ID, therefore I’m not
Bibek Debroy
Posted online: Sat Jan 12
2008, 22:23 hrs
The prime minister’s upcoming
visit to China in January may introduce his Delhi government officials
to the hukou system, greatly to their taste. For the uninitiated, hukou
is a household registration system that tightly controls internal
migration according to place of residence. A worker, classified as rural
under hukou, cannot normally seek employment in urban areas and
assuming such employment occurs, has to return to rural areas to seek
public services like access to health or education. In Chinese reforms,
the hukou system was relaxed. Indeed, assertions that India needs to
learn from flexibility in Chinese labour markets are overly simplistic.
After some initial ad hoc experimentation, de jure, contractual provisions were introduced in Chinese labour law through a 1994/1995 National Labour Law and rural hukou allowed to work in urban China. But beyond reforms in SOEs (state-owned enterprises) it is doubtful whether this flexibility really drove China’s labour cost advantages. Instead, there were de facto deviations from worker rights codified even in the 1994/1995 Law, especially for rural hukou workers, whose numbers are estimated to go up to even 150 million.
That is, more than hire and fire provisions (the counterpart of Chapter V-B of our Industrial Disputes Act), it was deviations from minimum wage and other social security norms, absence of unionisation, lack of inspection and lower procedural and compliance costs in general that drove growth. It is a separate matter that China has now (from January 1 2008) tightened up labour laws to grant workers more rights.
Coincidentally, the PM returns from China on January 15, the day Delhi’s LG (lieutenant governor) originally proposed to introduce the mandatory requirement of carrying ID cards.
We love this idea of controlling ‘suspected persons’ and their movements, enshrined partly in the hukou concept. Read Sections 109 and 110 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC), under which cops indiscriminately pick up ‘suspicious’ people, invariably, but not always, the poor. Read Surjit Singh Barnala’s Story of an Escape: Barnala, then CM of Punjab, vanished incognito for a few days and was picked up under these sections in UP. The history of such legislation goes back to English workhouses, where able-bodied vagrants were picked up and forced to work. And we carry these legacies not just in CrPC, but also in statutes like Delhi Police Act. Had one gone ahead with the hare-brained idea, these statutes, and perhaps the Foreigners Act, would have been used.
There is an extremely valid argument for introducing a multi-purpose identity card throughout India. For instance, Kelkar Task Forces on tax reforms and fiscal consolidation also recommended this. Other than security, this enables targeted delivery of public services, incorporation of subsidies and prevention of leakage. Technology also permits use of biometry.
How can social security for the unorganised sector be delivered in the absence of identity cards? In the absence of an India-based ID, we fall back on PAN cards, passports, driving licenses, ration cards, voter cards and in Delhi’s original proposal, IDs issued by recognised companies. The point is a simple one. How many of the poor have access to such IDs? PAN cards aren’t IDs for everyone and never will be. For argument’s sake, what happens if Delhi cops confront someone from Sikkim? Those who live in Sikkim don’t pay income tax. Ipso facto, they can’t be issued PAN cards and for Delhi police purposes, may well be treated as foreigners. Why haven’t we gone ahead with the idea of all-India IDs? And when we do, we should make access to IDs sufficiently easy for the poor and reduce multiplicity. How easy is it for the poor, who don’t typically have access to gazetted officers, to obtain ration cards or open bank accounts? Why can’t issue of IDs be bundled with other schemes like say NREGA (National Rural Employment Guarantee Act), so that the poor are not exposed to monopolies in issuing, with all the attendant problems of bribery and harassment? Has there been an attempt to incentivise demand for IDs, so that these costs are less than perceived benefits?
Delhi isn’t to India what Texas is to the US. Imposing mandatory IDs in Delhi, when we don’t have a pan-India one, has doubtful legal validity. Why did this become an issue in the first place? One isn’t convinced that security was the concern. Recently, a newsmagazine reported how it had driving licenses issued in the names of the president, PM and a former president from UP. These were genuine licenses, not counterfeit ones, with respective claimants never having stepped inside the premises of the concerned RTO. Delhi isn’t remarkably different. Delhi’s RTO isn’t much better, which is perhaps the reason why DDA no longer accepts driving licenses issued in Delhi as valid proof of identity. A TV channel obtained a ration card, PAN card, voter ID, birth certificate and passport for Anand Gupta in 45 days and Anand Gupta was a completely fictitious person, existing on paper. The driving license cost Rs 2,500, ration card Rs 800, income certificate Rs 1,700, birth certificate Rs 3,000, PAN card Rs 79 and tenancy proof (for residence in Delhi) Rs 14,000. For roughly Rs 35,000, one had the whole works of establishing identity. Those who wish to commit breaches of security are rarely impoverished and have the means to establish identity, since the system is rife with corruption. And those who are poor don’t possess legal identity at all.
That’s the reason security was a red herring. At the core of the hair-brained scheme was the hukou concept of keeping out the poor and migrants, since they were the ones who wouldn’t have legal identity. Think of the numbers involved. Out of Delhi’s population of 15 million (all numbers depend on the year and are often estimates), 5 million are migrants and only 6 million have some valid ID. Eighty per cent of Delhi’s income now comes from the tertiary sector and around 80 per cent of this is from the informal economy, where no form of legal identity exists. Sixty-seven per cent of Delhi’s employment originates in the informal economy. The answer to solving Delhi’s (and India’s) urban planning and other policy problems isn’t in keeping the informal economy out, or in legitimising it overnight through the stroke of a legislator’s pen. The legislator’s pen only increases scope for bribery and harassment. Instead, one reduces costs for formalisation and increases incentives. Mandatory IDs would have served no purpose.
The writer is a noted economist bdebroy@gmail.com
After some initial ad hoc experimentation, de jure, contractual provisions were introduced in Chinese labour law through a 1994/1995 National Labour Law and rural hukou allowed to work in urban China. But beyond reforms in SOEs (state-owned enterprises) it is doubtful whether this flexibility really drove China’s labour cost advantages. Instead, there were de facto deviations from worker rights codified even in the 1994/1995 Law, especially for rural hukou workers, whose numbers are estimated to go up to even 150 million.
That is, more than hire and fire provisions (the counterpart of Chapter V-B of our Industrial Disputes Act), it was deviations from minimum wage and other social security norms, absence of unionisation, lack of inspection and lower procedural and compliance costs in general that drove growth. It is a separate matter that China has now (from January 1 2008) tightened up labour laws to grant workers more rights.
Coincidentally, the PM returns from China on January 15, the day Delhi’s LG (lieutenant governor) originally proposed to introduce the mandatory requirement of carrying ID cards.
We love this idea of controlling ‘suspected persons’ and their movements, enshrined partly in the hukou concept. Read Sections 109 and 110 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC), under which cops indiscriminately pick up ‘suspicious’ people, invariably, but not always, the poor. Read Surjit Singh Barnala’s Story of an Escape: Barnala, then CM of Punjab, vanished incognito for a few days and was picked up under these sections in UP. The history of such legislation goes back to English workhouses, where able-bodied vagrants were picked up and forced to work. And we carry these legacies not just in CrPC, but also in statutes like Delhi Police Act. Had one gone ahead with the hare-brained idea, these statutes, and perhaps the Foreigners Act, would have been used.
There is an extremely valid argument for introducing a multi-purpose identity card throughout India. For instance, Kelkar Task Forces on tax reforms and fiscal consolidation also recommended this. Other than security, this enables targeted delivery of public services, incorporation of subsidies and prevention of leakage. Technology also permits use of biometry.
How can social security for the unorganised sector be delivered in the absence of identity cards? In the absence of an India-based ID, we fall back on PAN cards, passports, driving licenses, ration cards, voter cards and in Delhi’s original proposal, IDs issued by recognised companies. The point is a simple one. How many of the poor have access to such IDs? PAN cards aren’t IDs for everyone and never will be. For argument’s sake, what happens if Delhi cops confront someone from Sikkim? Those who live in Sikkim don’t pay income tax. Ipso facto, they can’t be issued PAN cards and for Delhi police purposes, may well be treated as foreigners. Why haven’t we gone ahead with the idea of all-India IDs? And when we do, we should make access to IDs sufficiently easy for the poor and reduce multiplicity. How easy is it for the poor, who don’t typically have access to gazetted officers, to obtain ration cards or open bank accounts? Why can’t issue of IDs be bundled with other schemes like say NREGA (National Rural Employment Guarantee Act), so that the poor are not exposed to monopolies in issuing, with all the attendant problems of bribery and harassment? Has there been an attempt to incentivise demand for IDs, so that these costs are less than perceived benefits?
Delhi isn’t to India what Texas is to the US. Imposing mandatory IDs in Delhi, when we don’t have a pan-India one, has doubtful legal validity. Why did this become an issue in the first place? One isn’t convinced that security was the concern. Recently, a newsmagazine reported how it had driving licenses issued in the names of the president, PM and a former president from UP. These were genuine licenses, not counterfeit ones, with respective claimants never having stepped inside the premises of the concerned RTO. Delhi isn’t remarkably different. Delhi’s RTO isn’t much better, which is perhaps the reason why DDA no longer accepts driving licenses issued in Delhi as valid proof of identity. A TV channel obtained a ration card, PAN card, voter ID, birth certificate and passport for Anand Gupta in 45 days and Anand Gupta was a completely fictitious person, existing on paper. The driving license cost Rs 2,500, ration card Rs 800, income certificate Rs 1,700, birth certificate Rs 3,000, PAN card Rs 79 and tenancy proof (for residence in Delhi) Rs 14,000. For roughly Rs 35,000, one had the whole works of establishing identity. Those who wish to commit breaches of security are rarely impoverished and have the means to establish identity, since the system is rife with corruption. And those who are poor don’t possess legal identity at all.
That’s the reason security was a red herring. At the core of the hair-brained scheme was the hukou concept of keeping out the poor and migrants, since they were the ones who wouldn’t have legal identity. Think of the numbers involved. Out of Delhi’s population of 15 million (all numbers depend on the year and are often estimates), 5 million are migrants and only 6 million have some valid ID. Eighty per cent of Delhi’s income now comes from the tertiary sector and around 80 per cent of this is from the informal economy, where no form of legal identity exists. Sixty-seven per cent of Delhi’s employment originates in the informal economy. The answer to solving Delhi’s (and India’s) urban planning and other policy problems isn’t in keeping the informal economy out, or in legitimising it overnight through the stroke of a legislator’s pen. The legislator’s pen only increases scope for bribery and harassment. Instead, one reduces costs for formalisation and increases incentives. Mandatory IDs would have served no purpose.
The writer is a noted economist bdebroy@gmail.com
