhli, a village in Maharastra, Since then the UPA government’s much vaunted Aadhar scheme, the elixir for the poor has been introduced in Mohali, Hyderabad and is soon to be launched in Jaipur, parts of Bihar and so on. A unique 16 digit identification number for each resident of India will ensure that from your daily ration to your education loan is just the swipe of a card away! So adieu red tape! Adieu corruption! After the NREGA, this scheme is being touted as the UPA’s next big ticket development project. With Nandan ‘Imagining India’ Nilekani (somewhere he said UID number, bank accounts and mobile phones should be the new slogan as bijli, sadak, pani is passé) at the helm, what could go wrong? But then a few niggling questions refuse to disappear.
Firstly there is hardly anything unique about UID. Riding high on
the mass hysteria of the Kargil War, the NDA government had
decided to compulsorily register all citizens into the NPR (National
Population Register) and issue them Multi-purpose National
Identity Cards (MNIC) following security concerns expressed by the
‘Kargil Review Committee’ in 2000. Effectively this would bring all
under State surveillance for national security, boot out insurgents
and immigrants, whatever that is supposed to mean.
The MNIC is hardly any different from the UID numbers. Then
the question is how did a measure that was initiated for security
concerns get a development spin? Now along with the NPR and UID
put Chidambaram’s National Intelligence Grid into perspective. The
Natgrid is meant to integrate 21 databases, including bank account
details, phone calls, income tax, credit card transactions and so on,
with Central and State government agencies. Though it has been
rejected by the Cabinet Committeee on Security, the project
continues to remain on the radar of the government. The 3
complete the triumvirate for profiling citizens. So the question,
when there is already a multiplicity of identity proofs like your
voter id card, ration card, driving licence etc., what’s the
need of a new centralized identity proof, becomes redundant.
One of the three companies that have bagged the contract
(surprisingly in a record 3 months!) to register citizens
under the UID scheme is L-1 Identity Solutions.
What is important here is it provides identification technology to
the US State Department and Homeland Security as well and is
widely known to be connected to the CIA. It is also involved
with the Chinese company Pixel Solutions to provide street
cameras that take mug shots of protestors and then compare
them with the Government database using face recognition
softwares. It was widely used during the Beijing Olympics.
Democracy, anyone? There are many who dismiss these security
concerns as elitist citing square meals as more important than
privacy. But it is a proven point that a dictatorship often comes up
with enviable economic numbers, great infrastructure. Even then
do we want to go back to our Emergency days?
Now a few points on the development cover. That it is a complete
façade is proven when Manmohan Singh says that the UID can be a
vehicle to reduce fiscal deficit. Though it is being said that it is
entirely voluntary, Nilekani’s comments, “Sooner or later you will
have to get your UID number” gives it away. Thus the ones without
this number can be shunted out of any state social security
schemes. Gradually public distribution system (PDS) can be
eliminated giving way to food stamps by which you avail your
quota of grains from groceries using stamps. This despite the
abysmal record of food stamps in other countries including our
neighbour Sri Lanka. This despite a universal scheme working
better than a targeted one in a country with the highest number of
malnourished children.
On the technical front, the UID will be based on finger prints
that will be stored as images. In a country of billion people
how full proof is that when even finger prints change with
years of hard labour? The questions keep mounting without
any cogent response from the Government. At this point all
that can be said is even the cacophony of a rally is music to
ears compared to what we are in for.
To end with the
beginning, I can only resort to Orwell’s dystopian ‘1984’:
“Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimetres
inside your skull.”
