Satyaki
Roy
Roy
The
state should know its citizens, power should know its subjects and the nation
should secure and ensure the rule of the sovereign. An illegal immigrant, not a bonafide citizen
who crosses border to the heaven for two square meals or a duplicate citizen
unscrupulous and immoral who stands in the queue for a second help using fake
identities seem to be the greatest
threat to our fiscal and national security. So we need unique identification
number which identifies and codifies every Indian citizen by a twelve-digit
number loaded with unique finger prints and iris scan. There is nowhere to run
away or hide! The government found this so important that it passed the Aadhaar
(Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services)
Bill, 2016 as money bill that requires a majority in the lower house only and
hence given the current situation could avoid the potential debates and schism
in the upper house. Many commentators see this as an architecture of mass surveillance
and a compromise to the right to privacy.
state should know its citizens, power should know its subjects and the nation
should secure and ensure the rule of the sovereign. An illegal immigrant, not a bonafide citizen
who crosses border to the heaven for two square meals or a duplicate citizen
unscrupulous and immoral who stands in the queue for a second help using fake
identities seem to be the greatest
threat to our fiscal and national security. So we need unique identification
number which identifies and codifies every Indian citizen by a twelve-digit
number loaded with unique finger prints and iris scan. There is nowhere to run
away or hide! The government found this so important that it passed the Aadhaar
(Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services)
Bill, 2016 as money bill that requires a majority in the lower house only and
hence given the current situation could avoid the potential debates and schism
in the upper house. Many commentators see this as an architecture of mass surveillance
and a compromise to the right to privacy.
It is the realization of Nandan
Nilkarni’s dream of making UID ‘ubiquitous’ a compulsory authentication that
can be called upon whenever desired by the government. So starting from
attendance in your workplace recorded by biometric authentication linked to
Aadhar, booking train or flight tickets, online retail purchase, buying a SIM
card, bank transactions, board exams,
marriages to n-number of such socio-economic and cultural transactions would be
recorded in the data vault of the national informatics system. And the
government can easily access those data which records your movements,
transactions, engagements whenever they seem to be needed for the great cause of national security. The situation is
something like this. I quote Sunil Abraham[i], executive director of a Bengaluru based
research organisation ‘Maintaining a central database is akin to getting the
keys of every house in Delhi
and storing them at a central police station. The chances of getting a central
database compromised depend on the nature of information stored in it. For the
sake of security one can’t create a honey pot to be attacked by many.’
Nilkarni’s dream of making UID ‘ubiquitous’ a compulsory authentication that
can be called upon whenever desired by the government. So starting from
attendance in your workplace recorded by biometric authentication linked to
Aadhar, booking train or flight tickets, online retail purchase, buying a SIM
card, bank transactions, board exams,
marriages to n-number of such socio-economic and cultural transactions would be
recorded in the data vault of the national informatics system. And the
government can easily access those data which records your movements,
transactions, engagements whenever they seem to be needed for the great cause of national security. The situation is
something like this. I quote Sunil Abraham[i], executive director of a Bengaluru based
research organisation ‘Maintaining a central database is akin to getting the
keys of every house in Delhi
and storing them at a central police station. The chances of getting a central
database compromised depend on the nature of information stored in it. For the
sake of security one can’t create a honey pot to be attacked by many.’
Therefore
you are under surveillance, your
transactions are detectable, your iris scan allows you to get detected by the
police using sophisticated camera. So if you are in a mob of protest you can be
identified amidst thousands! only thing required to proceed with this
infringement of privacy is that the authority should at least find something
wrong in you which could be a cause of concern for ‘national security’. It has
also been argued by many grassroot social activists, researchers including
eminent scholar Jean Dreze[ii]
that compulsory authentication of Aadhar would exclude many bonafide claimants
from the welfare benefits simply because such technologies do not work in rural
areas because of weak connectivity. The other problem is those who do regular
manual work their finger prints very often do not match with the recorded data
and there are ample evidences that show people are unnecessarily harassed and
excluded because of this malfunctioning of related tools. Experts also say that
a transparent and visible auditing of transactions could have served better to plug
the leakages in public distribution and other welfare schemes rather than
linking individuals to compulsory authentication. And who doesn’t know in this
country why and how real leakages happen? There are loads of evidence including
recent gala theft by Maliya and also what
the Panama
papers suggest. Big ticket leakages in this country actually do not take place
in the PDS shops distributing wheat and other grains to the poor but it is
siphoning of wealth amassed out of public money done by the elite. It happens
and continues to happen not because of any problem of identification rather
they are celebrities! Therefore the purpose of compulsory authentication is not
meant to handle leakage as it appears to be in the bill; neither there is
adequate evidence that such technological solutions would be effective in a
country where large parts do not have adequate network reach. It is a much
deeper project that matches with a particular template of the architecture of
power in capitalism.
you are under surveillance, your
transactions are detectable, your iris scan allows you to get detected by the
police using sophisticated camera. So if you are in a mob of protest you can be
identified amidst thousands! only thing required to proceed with this
infringement of privacy is that the authority should at least find something
wrong in you which could be a cause of concern for ‘national security’. It has
also been argued by many grassroot social activists, researchers including
eminent scholar Jean Dreze[ii]
that compulsory authentication of Aadhar would exclude many bonafide claimants
from the welfare benefits simply because such technologies do not work in rural
areas because of weak connectivity. The other problem is those who do regular
manual work their finger prints very often do not match with the recorded data
and there are ample evidences that show people are unnecessarily harassed and
excluded because of this malfunctioning of related tools. Experts also say that
a transparent and visible auditing of transactions could have served better to plug
the leakages in public distribution and other welfare schemes rather than
linking individuals to compulsory authentication. And who doesn’t know in this
country why and how real leakages happen? There are loads of evidence including
recent gala theft by Maliya and also what
the Panama
papers suggest. Big ticket leakages in this country actually do not take place
in the PDS shops distributing wheat and other grains to the poor but it is
siphoning of wealth amassed out of public money done by the elite. It happens
and continues to happen not because of any problem of identification rather
they are celebrities! Therefore the purpose of compulsory authentication is not
meant to handle leakage as it appears to be in the bill; neither there is
adequate evidence that such technological solutions would be effective in a
country where large parts do not have adequate network reach. It is a much
deeper project that matches with a particular template of the architecture of
power in capitalism.
Jeremy
Bentham proposed an infamous project, panopticon,
a design of discipline and control which Foucault picked up as a genealogical
marker. Foucault describes it “At the periphery, an annular building; at
the centre, a tower; this tower is pierced with wide windows that open onto the
inner side of the ring; the peripheric building is divided into cells, each of
which extends the whole width of the building; they have two windows, one on
the inside, corresponding to the windows of the tower; the other, on the
outside, allows the light to cross the cell from one end to the other. All that
is needed, then, is to place a supervisor in a central tower and to shut up in
each cell a madman, a patient, a condemned man, a worker or a schoolboy. By the
effect of backlighting, one can observe from the tower, standing out precisely
against the light the small captive shadows in the cells of the periphery. They
are like so many cages, so many small theatres, in which each actor is alone,
perfectly individualized and constantly visible (Foucault, 1977)[iii].
This is the architecture of power in the modern world which Foucault describes
as the socio-material template for institutional power. The peculiarity of this
template is that power should be visible and unverifiable at the same time. You
are always visible by the authority but not necessarily power at the tall tower
is monitoring you all the time; you are under the radar but you cannot verify
whether you are watched upon or not. Panopticon is a template that dissociates
‘seeing’ and ‘being seen’. This creates a sense of helplessness and horror to
the individual vis-a-vis institutional
power. Aadhar, a twelve digit number makes one accessible by the state, makes
the state omnipresent. So the individual is conditioned because one would always have this scary feeling that I can
always be watched by someone far more powerful. This is a particular type of
intervention on the part of the state, an intervention that allows the
individual to be examined by power at every moment whenever required.
Bentham proposed an infamous project, panopticon,
a design of discipline and control which Foucault picked up as a genealogical
marker. Foucault describes it “At the periphery, an annular building; at
the centre, a tower; this tower is pierced with wide windows that open onto the
inner side of the ring; the peripheric building is divided into cells, each of
which extends the whole width of the building; they have two windows, one on
the inside, corresponding to the windows of the tower; the other, on the
outside, allows the light to cross the cell from one end to the other. All that
is needed, then, is to place a supervisor in a central tower and to shut up in
each cell a madman, a patient, a condemned man, a worker or a schoolboy. By the
effect of backlighting, one can observe from the tower, standing out precisely
against the light the small captive shadows in the cells of the periphery. They
are like so many cages, so many small theatres, in which each actor is alone,
perfectly individualized and constantly visible (Foucault, 1977)[iii].
This is the architecture of power in the modern world which Foucault describes
as the socio-material template for institutional power. The peculiarity of this
template is that power should be visible and unverifiable at the same time. You
are always visible by the authority but not necessarily power at the tall tower
is monitoring you all the time; you are under the radar but you cannot verify
whether you are watched upon or not. Panopticon is a template that dissociates
‘seeing’ and ‘being seen’. This creates a sense of helplessness and horror to
the individual vis-a-vis institutional
power. Aadhar, a twelve digit number makes one accessible by the state, makes
the state omnipresent. So the individual is conditioned because one would always have this scary feeling that I can
always be watched by someone far more powerful. This is a particular type of
intervention on the part of the state, an intervention that allows the
individual to be examined by power at every moment whenever required.
But
what is exactly meant by managing and governing. It is not policing in its
limited sense of the term but a complex triad of objectification,
scientification and subjectification. In order to manage, power has to
understand the population and control the body. Just like in order to
understand the physiology of a frog the frog has to be transformed into a
dissected body and then it is labelled, categorized, the parts of the body gets
objectified, it shows a pattern, a resemblance as also differences with the
existing body of knowledge. So the frog has to be objectified, transformed,
analysed by means of scientific categories and then only one understands the
physiology of a frog and hence make it amenable to intervene. Similarly power first
of all has to individuate the individual. The citizen becomes a number which is
far more stable than a photograph. And the number is tractable along with the
movement of the individual, just like a packet of sugar is identified and
monitored in a super market by the bar codes attached to it. Thus the
government handles a huge data base that allows to categorise, analyse and
identify patterns culled out from individual data. And by that process
ascertains a process of normalisation that defines the ‘norm’ and allows to
identify the ‘abnormal’. By this process new subjectivities are also created.
People are identified in groups, various categories, labelled according to
certain patterns. And such patterns allow the government to understand the
populace and control them. The intervention on the part of the government in that
way might be more productive being far more specific and scientific and at the
same time it gives rise to new subjectivities that are more amenable to
control.
what is exactly meant by managing and governing. It is not policing in its
limited sense of the term but a complex triad of objectification,
scientification and subjectification. In order to manage, power has to
understand the population and control the body. Just like in order to
understand the physiology of a frog the frog has to be transformed into a
dissected body and then it is labelled, categorized, the parts of the body gets
objectified, it shows a pattern, a resemblance as also differences with the
existing body of knowledge. So the frog has to be objectified, transformed,
analysed by means of scientific categories and then only one understands the
physiology of a frog and hence make it amenable to intervene. Similarly power first
of all has to individuate the individual. The citizen becomes a number which is
far more stable than a photograph. And the number is tractable along with the
movement of the individual, just like a packet of sugar is identified and
monitored in a super market by the bar codes attached to it. Thus the
government handles a huge data base that allows to categorise, analyse and
identify patterns culled out from individual data. And by that process
ascertains a process of normalisation that defines the ‘norm’ and allows to
identify the ‘abnormal’. By this process new subjectivities are also created.
People are identified in groups, various categories, labelled according to
certain patterns. And such patterns allow the government to understand the
populace and control them. The intervention on the part of the government in that
way might be more productive being far more specific and scientific and at the
same time it gives rise to new subjectivities that are more amenable to
control.
Aadhar
serves the purpose of both controlling the population and the body. Power needs
to understand its subjects and create ‘docile body that may be subjected, used,
transformed and improved’. It is about understanding the population, categorize
and control and the control works in a subtle manner. Power works in its
extremities, in its capillary form, the state appears to be invisible in this
articulation of power. Rather new subjects created through categories and
identities emerge as new language of control. It relies on a mechanism an
apparatus of digital surveillance that allows the state to exert indirect
control over the individual. The ‘discipline’
is internalized in this case. The person who is constricted by such
surveillance who is reduced to a number or a code and can only engage with the
state by means of some password or the code being read through, the
helplessness of exclusion in those situations is completely individualized. So
if your fingerprints are not identified by a biometric apparatus it would appear to be legitimate of being
deprived from the welfare schemes that are subject to compulsory
identification. The state is faceless and the citizen every time has to pass
through this test of legitimacy. Aadhar familiarizes the test, the test gets
normalized. The discipline and control in such situations therefore are exerted
by an environment where those who are controlled in the process themselves
become the carriers of power.
serves the purpose of both controlling the population and the body. Power needs
to understand its subjects and create ‘docile body that may be subjected, used,
transformed and improved’. It is about understanding the population, categorize
and control and the control works in a subtle manner. Power works in its
extremities, in its capillary form, the state appears to be invisible in this
articulation of power. Rather new subjects created through categories and
identities emerge as new language of control. It relies on a mechanism an
apparatus of digital surveillance that allows the state to exert indirect
control over the individual. The ‘discipline’
is internalized in this case. The person who is constricted by such
surveillance who is reduced to a number or a code and can only engage with the
state by means of some password or the code being read through, the
helplessness of exclusion in those situations is completely individualized. So
if your fingerprints are not identified by a biometric apparatus it would appear to be legitimate of being
deprived from the welfare schemes that are subject to compulsory
identification. The state is faceless and the citizen every time has to pass
through this test of legitimacy. Aadhar familiarizes the test, the test gets
normalized. The discipline and control in such situations therefore are exerted
by an environment where those who are controlled in the process themselves
become the carriers of power.
Aadhar
conforms to the architecture of power.
conforms to the architecture of power.
[i] Aadhaar is Actually
Surveillance Tech, Business Standard,
March 12, 2016
Surveillance Tech, Business Standard,
March 12, 2016
[ii] The Aadhar Coup, The Hindu, May 15, 2016.
[iii] Foucault, M. (1977) Discipline
and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New
York, Pantheon.
and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New
York, Pantheon.
Satyaki Roy is with the Institute for Studies in Industrial Development, New Delhi.
Is this inevitable or can something be done to stop it – minimise the Adharshila connectivity – exclude finger printing and iris scan, connect only some things?