In the Wake of Aadhaar: The Digital Ecosystem of Governance in India

massive move towards the digitisation of government services launched by the Government of India’s National e-Governance Plan of 2006. Between 2010–12, CSCS conducted field visits in seven Indian states, and now has published in web-downloadable form numerous video-conversations with diverse stakeholders: including people being enrolled into the Aadhaar programme, district-level Panchayat and other officials, State government bureaucrats, private enrollment representatives, representatives of various governmental services, operators and other members of this digital workforce. (for full public archives see: http://cscs.pad.ma). Emerging from these visits, CSCS conducted several public consultations, focusing on some key issues shortlisted for detailed inquiry: those of migrants, both domestic and across international borders, homelessness in cities and the financially excluded . Each of these areas was discussed in considerable detail at major public consultations held in Delhi, Kolkata, Hyderabad, and Bangalore. CSCS also has an extensive text archives of material on the field as a whole, available on http://eprints.cscsarchives.org. This book comprises an anthology of key interviews, field reports and presentations at different consultations conducted from this project to provide the first comprehensive 360-degree perspective on the impact of India’s e-governance initiatives as a whole.

IN THE WAKE OF AADHAAR

in 2010, with the idea of providing a possible framework for a debate on the

The Digital Ecosystem of Governance in India

The Centre for the Study of Culture & Society’s Identity Project was launched

IN THE WAKE OF

AADHAAR

The Digital Ecosystem of Governance in India

Ashish Rajadhyaksha

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IN THE WAKE OF AADHAAR The DigiTal ecosysTem of governance in inDia editor: Ashish Rajadhyaksha

centre for the study of culture & society no. 302 Pramoda 70/ 1, surveyor street Basavanagudi Bangalore - 560 004

Project supported by The ford foundation, new Delhi

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Copyright © Centre for the Study of Culture & Society, Bangalore Individual essays © authors. May, 2013 Principal Investigator: Ashish Rajadhyaksha Research Coordination/Principal Research: Sruti Chaganti, Nafis Hasan Research: S. Ananth, Sahana Basavapatna, Swagato Sarkar, Arun Menon, Malavika Jayaram, Akshaya Kumar Research support: Nandini Chami, Elonnai Hickok, R.V.S.S. Ramakrishna, Bharavi Editorial Support: Arun Menon Partner institutions: Centre for Internet & Society (Bangalore), Mahanagar Calcutta Research Group (Kolkata), National Institute of Advanced Studies (Bangalore) Video assistance: Pedestrian Pictures (Bangalore), Raghu Prasad (Bangalore), Gautam Sonti (Bangalore), Subhasri Krishnan (Delhi), Govind Menon (Bangalore) OptionWebsite: 1 (Ideal Case) Sumandro Chatterjee/Ajantriks Option 2 Netbramha, Video transcriptions: Lekha Naidu (Bangalore), Raghavendra Tenkayala (Bangalore)

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS CSCS gratefully acknowledges the assistance of the Unique Identification Authority of India in Delhi, and their offices in Chandigarh, Guwahati, Kolkata, Bangalore, and Hyderabad for providing and facilitating access to enrollment centres and conversations with various stakeholders of the mammoth Aadhaar project across the country. We thank the State Government officials of the various Departments of Andhra Pradesh, Delhi, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, and Tripura, and District and Panchayat officials of the Ratu Block, Ranchi (Jharkhand), the Ranga Reddy and Kurnool districts (Andhra Pradesh), the West Tripura district, Delhi South-West and East, Mandi, Jogindernagar, Dharamshala, Una and Amb (Himachal Pradesh), and Palakkad (Kerala). The project also thanks representatives of COMAT, Smart Chips, I-Grandee, Wipro, Strategic Outsourcing Services and IL&FS. We also thank the representatives of the State Bank of India, Hyderabad and Kurnool and the Central Bank of India, Chandigarh. All of the above support came ex officio and therefore no individual names are mentioned. Very special individual thanks go to Dr. Amod Kumar and Ms. Smriti Vaid (Mother NGO, St. Stephen’s Hospital, Delhi), Ravinder Kumar (Humana People to People India), Mr. Fazle Haq and Mr. Nitesh Kumar (Society for Promotion of Youth and Masses), Mr. Reddy Subramanyam, IAS, Principal Secretary, Department of Rural Development, Government of AP, Mr. B. Sambamurthy, Director, Institute for Development and Research in Banking Technology, Hyderabad, Mr. Shamsher Singh Rawat, IAS, Special Secretary to the Chief Minister, Hyderabad, Mr. Naga Sridhar, Correspondent, Business Line, Hyderabad, Mr. Brij Raj, RBI Staff College, Chennai. A special thanks to Mr. S. Kuberan (SERP, Hyderabad) and Mr. G. Anand, Mr. Siva Kumar and Mr. P. Vasu (Chittoor District) and Mr. Sasidharan Nair (ITI, Palakkad). We are especially and deeply grateful to Sunil Abraham and Nishant Shah (CIS), Carol Upadhyay (NIAS), Ranabir Samaddar and Atig Ghosh (MCRG), Ravi Sundaram (CSDS) and Lawrence Liang (Alternative Law Forum) and to Devi Pabreja, Shankar Maruwada, Reetika Khera, and Deepika Mogilishetty. The project could not have happened without their individual support. CSCS could not have done this project without the support of the team at http://pad.ma, and we thank Shaina Anand, Ashok Sukumaran, and others at the Mumbai office of pad.ma, and Jan Gerber and Sebastian Lütgert, without whom this was impossible. In the Wake of Aadhaar


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And finally, we use this opportunity to thank Ravina Aggarwal, Program Officer for Advancing Media Rights and Access, The Ford Foundation, New Delhi, without whose enthusiastic participation and support this project would not have even been conceived, let alone realised. As ever, the project team thanks all the faculty of CSCS, especially S.V. Srinivas, Kakarala Sitharamam and Tejaswini Niranjana. We also thank M.P. Nagaraj, N.S. Pradeep, and other staff. The project of the Nemmadi kendras was produced under the SIRCA-IDRC and the authors are grateful to B. Manjunath for assistance with fieldwork, Servelots for hosting the research and SIRCA for supporting the research. The project on financial inclusion benefitted from a parallel project conducted by S. Ananth titled An In-Depth Study of Issues and Challenges in the Microfinance Sector in Andhra Pradesh (2011), submitted to the Society For The Elimination of Rural Poverty (SERP), Hyderabad. The presentations appearing in this book are part of a larger set of consultations: and reproduces statements made during the course of research, or at the consultations. Views held are the author’s own and CSCS does not necessarily agree with all the views expressed in this book or in the various interviews available on video. For private circulation only. How to use this book: This book is available both in print and in e-pub versions, and works in synergy with the digital repositories of video and text available on http://cscs.pad.ma and http://eprints.cscsachive.org respectively. Relevant video ‘quotes’ are embedded in the text, where they can be viewed with the QR code in the print version. Full transcripts of all videos are available next to the videos. Project website: http://identityproject.in

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SELECT INTERVIEWS Enrollment Representatives and Implementers/Local Operators Abdul Rehman, Enrollment Operator, Chhotiyal, Palamgaon, Delhi: https://pad.ma/CBD/info Amit Puri, Team Supervisor, WIPRO, Mandi: https://pad.ma/CDF/info Badal Ghosh, Team Supervisor, Alankit Assignments Ltd., Subhash Nagar, Agartala: https://pad.ma/CDV/info Bolon De, Ward Committee member, Subhash Nagar, Agartala: https:// pad.ma/CDT/info Jitender Singh and other Operators, Amb: https://pad.ma/CJI/info Prem Singh, Enrollment Operator, Raj Nagar, Delhi: https://pad.ma/ CBH/info Ravinder Singh, representative of the Humana Homeless Resource Centre, Mansarovar Park, Delhi: https://pad.ma/CPK/info S. Kuberan, Consultant, Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty, Hyderabad: https://pad.ma/CCY/info Shailendra Rao Nalige, General Manager, COMAT, Mysore: https://pad. ma/CKN/info Shashi Kapoor and Naveen Kumar, Enrollment Operators, Tashi Jong, Dharamshala: https://pad.ma/CJO/info Shivaram Prasad, Smart Chips, Hyderabad: https://pad.ma/CJF/info V.K. Gandotra, Alankit, Agartala: https://pad.ma/CDW/info Volunteers at Enrollment Centre, Subhash Nagar, Agartala: https://pad. ma/CEV/info Local and Village-Level Entrepreneurs/Local CSCs/Local Banking and Financial Correspondents Balbir Guleria, Village-Level Entrepreneur, Drang: https://pad.ma/ CKD/info Mithun Debnath, VLE for Basix in Uttar Majlishpur: https://pad.ma/ CDP/info Nazir and B. Vishwanath Reddy, Banking Correspondents in Gonegundla, Kurnool: https://pad.ma/CJJ/info Operators of the Sugam Integrated Community Service Centre at Una: https://pad.ma/CAH/info



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Raghunatha Reddy, Village Level Entrepreneur, Koilkuntla Village, Nandyal: https://pad.ma/CJR/info Interviews with people directly impacted by Digitisation Aiyappa Reddy, agriculturist and faction leader at Allagadda, Nandyal: https://pad.ma/CCN/info Anonymous Dalit labourer at Chhotiyal, Palamgaon, Delhi: https://pad. ma/CBC/info Anonymous enrollee working as financial analyst at Oracle, Bangalore: https://pad.ma/CAT/info Anonymous enrollee working at St John’s Hospital, Bangalore: https:// pad.ma/CAS/info Anonymous enrollee, Dharamshala: https://pad.ma/CSX/info Ashok, Homeless Resident, Mansarovar Park, East Delhi: https://pad. ma/CAY/info Bade Bi financial indebtee, Gonegundla, Kurnool: https://pad.ma/CCZ/ info Birsi, Resident of Ranchi: https://pad.ma/CEC/info Buddhist students at Tashi Jong: https://pad.ma/CJO/info Dilip Debnath, Resident, Uttar Majlishpur: https://pad.ma/CEU/info Enrollees at Joginder Nagar, Mandi: https://pad.ma/CBU/info Goppur Mian, rickshaw puller and shopkeeper, Uttar Majlishpur: https://pad.ma/CDQ/info Jehangir, handicapped financial indebtee, Shamirpet: https://pad.ma/ CJE/info Jharkhand: group of women who have enrolled under Aadhaar: https:// pad.ma/CER/info Manohar Reddy, agriculturist and small-time contractor, Allur village, Koilakuntlamandal, Kurnool: https://pad.ma/CKP/info Manoj Mahto, Tarup village, Ranchi: https://pad.ma/CEH/info Mekala Kundalala, a Mala labourer, Allur village, Koilakuntla mandal, Kurnool: https://pad.ma/CKP/info Pratyush Das, Resident, Subhash Nagar, Agartala: https://pad.ma/CDU/ info Ramakrishna, Boya leader, Kotekal village, Kurnool: https://pad.ma/ CCD/info vi



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Ruchika and three of her sisters, Mysore: https://pad.ma/CPG/info Sanju Sharma, Bihari labourer, Mandi: https://pad.ma/CDG/info Saritha, financial indebtee, Jagganguda village, Ranga Reddy District: https://pad.ma/CIU/info Sebina, Assamese resident in Bangalore: https://pad.ma/CAR/info Sheikh Shah Valli and his father, Arogyasri beneficiaries. Gonegundla, Kurnool: https://pad.ma/CBX/info Subedar Trilok Thapa, Enrollee, Dharamshala: https://pad.ma/CBN/ info Sudhakar, Allagadda, Nandyal: https://pad.ma/CKA/info Swapna, Jagganguda village, Ranga Reddy district: https://pad.ma/ CJK/info Weavers of Emmigannur: https://pad.ma/CJH/info State and District-level Administrators involved in IT implementation A. Babu, former CEO, Arogyasri, Hyderabad: https://pad.ma/CIZ/info Amitabh Datta, Manager, NREGA, Agartala: https://pad.ma/CFA/info Amod Kumar, Mother NGO, New Delhi: https://pad.ma/COV/info Arvind Prasad, Additional Director-General for Jharkhand, UIDAI: https://pad.ma/CEA/info B. Sambamurthy, Director, IBRDT, Hyderabad: https://pad.ma/CJZ/ info B. Satyanarayana, AGM, State Bank of India AGM Hyderabad: https:// pad.ma/CCV/info Bidesh Chandra Roy, Panchayat Secretary, Uttar Majlishpur, Agartala: https://pad.ma/CEY/info Bidyut Datta, Senior Technology Officer, Directorate of Information Technology, Agartala: https://pad.ma/CFB/info Jyotsna Singh, Block development Officer, Ratu Block, Ranchi district: https://pad.ma/CEF/info K.K. Soan, Deputy Commissioner, Ranchi: https://pad.ma/CEG/info K.R.Bharti, Deputy Commissioner, Una: https://pad.ma/CAG/info Narendra Singh, Panchayat Pradhan, Chari village, Kangra district: https://pad.ma/CBO/info Pramila Devi, Panch Pradhan, Tandu: https://pad.ma/CDN/info In the Wake of Aadhaar


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Promila Thakur, Panchayat, Amb: https://pad.ma/CIX/info Rama Shankar Naik, Collector and District Magistrate, Kurnool: https:// pad.ma/CCR/info Reddy Subramanyam, Principal Secretary, Department of Rural Affairs, Government of Andhra Pradesh, Hyderabad: https://pad.ma/CJS/info S.K. Satapathy, Secretary, Rural Development Department, Government of Jharkhand: https://pad.ma/CEP/info Satyendra Singh, CEO, JAPIT, Jharkhand: https://pad.ma/CEQ/info Tarun Debnath, Chief Engineer, Rural Development Department, Agartala: https://pad.ma/CEX/info Vidya Sagar, Panchayat Secretary, Jogindar Nagar: https://pad.ma/CBT/ info Vijaya Bharathi, SHG movement, Orvakal, Kurnool: https://pad.ma/ CKQ/info Civil Society Views Achan Mungleng, Coordinator of South Asian Euro Burma Office: https://pad.ma/CKJ/info C.P. Chandrasekhar and Jayati Ghosh, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi: https://pad.ma/CED/info Congress and BJP Politicians at Aadhaar Enrollment Centre, Raj Nagar, Delhi: https://pad.ma/CJQ/info Reetika Khera: https://pad.ma/CEO/info Students of Tripura University: https://pad.ma/CEZ/info Sukhendu Debbarma, Tripura University: https://pad.ma/CDR/info Tenzin Tsundue: https://pad.ma/CKO/info Usha Ramanathan, Nikhil Dey, Reetika Khera, Praful Biswai and others: https://pad.ma/CKK/info

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IN THE WAKE OF AADHAAR

The Digital Ecosystem of Governance in India Acknowledgments......................................................................................iii INTRODUCTION Digital Delivery of Services: The Indian Landscape – Ashish Rajadhyaksha ....................................................................................... vii ONE: THE DIGITAL ECOSYSTEM – THE CONCEPTUAL CHALLENGE 1. Networking-In-Governance: Revisiting the Digital Horizon – Dipankar Sinha ........................................................ 2 2.

The Measure of a Number – Sruti Chaganti .......................................26

3.

Naming the Problem: or, Thinking like the State – Ashish Rajadhyaksha...............................................................44

4.

The Unique Identity Project and the New ‘Bureaucratic Moment’ in India – Swagato Sarkar.....................76

5.

The Unique Identity Number and the National Population Register – Sudhir Krishnaswamy....................101

6.

The Social Category of the ‘Introducer’ – Ashish Rajadhyaksha/ArunMenon ...............................................131

7.

Citizens’ Participation and Technology Interventions in Government Programmes – Bhuvaneshwari Raman/Zainab Bawa ............................................156

TWO: THE DIGITAL ECOSYSTEM – THE EXPERIENCE 8. Field Visits: A Report .........................................................................198 Jharkhand ..........................................................................................202 Andhra Pradesh ..................................................................................213 Tripura ................................................................................................249 Delhi ...................................................................................................282 Himachal Pradesh ..............................................................................298 Karnataka ...........................................................................................308 Kerala ..................................................................................................315



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9.

Ration Card Digitisation and the PDS in Kerala: A brief history ....335 The Public Distribution System–Dossier Prepared by Swagato Sarkar/Nandini Chami ...................................................340

10. The RSBY and Enrollers: A Field Report – Arun Menon ..................353 11. Issues in Financial Inclusion – S. Ananth .........................................360 THREE: THE DIGITAL ECOSYSTEM – TECHNOLOGY ISSUES 12. Technologies In Aadhar: A Sociotechnical View – Ravi Shukla .......372 Encryption Standards and Practices – Elonnai Hickok ...................400 FINO: A case study – S. Ananth ........................................................407 13. Legal Legacies of Identity Production – Malavika Jayaram ............412 FOUR: THE DIGITAL ECOSYSTEM – MIGRANT LIVES 14. Counting the Migrant in India: Forced Migration and the Identification Project – Sahana Basavapatna......................432 15. Migration and Financial Exclusion In AP – S. Ananth .....................468 FIVE: THE DIGITAL ECOSYSTEM – THE HOMELESS 16. Shelter, Enumeration and Homelessness: Historical And Contemporary Contexts For Delhi – Diya Mehra......................................................................480 17. Being Singular: Figuring the Homeless Ecosystem in the Shadow of the UID – Akshaya Kumar ....................................497 SIX: THE DIGITAL ECOSYSTEM – THE FINANCIALLY EXCLUDED 18. Issues in Credit to the Poor: Following the Microfinance Crisis in Andhra Pradesh – S. Ananth ........................514 Faction Wars – S.V. Srinivas ..............................................................541 Extended Bibliography ..........................................................................546

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Digital Delivery of Services – the Indian Landscape Ashish Rajadhyaksha Senior Fellow, CSCS and Principal Investigator, The Identity Project

The Identity Project of CSCS (2010-13) began with the idea of providing the possible framework for a debate on the massive move towards the digitisation of government services launched by the Government of India’s National e-Governance Plan of 2006. The essay points to six key ‘stresspoints’ that emerged in the course of the field research over seven Indian states.

THE PROJECT

In 2010, the Centre for the Study of Culture & Society launched The

Identity Project as a two-year initiative following a grant from the Ford Foundation. The purpose of the project was to ‘research, document, and contextualise the “Last Mile” of governance in India’ in the light of the massive digitisation of delivery of several major state benefits at both Central and State levels. The project emerged as a result of our dissatisfaction with the nature of the debate that was emerging on the area of digital governance in India. It appeared necessary to distance ourselves as much from techno-utopians who promised overnight change with new technology as from those who presented a dystopian imagination of extreme State surveillance. It also appeared necessary to recognise the many legal and procedural issues that several of the new digitisation initiatives were creating: in immediate terms,



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INTRODUCTION

in their limitations, as well as in the larger terms of a transforming State apparatus that often found itself out of its depth in dealing with the new challenges of digitisation. Over the past three years we have conducted numerous field visits in seven Indian states (see Chapter 8 for details). These visits include numerous video-conversations, some short and others very long, with a diverse number of those who were involved with this entire process of participating in the emergence of a digital ecosystem of governance. These are interviews with people being enrolled into the Aadhaar programme, with district-level Panchayat and other officials, with numerous State government bureaucrats, with private enrollment representatives, representatives of various governmental services, with operators and other members of this digital workforce. Conversations are often long, spontaneous and deliberately unstructured: and the focus is mainly on a vérité style using amateur video (for full archives see: http://cscs.pad.ma). Emerging from these visits, CSCS conducted several public consultations, focusing on some key issues that we shortlisted for detailed inquiry: those of migrants, both domestic and across international borders (see chapters 14 and 15), homelessness in cities (chapters 16 and 17), and the financially excluded (chapter 18). Each of these areas was discussed in considerable detail at major public consultations held in Delhi, Kolkata, Hyderabad, and Bangalore, in partnership with the CSDS, the Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group (who have brought out their own volume on our joint consultations),1 and the Urban Research and Policy Programme Initiative of the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore. All videos of all presentations made at these events are also available at the CSCS repository. A selection of the presentations made there is a part of this book. CSCS also has an extensive text archives of material on the field as a whole, available on http://eprints.cscsarchives.org. With this material and with these publications, we believe we have attempted to capture, keeping a wide range of concerns alive, the issues that xii



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define the domain of digitising governance and the experience of India, with all its contradictions and social tensions, going digital. It was important for us to recognise that the process of an Indian people moving, along with various aspects of State administration, into a digital domain could also mean, so to say, the translation of existing social conflicts into an e-variant. We hope that the vast archives available in free access to researchers, that has been put together in the assumption that in capturing the present contradictions, conflicts, and tensions of the digital ecosystem of governance as they play themselves out, we are capturing something of historic importance in India today. The remaining part of this introductory essay speculates on the issues that could underpin that importance. We provide here a series of six ‘stress points’ that our field work yielded.

AADHAAR AND THE LAST MILE PROBLEM

The Identity Project defined its purpose in the wake of the

now-famous Aadhaar project launched in February 2009. The founding of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) that month—and with it the ambition to provide a unique identification number to all Indian residents that would be robust enough to eliminate duplicate and fake identities, and verifiable and authenticable in an easy, cost-effective way—was, we felt, potentially a definitive intervention into what has for long come to be known as the last mile problem in independent India.

The founding document of the Authority was its 2009 working paper, ‘Creating a Unique Identity Number for Every Resident in India’.2 Here at least, the Authority claimed that, on its own, it would be no more than this: it would be a number, not a card, with the UIDAIs role limited only to issuing that number. However, the UID number could itself appear on several smart cards, issued by partner programmes in different States, as well as by banks and perhaps other private services. The UID itself would function as an online In the Wake of Aadhaar xiii


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INTRODUCTION

service, with a straight ‘yes-no’ authentication, and the Aadhaar number would by itself be a random number without intelligence since, they claim, loading intelligence onto identity numbers made them susceptible to fraud and theft. What Aadhaar would do is to assist the entry of ‘residents’—in other words, all those who cared to enter it—into a digital ecosystem, and it would in turn assist the ecosystem that was emerging to function adequately, through linking the biometric—and with it the data that the biometric would generate—with the person. The process of entry into the digital ecosystem, the process of enrollment, would (as per the original vision) be diverse: would permit a numerous set of Registrars making available numerous entry-points to potential enrollees. Aadhaar itself has been careful to limit its own promise to providing no more than a nationwide authentication and de-duplication structure. Unlike purpose-driven identity definitions such as social security numbers, voting registrations or driving licenses, Aadhaar is in itself purposeless, an empty vessel: purpose would be needed to be added to it by the services that needed it, and it would then define its own purpose to suit theirs. In 2006, the Department of Information Technology announced the 27 Mission Mode projects of the National E-Governance Plan (NeGP). Among the integrated MMPs were to be the Common Service Centres, and several e-delivery services such as e-Biz (for Government-to-business schemes), e-Courts, e-Procurement, ‘electronic data interchange’ systems for trade, including ‘24×7 access to users, increase transparency in procedures, reduce transaction cost and time, and introduce international standards and practices in the area of clearance of export/import of cargo’, a national e-governance service delivery gateway etc. Key MMPs to be taken up by the Central Government included e-banking, excise and customs, income tax, insurance, passports, and pension schemes, and at the State level they would include commercial taxes, land records, municipal records, and gram panchayats. Since the UIDs production of identity is meant to be used for all of the above purposes, it has become something of a chimera, attributed with whatever downstream purpose to which it will now be put. This plethora xiv In the Wake of Aadhaar


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of definitional responsibilities the UIDAI has willingly taken on, having assiduously advocated and marketed the varied uses to which both the State and the market intends to put it, but it is important to note that these are autonomous domains of functioning, often defining policies and procedures that are not common to each other. And so, as the big picture has gradually emerged, and as the potential for usage of this service has come to be understood across different parts of the country even as the de-duplication/authentication process has started being coupled to an astonishingly diverse set of schemes by different local governments, Aadhaar’s own claims have in turn got refracted through a number of further claims by a number of independent agencies, both governmental and private, on what such an initiative could do for India: and what it was doing to India. The Digital Ecosystem and the Last Mile Problem Our project has been concerned with this diverse digital ecosystem of governance itself, rather than with Aadhaar as such. It recognises that Aadhaar is a cog in a wheel, or more appropriately, perhaps, a single cog linking a discrete set of giant wheels. There are other cogs functioning with various degrees of efficiency, but the UID has been perhaps the only cog to have conceptualised the wheel itself, so to say, often leading people to make the common mistake of confusing the part for the whole. Here we define the whole—the digital ecosystem—as nothing less than the public domain of the 21st century. As such it has several characteristics similar to the original public domain that emerged in the 18th, 19th, or even based on where you were, the 20th centuries, but also it also bears key differences. It has the highways, the streets, the locations of public gathering, debate and discussion, the capacity to associate and mobilise, and with it apparently go specific rights, as they did to its predecessor: the right to assemble freely, to speak freely. And, like the physical public domain, it has the alleyways and bylanes, the spaces of anonymity and of ambiguity: spaces where the rule of law does not reach, is ambiguous, or even absent.



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The parallels between the digital ecosystem and the classical public sphere both illuminate and confuse. To a very great extent, the apparent parallels have allowed the properties of virtuality to be comprehended through that resemblance and with the same apparatus that characterised its 19th century predecessor: a problem particularly virulent in privacy debates where the concept of ‘privacy’ that the digital domain is often accused of violating is unchanged from its 19th century origins. On the other hand, there is also in evidence a growing recognition of the limit to the parallel: of instances where the digital ecosystem differs in key aspects to the classic public domain, and may be producing phenomena that could be unprecedented to the classical public sphere. In defining the last mile problem for ourselves, we felt that there was growing evidence to show that the problem primarily lay in the structure of a centralised State being unable to even comprehend, or find appropriate mechanisms to either define or regulate, this new ecosystem. This project takes on board growing evidence that, contrary to its typical image of a fully automated computer-driven hyper-rationality (which is how modern States would like to conceive it), the digital ecosystem of governance is rife with internal contradiction. Further, contrary to its rational imagination, it also possesses an organicity and may indeed, in this respect, bear some similarity to the social networking process. One of the key points our researchers make in this book is that it grows locally, in diverse ways, depending on how different issues around digitisation are locally comprehended, and how the system is put to local use. The centralised imagination of the State often therefore presents itself as a barrier to this organic growth. This barrier, we propose, is a crucial component of the last mile problem, and we believe we are right now witnessing situations where the Indian state is facing up to a major technological challenge that could threaten its very existence in its present form. In the rest of this Introduction, we will provide a small list of such conflicts and stress points. These stress points are both, at one level, specific—in that these constitute the day-to-day contradictions and negotiations of entering xvi In the Wake of Aadhaar


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and navigating—and foundational, in that they provide several of the ethical bases upon which, we propose, the digital public sphere will now be defined: sequel forms to the various rights that defined its classical ancestor. Governance and the Last Mile Problem Is the challenge posed by digitisation an unprecedented one? It is not new for India to take on the latest available technology and assume that it can now, miraculously and overnight, reach out to the remotest parts of the country. The famous ‘last mile problem’, a variant of the horse-and-water metaphor, has been primarily concerned with the fact that intended beneficiaries of state benefit do not receive what is meant for them: mainly due to distortions in the system at the receiver’s end. These days, the term has been widened to include problems that affect most schemes of public policy, from disaster relief to housing and food subsidies, where it is widely assumed that benefits do not percolate to those who need them most; and it today captures a long history of the capacity of developmental schemes to slice through the barriers of reception to both identify and to reach their intended addressees. Perhaps the classic avatar of overcoming the Last Mile through technology was scientist Vikram Sarabhai’s contention that the key reasons for problems in last mile delivery in India were linguistic diversity and geographical distance,3 and his suggestion in the late 1960s that terrestrial television could in one stroke overcome these problems by reaching out to all of India’s population wherever they are. Considered by many as the classic example of India’s fascination with technological leapfrogging,4 the Sarabhai model provides the classic example of developmental fascination with communications media, linking key tenets of democratic citizenship to connectivity. The mapping of media upon developmentalist-democratic priorities has been the dominant characteristic of communications technology since at least the invention of the radio in the 1940s, and has provided the major rationale for successive technological developments, from the 1960s wave of portable transistors to the terrestrial transponders of the first televisual revolution in the early 1980s, the capacity of satellite since SITE and the INSAT series, and from the 1990s the arrival of wired networks (LANs, Cable, fibre-optic) followed by wireless (WLAN, WiMAX, W-CDMA). In the Wake of Aadhaar xvii


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INTRODUCTION

One way of comprehending the problem is therefore this: how to translate, or scale up, a communications-driven mode of centralised state-addressingremote citizen into a model by which the state could reach benefit to the doorstep of that remote citizen? The pivotal role given to broadcast media to somehow overcome the last mile between the late 1960s and culminating with the Special Plan for the Expansion of Television in 1981, provides one legacy to the 1990s emphasis on electronification (to use UIDAI Chairman Nandan Nilekani’s term), in defining the last mile in terms of technological delivery of state welfare, as well as its capacity to overcome what has sometimes been considered an unbridgeable gap between the intended and the actual beneficiary of development. Through the 1990s and early 2000s, the major fascination with the concept of ‘convergence’ attempted to forge new coalitions between historically disparate agendas, and to find a single solution for multiple ends. Nilekani writes (Imagining India, 2008): Around the 2000s, the impact of electronification in India began to change. It started to rapidly evolve from a top-down system driven by government policy and industry into a force surging up from the grassroots. Indian entrepreneurs big and small were at this point focusing on the possibilities of building a unique business approach—based on the idea that you could vastly expand the pool of Indian consumers if you were willing to focus on extremely low-cost products. When IT met this strategy, its presence exploded. Even as Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL), P&G, Nirma, and Cadbury began selling everything from shampoos to soap, detergent and chocolate in tiny ‘single serve’ packets costing a rupee or less, banking firms such as ICICI began to offer ‘micro’ loans and hospitals such as Aravind Eye offered targeted, low-cost health services, technology entrepreneurs began offering lowcost internet and computer usage to villagers across rural India. [A]s the possibilities in such low-cost technology began to explode, firms across retail, banking and communications found that IT could well be their missing link in connecting with people who were often illiterate and located in distant villages, dirt-road miles away from the nearest market. And reform-minded bureaucrats found that such technology, untouched xviii In the Wake of Aadhaar


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as it were by the legacies of the sarkar raj, could be a powerful leverage for better public services. IT could play a bigger and more powerful role in the economy than anyone had guessed or attempted before.5 Are we right in seeing a similarity in Nilekani’s view on IT and Sarabhai’s view on terrestrial and later satellite television? There are key similarities: both present a somewhat benevolent State—or now a State-Corporate—structure benignly taking on the most recent technologies to do its job better. But the differences in their position are crucial, and constitute a record of what’s changed since the 1970s. The difference is partly in the changed nature of the State itself: in the new Public-Private Partnerships being envisaged, and thereby of the intensity of the change being launched. The former communications model of reaching out to citizens in remote areas was now being significantly extended by Information and Communications Technology with at least two additional responsibilities that Sarabhai could not have imagined: of defining, identifying, the marginalised, and then of mounting physical benefit upon the communications channel. There was also a change in the model itself: such identification happened because, as Nilekani contends, we were no longer speaking of a top-down model: this was a ‘force surging up from the grassroots’. Stresspoint # 1: Top-down State versus lateral market-driven benefit: On the one hand, then, and continuing the Sarabhai vision of a benevolent State apparatus scaling up to better deliver its benefit, the 2011 draft Electronic Delivery of Services (EDS) Act proposed that, if passed by Parliament, the Act would make it mandatory for every government organisation to deliver public services in electronic mode. Each Ministry/ Department would be required to identify the basket of citizen-centric services, and these benefits would include ‘an efficient, transparent, and reliable delivery of web enabled public services in a definite and time bound manner to citizens, thereby transforming Governance’, and to ‘eliminate the need for a citizen to go to Government offices to seek services’.6 On the other hand, in departure from the Sarabhai model (and indeed departing from the In the Wake of Aadhaar xix


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INTRODUCTION

strongly governmental service-delivery mechanism), Nilekani personally did not think that the delivery of benefit would happen primarily with the government: indeed, such web-based delivery was only a small detail in a much larger picture. Once the model was properly in place – once a beneficiary got identified and so to say brought into the digital arena, the market would do the rest. He made the upbeat assumption that ‘as regulations eased up, market players have brought in remarkable synergies into the rise of a single market. Freeing up the private sector has allowed entrepreneurial energy to work its way through infrastructure barriers and connect markets, thus building innovative, interlinked networks from scratch’, and that the ‘new focus on single market synergies is also driving reform towards national policies and infrastructure around critical sectors’ (in Imagining India: Ideas for the New Century, 2008). Despite the immense optimism in the 1990s around convergence and the opportunities around PPP, and Nilekani’s confident assertion that ‘firms across retail, banking, and communications’ could make common cause with ‘better public services’ through their joint discovery of ‘technology untouched… by the legacies of the sarkar raj’ that could ‘be their missing link in connecting with people who were often illiterate and located in distant villages, dirt-road miles away from the nearest market’, the capacity of delivering public services through the marketplace has been a matter of considerable concern for many in India.7 For example, in his essay ‘Markets, State and Social Opportunity’ (2000), Amartya Sen offers more elaborate explanations for the conditions under which markets can work in tandem with development, and conditions when they cannot. He writes, The role that markets play must depend not only on what they can do but also on what they are allowed to do. There are many people whose interests are well served by the smooth functioning of markets, but there are also groups whose established interests may be hurt by such functioning. If the latter groups are politically more powerful and influential, then they can try and see that not given adequate room in the economy… Confronting such influences has to occur not merely through resisting—and perhaps xx



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even ‘exposing’—the seekers of profit from captive markets, but also from taking on their intellectual arguments as proper subjects of scrutiny. How does one take on the ‘intellectual arguments’ of profit-seekers who prevent the smooth functioning of markets? Sen provides a number of explanations for why the market could have a historical resistance to the dissemination of public good. His explanation relates to why certain forms of dissemination that may have once emerged as a public good had to transform their premise in order to enter the market—and therefore, even if they are doing good, may not qualify as delivery mechanisms for the public good. His explanation may well have considerable relevance as much for understanding electronification as a social benefit, as for large schemes of public policy that would have had to find their own strategies of addressing the barriers of the market. The citizen/the resident/the beneficiary Let us go a bit further into the last mile problem. It is a common truism of Indian social sciences that the process of defining the normative citizen, the discursive beneficiary of state development, long precedes the far more complex process of naming that actual citizen of India. Partha Chatterjee’s legendary essay ‘Beyond the Nation? Or Within?’ (2003), classifies the division between civil society represented by the citizen, and political society represented by the category of ‘population’, to propose that, long before the Indian state came up with an adequate normative mechanism to define the citizen as bearer of democratic rights and entitlements, it was able to extend key developmental systems of welfare well beyond the physical boundaries that characterised the norm: namely, the actually existing individuals in India who could practice citizenship in the full sense. It could do so by creating a parallel form of classification and enumeration that divided society into elementary units of population: numbers of people who could receive state benefit and nothing else. Unlike the citizen, he says, the concept of population is descriptive and empirical, not normative. Those listed under population measures do not normally have defined rights, but nevertheless exist as the beneficiaries of state welfare. In the Wake of Aadhaar xxi


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INTRODUCTION

Stresspoint # 2: Citizen versus beneficiary: The consequences of this move have been many. On the one hand, the normative citizen provided the Constitutional basis upon which the Indian state exists, since all welfare— including all of its fundamental rights, crucially the right to shelter, the right to life and the right to vote—had to be in the name of the normative citizen. However, since the vast numbers of the actual people of India did not qualify as normative citizens, a second structure of distribution had to work over the first. To protect its civil society, the Indian state had to make the benefits of welfare available to a population which, in addition to being named through processes such as the census, the ration card, and the bank account, was also named through the political processes of democracy. It was the job of the latter processes to transform not-quite-citizens into full members of civil society by extending the principles of associational behavior through voting, through political membership, etc. However, it is well known that the two processes did not work together well: indeed, civil society’s extreme suspicion of political processes—widely viewed with scorn and derision as innately corrupt—effectively meant that as per the norms of civil society functioning, the benefits of welfare could never efficiently percolate through the dense barriers set up by political interest groups. In many ways, this has constituted the classic definition of the last mile problem. What does the new digital ecosystem now do to this barrier? On its side, does an Electronic Delivery of Services simply translate this populational mechanism onto a digital platform, keeping it otherwise unchanged from its physical variant? Or would there also be a way by which the access of people to digital identity—identity now in the fullest possible sense—also transform the normative structure? In other words, assuming that Nilekani is right and that the digital ecosystem constitutes not merely a ‘better’ but still unidirectional service-delivery mechanism but was a ‘force surging up from the grassroots’, would the complexity of a market-driven structure of overseeing entry into the digital ecosystem transform the very theory of the last mile? xxii In the Wake of Aadhaar


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To understand this better, we need to look at three key concepts that seem to be new to the very idea of democracy as a political process in India. The first is the very concept of identity: as a form of selfhood, as something that an individual can act upon. The second, the idea of a resident: the assumption that such identity was not citizenship, but was more individually driven, and emanated so to say from the bodily properties of the person rather than from his/her belonging to a nation (as we see among migrant communities, but also refugees, both discussed extensively elsewhere in this book). Does this form of self-actualisation come into conflict with the concept of beneficiary, the recipient of targeted delivery—a recipient who, as part of the contract of receiving, had to forego the self-enabling fact of digital citizenship? Would s/he be regulated to know that receiving benefit did not mean receiving the rights of citizenship? Stresspoint # 3: Voluntary versus compulsory enrollment: The above distinction between citizen and beneficiary directly impacts the one issue that has dominated all discussion of Aadhaar, namely whether it is a species of Identity Card or not, and if so, just what it is an identity of. The Authority has claimed that they would register anybody who lived in India who wanted to be registered. They would also not force anyone to be registered: but this right to not enroll is importantly overridden by any State benefit that is mounted on Aadhaar and makes it mandatory for a beneficiary to have an Aadhaar number. Jean Dreze, for example, has belittled the Authority’s claim that enrollment for Aadhaar is not compulsory given that in its own selfjustification, the UIDAI claims that ‘all benefits and services linked to the UID will ensure demand for the number’. This, he says, ‘is like selling bottled water in a village after poisoning the well’.8 Although Dreze is perhaps factually correct, in normative terms his argument may be erasing a thin but significant distinction between a law that makes it mandatory for citizens to register and one that does not make it mandatory, however essential it may be. The problem that we have is that government schemes that require you to have a UID number, leaving it up to you to decide whether you wanted the In the Wake of Aadhaar xxiii


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INTRODUCTION

number or not (depending on whether you wanted that benefit or not), are very different from citizenship initiatives that do make it mandatory for you to have this number and illegal for you not to do so. We need to define identity carefully here: as a distinction between that which is chosen, as a condition of selfhood and produces a capacity to represent oneself in the public domain voluntarily, in a manner that is satisfactory to one’s self-representation, and that which is assigned. The first includes a sense of entitlement, where individuals declare their unique individuality, is not the same as a populational record of people’s lives where people are issued an identity that only qualifies them as beneficiaries and nothing else. If there was one thing that emerged in our field meetings with enrollees, it was this. The primary problem has arisen, it appears to us, when biometrics have been mounted on several data resources that work with populational purposes that could fly in the face of aspirational entitlement. The best known of these data resources is of course the NATGRID, but it could include no less than, in the words of Home Minister P. Chidambaram, ‘21 sets of databases… to achieve quick seamless and secure access to desired information for intelligence and enforcement agencies’.9 These databases would include a DNA data bank, the NATGRID, and a series of others such as the Crime and Criminals Tracking Network and Systems (CCTNS)10 and a National Counter Terrorism Centre,11 all of which could work together to make a devastating and unimaginable impact on surveillance. A consequence of the voluntary/mandatory issue of enrollment is the further one of whether the Government should be the sole Registrar, or whether there should be multiple market-driven registrar structures. The UIDAI itself was clear that there would have to be multiple registrars. The 2009 Working Paper says that the: Authority will partner with agencies such as central and state departments and private sector agencies who will be ‘Registrars’ for the UIDAI. Registrars will process UID applications, and connect to the CIDR to de-duplicate resident information and receive UID numbers. xxiv In the Wake of Aadhaar


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These Registrars can either be enrollers, or will appoint agencies as enrollers, who will interface with people seeking UID numbers. The Authority will also partner with service providers for authentication. The UIDAI will emphasise a flexible model for Registrars: The Registrars will retain significant flexibility in their processes, including issuing cards, pricing, expanding KYR (Know Your Resident) verification, collecting demographic data on residents for their specific requirements, and in authentication. The UIDAI will provide standards to enable Registrars maintain uniformity in collecting certain demographic and biometric information, and in basic KYR. These standards will be finalised by the KYR and biometric committees the Authority constitutes. On the other hand, by some accounts if the NPR had its way, it would be the sole Registrar in India. The issue is not merely a turf battle within the Planning Commission and the Home Ministry as some have characterised it. Major issues hang on whether there is only a single point of entry into this digital ecosystem or a plurality of entries. As outlined by Usha Ramanathan, there seems to be a clear divide between the stated positions of the NPR and the UIDAI, although the NPR claims to be riding on the UIDAI to get its own work done.12 She points out that the NPR will be assembled, not under the Census Act of 1948 but under the Citizenship Act of 1955 and the Citizenship (Registration of Citizens and Issue of National Identity Cards) Rules 2003.13 Unlike the Act, which has an express provision regarding confidentiality and would have made it impossible for the Government to share Census data with something like the UIDAI (since section 15 of the Census Act categorically makes the information that we give to the census agency ‘not open to inspection nor admissible in evidence’), information gathered in NPR’s proposed house-to-house surveys, and the biometrics collected during the exercise, is expected to directly feed into the UID database. Conflicting directly with the UIDAI’s claim to ‘voluntary’ registration, the Citizenship Rules of 2003 class every individual and every ‘head of family’ as an ‘informant’ who will be penalised if every person in his household is not listed, or if the information provided by him is incorrect or outdated. Additionally, the rules also envisage an exercise in sifting citizens from residents, a distinction the In the Wake of Aadhaar xxv


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INTRODUCTION

UID does not make, since persons collecting NPR information are expected to exercise judgment in deciding whether those whose details are being taken down are citizens or not, and to categorise suspicious people for further investigation.14 How identity claims, and with them data that would allow the State to deliver services uniquely targeted to me and my needs, can be reconciled with initiatives around direct surveillance, therefore remains an open question: and almost the central conflict in the digital ecosystem as we have outlined it. Is there a way that current rights discourse can square the purpose of databases that apparently work very different definitions of both voluntariness and citizenship? Stresspoint # 4: Universal versus targeted benefit: To see the objects of targeting as patients rather than as agents can undermine the exercise of poverty removal in many different ways. The people affected by such policies can be very active agents indeed, rather than languid recipients waiting for their handouts. Not to focus on the fact that they think, choose, act, and respond is to miss something terribly crucial to the entire exercise—Amartya Sen.15 One very specific area where the entitlements question, as an issue of State delivery, came to play itself out was around the concept of targeting, that several State Governments introduced in their Public Distribution System (PDS) systems since June 1997. Targeting occurred through the creation of Below Poverty Line (BPL) and Above Poverty Line (APL) categories, after several complaints about the inefficiency of a Universal PDS and the problems it was having with reaching out to the truly needy. This concept of targeting has found few takers among the new proponents of social rights. Among the more trenchant attacks on targeting is by Himanshu and Abhijit Sen,16 who argue that not only does targeting increase inefficiency and leakage,17 but, crucially, that it violates constitutional rights. A universal PDS is the only option consistent fully with a rightsbased approach, and feasible alternatives that are more universal xxvi In the Wake of Aadhaar


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and less targeted are more likely to be effective in ensuring food security for the poor. Since a legal right must apply to all citizens with any exclusion defined precisely, targeting the ‘poor’ or ‘priority’ will involve definition of these terms and possible litigation. (While) targeting was considered when the UPA government was enacting earlier landmark legislations, finally both the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act and the Right to Education Act, which govern schemes providing basic rights to citizens, are universal (ibid.) In contrast to such universality requirements, the National Advisory Council’s final proposal for the National Food Security Act (NFSA) has been to provide subsidised foodgrains to 75% of the total population of the country, covering 90% of the rural and 50% of the urban population. These are to now be further divided into two categories: a ‘priority’ group’ comprising 46% of rural and 28% of the urban population and a ‘General’ group which would comprise 44% of the rural and 22% of the urban population. If this is not complex enough, the roll-out is expected to be even more complex: benefits will vary with household position on a below poverty line (BPL) list and a quarter will be ineligible for food security. This could be an administrative nightmare, say Himanshu and Sen, with no easy way to find credible criteria that can exclude half the urban population and also divide the included rural population into two halves for very different entitlements.18 Despite the concerns, it is now widely accepted that that the key methodology by which the civil-political divide would be cut through, eventually abolished, would be in the process of targeting. Such targeting would in turn split into two definitions: (1) Ensuring that the beneficiary was correct (i.e. to prevent leakage and corruption); and (2) Ensuring that the beneficiary qualified for the benefit. Effectively, the argument went, Direct Cash Transfers would be the means to solve both problems. Although the Direct Cash Transfers system was only launched as recently as the 2011 Budget, the strategy of major Centrally Sponsored Schemes working to make direct payments into beneficiary bank accounts—and thus entirely bypassing the last mile barrier that is explicitly and irretrievably that In the Wake of Aadhaar xxvii


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INTRODUCTION

of political society—has been long discussed. In 2008, Kapur, Mukhopadhyay, and Subramanian outlined a big-picture scenario for what would eventually become, in key aspects, the DCT project.19 Their argument was the following. India had among the largest number of programmes directly addressing poverty eradication, one way or another. In 2006–07, there were at least 151 Centrally Sponsored Schemes entailing annual expenditures of about ` 72,000 crore. Thirty key schemes out of these accounted for ` 64,000 crore, i.e., almost 90%. If we added CSS programmes that called for additional central plan assistance, such as the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) and the Backward Region Grant Fund (BGRF), the allocations to the Food Corporation of India (FCI) for procuring and distributing foodgrains through the public distribution system (PDS), fertilizer subsidies, kerosene, and LPG, the total amount of subsidies would rise to ` 88,000 crore. Kapur et al pointed to the enormity of waste that is associated with such schemes, contending that numerous reports pointed to ‘one incontrovertible fact’, namely that most of the resources were failing to reach their intended beneficiaries. Only a small fraction of overall resources reach the poor due to, in varying degrees, inefficiency of targeting (inability to reach the poor), leakages (to the non-poor), participation costs (foregone earnings that are especially consequential in employment programs) and large administrative costs. The authors quoted Planning Commission figures indicating that for every Rupee worth of food actually transferred to beneficiaries, the Government spent ` 3.65, suggesting leakage of about 70%. From this contention, the authors proposed a simple arithmetical solution: around 27.5% of India’s roughly 1.13 billion people are below the poverty line, i.e., about 310 million people or 70 million households. If the money spent on CSS and food, fertiliser and fuel subsidies were distributed equally to all these 70 million households, it would mean a monthly transfer of over ` 2,140 per household. This would be more than 70% of the urban poverty line income. Indeed, if the government simply gave eligible households the amount of money it spends on the PDS, this alone would entail a monthly transfer of more than ` 500 to each household, i.e., about 40% of the entire xxviii In the Wake of Aadhaar


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food budget for a household at the poverty line. More pertinently, such a transfer could allow them to simply buy the entire monthly PDS entitlement of 35 kilograms of rice or wheat in the open market, even at relatively high current market prices. The authors therefore proposed that central expenditures be redirected into a scheme of outright transfers to individuals, and to local governments. How would such a transfer scheme be implemented? Unlike the past, said Kapur et al, there were now robust technologies for making cash transfers that are reliable, transparent, and monitorable. The key issues were those of identifying the beneficiaries and determining the amount of transfers. Identification here was a significant challenge, given that cash transfer programs would create strong incentives for people to identify themselves as poor. It was therefore vital, said Kapur et al, to recognise that establishing an individual’s identity is effectively almost more important than establishing her eligibility. Once an individual’s identity is established, ineligible beneficiaries can be removed over time as the process of verification is strengthened. The authors noted that several smart cards have been proposed or are already in place: the voter ID card, the BPL card, and the NREGS job card, and in some states, the poor will have a health insurance card under the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY) and a PDS smart card. They therefore recommend that, rather than profligacy in ID cards, it was imperative that the various functionalities integrated within a single individual biometric service, which would be individual based as opposed to household-based. As we discovered in our field work, the only way in which the entire biometric structure makes sense to a vast amount of the bureaucracy in India is in the way it overcomes leakage. One UID Cost Benefit Analysis by the NIPFP proposed that stopping leakage due to ‘ghost’ cards alone would be between 8-11% of the total PDS subsidy.20 Such over-emphasis on leakage prevention and on policing has virtually driven out any discussion on improving the quality of service delivery. As Amartya Sen asks, of the mechanism of targeting and the purpose of what could end up as new forms of policing: (1) What happens when large kinds of public good are not divisible into individual use In the Wake of Aadhaar xxix


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INTRODUCTION

(the only way most markets would comprehend delivery)?; (2) What happens when individuated developmental goals start getting available only for a fee, requiring uncomfortable tracking mechanisms based not on the beneficiary’s need but on her ability to pay for them? Of the first point, he says: Those who have tended to take the market mechanism to be the best solution of every economic problem may want to inquire what the limitations of that mechanism might be… (S)ome of the most important contributors to human capability may be hard to sell exclusively to one person at a time. This is especially so when we consider the so-called public goods, which people consume together rather than separately… The rationale of the market mechanism is geared to provide private goods (like apples and shirts), rather than to public goods (like a malariafree environment), and it can be shown that there may be a good case for the provisioning of public goods, going beyond what the private markets would foster. Exactly similar arguments regarding the limited reach of the market mechanism apply to several other important fields as well, where too the provision involved may take the form of a public good. Defence, policing and environmental protection are some of the fields in which this kind of reasoning applies. There are also rather mixed cases… The ‘publicgoods’ argument for going beyond the market mechanism supplements the case for social provisioning that arises from the need of basic capabilities, such as elementary health care and basic educational opportunities. The second aspect, of individual capacities to pay, raises the more complicated question of identifying and naming specific beneficiaries as targets of development, and then of tracking and means-testing. This is a key concern, since many officials across different State governments have repeatedly claimed that Aadhaar’s greatest (indeed its only) utility is to permit targeted delivery. The problem, for Sen, is in whether the market has the capacity to at all transform the definition of the beneficiary in terms of capability handicaps as against income limitations. Since the potential beneficiaries are also agents of action, the art of ‘targeting’ is far less simple than some advocates of means-testing tend xxx In the Wake of Aadhaar


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to assume. It is important to take note of the problems involve in finetuning targeting in general and means-testing in particular, especially since the case for such targeting is, in principle, quite strong and cogent. Sen outlines the key distortions that may emerge, and which this project took as its key framework for assessing impact: (1) Information distortion, which has the key issue that it is not possible to eliminate cheating without putting honest beneficiaries at considerable risk; (2) Incentive distortion, where targeted support can in fact change people’s economic behavior fundamentally; (3) Disutility and Stigma, where identifying a person as, say, poor can stigmatise the beneficiary; (4) Administrative costs, invasive loss, and corruption: especially given the social costs of asymmetrical power that bureaucracy has over supplicating applicants; (5) Political sustainability and quality: especially given that targeted beneficiaries are politically weak. Stresspoint # 5: Anonymised versus targeted data: The other recent area, which also centrally takes on the question of entitlement, and targeted benefit, has been in the area of caste enumeration. India has seen this debate rage around whether we should or should not include caste data in the 2011 Indian Census that is presently underway. Among the most extreme attacks on the very idea of a Caste Census has been precisely the one around targeting: in the claim that such data would fix identities, and whether such fixity—in the name of targeted benefit—can benefit anyone. The most trenchant advocate of this argument, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, has claimed that such a census would ‘condemn us to the tyranny of compulsory identities’ so that we could from now on never escape caste. ‘Our identities are not something we can choose; they are given as non-negotiable facts which we can never escape. The state has legitimised the principle that we will always be our caste... Is there not a deeper indignity being inflicted on those to whom emancipation is being promised? You will be your caste, no matter what’.21 Upendra Baxi makes a counter-argument: he proposes, instead, that the transition from OBC enumeration to counting all castes could potentially inaugurate a shift away from ‘targeted’ to ‘non-targeted’ developmental In the Wake of Aadhaar xxxi


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INTRODUCTION

approaches, so that we may in fact be moving away from fixed identities, not towards them.22 In the process, and while proposing that the logics of ‘development’ require an equal regard for the OBC as well as non-OBC impoverished, Baxi also links this debate up with the one on BPL targeting, and to Jean Dreze’s attack on a targeted PDS. For Dreze, creating awareness of rights alongside creating accountability mechanisms was crucial, since not only did targeting undermine the notion that PDS entitlements are a matter of right—given that no one can have a ‘right’ to a BPL card—but it also weakened the ability of BPL households to enforce their rights. How does such a definition of implementable self-interest square with an anti-targeting stance? Are people so targeted willing to be so ‘named’, or could there also be (as Amartya Sen has suggested, and as we found especially in the instance of Delhi’s homeless population) a stigma associated with such naming? Clearly on the caste question there sometimes is a stigma, as V.K. Natraj points out, when he shows that students applying for engineering or medical college education often do not mention the name of their caste fearing that they may attract the ‘creamy layer’ barrier.23 Such a refusal to be named, Baxi proposes, could very well also lead us to an opposite and more enabling conclusion. While caste is like language and religion, an identity that one inherits, it is both possible for one to value this inheritance and to want to adhere to one’s caste—in which case this would represent agency rather than an imposition of any compulsory identity—or of course to change, or repudiate, this identity by consciously defying caste norms and taboos. One may even acquire a different caste identity by choice, as has happened among religions through collective acts of conversion. If in this context, asks Baxi, as subjects rather than objects of governance, the worst-off peoples may justifiably feel so offended to answer questions about their caste, to the point of foregoing any census-based privileges, why should such self-chosen under-inclusion be a problem for honest governance practices? Do these acts of agency not point to

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any alternate ways of measuring indices of deprivation, consistent with respect and dignity of self-chosen identities of the respondents?’ Such new indices, says Baxi tellingly, would need to find ways to move away from the concept of identity as a substance and into practices of ‘identification’ that would see identities as flows or as processes. What would it take for a technology of enumeration to build this kind of flexibility into it, as technology would have to do if it remained true to the concept of self-interest or, as Baxi has it, see identity as a flow or a process rather than as something fixed. It is of course commonsense that databases themselves work with fixed structures, so we would need a great deal of technological ingenuity to arrive at a database that can handle ambiguities such as these. And then there is of course the rights question, on whether both tagging and targeting violate human rights. Several concerns around the UID’s possible link with Caste enumeration are expressed in a letter to The Hindu on August 13, 2010.24 The authors, well known social scientists, are entirely in favour of a Caste Census, arguing that such a Census can better enable the distribution of national resources and opportunities, giving policymakers essential information on, say, sexratios, literacy, life expectancy, occupation, household assets, and so on, crucial evidence without which ‘all the problems that are blocking the implementation of social justice policies will remain unsolved’. ‘Enumerating castes has compelling benefits for our society’ since it ‘will invigorate our social justice policies; provide the credible evidence demanded by our judiciary; allow the revision of beneficiary group listings; and help profile India’s social diversity’. However, they are completely opposed to the way the Government is going about it, since such a way will end up defeating the very purpose of enumerating caste. Their problem directly hits at the biometric process: the Caste Census is expected to take place ‘in conjunction with the National Population Register (NPR) process at the biometric data capture stage’. To this they object: firstly, because data can be compromised because it would In the Wake of Aadhaar xxxiii


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INTRODUCTION

be tagged on to the biometric documentation of about 84 crore Indians. This has, they say, serious constitutional-legal issues around the crucial question of confidentiality. The Census Act of 1948 had provided strong protection for all data collected by the Census, and so historically, although the Indian Census necessarily collects individual information, it has always released only aggregated and anonymised data. Such protection to individuals is now removed by the Citizenship Rules of 2003 which govern the NPR and the biometric data capture process, and hence there is every chance of the confidentiality of caste data being breached. And there is of course also the fact that ‘outside agencies’ are likely to be involved in the process of data collection, whose bonafides are suspect. Such a coupling of the Caste Census with biometric data and with the NPR, they argue, actually sets back what is already a very complex exercise of enumeration. Even the most strident advocates of a Caste Census recognise that it is not an easy proposition. For them, the only answer is for the new technologies of biometrics to stay away from this. The only agency in India capable of handing such an exercise is the Office of the Registrar General, and this Office would be crippled if it has to now start collecting caste data at the stage of biometric capture. And what purpose would be served by such a process anyway? If the main reason to couple the caste census with biometrics is to eliminate inflation of numbers and to protect the integrity of the head count, there are other ways round the roadblock: for example, household population totals (along with gender breakup) that have already been collected in the House-listing and Housing Census Schedule can be used as a check on the caste data at the enumeration stage. Aspiration and falsification of data: What would any such exemplary system of enumeration of caste, one that could respect self-chosen identities, look like? Let us return to the idea of self-interest and the possibility of falsifying data, either through a refusal to give it, as Natraj suggests, or because one may have acquired a different identity, as Baxi points out. Deshpande and John’s major essay on the Census25 tends to dismiss the excessive importance given to falsification, xxxiv In the Wake of Aadhaar


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or to the possibility that this could undermine the value of the data being gathered. Such fears, they say, are exaggerated and not thought through carefully. Deshpande and John agree that people may answer the question, ‘What is your caste?’ differently on different occasions depending on who’s asking, when they are looking for a bride for their son, seeking a favour from someone, or deciding who to vote for. In the present instance, of course, the person asking is the Enumerator who has arrived at their doorstep and they have effectively nothing to gain by lying, since whatever caste you name in the Census entitles you to nothing, given that caste certificates (on which reservations depend) are entirely unrelated to the Census. The question of respondents not knowing the correct answer is also unlikely to happen, say Deshpande and John, since typical Indian respondents are ‘not likely to be in any fundamental existential doubt about their caste’, given that such a luxury is only available only to an upper caste urban elite. The further contention of some commentators that people would arbitrarily ‘choose’ what caste to claim, based on expectations of personal gain, is also not correct, say Deshpande and John, because: Given that the Census is counting what people would like to be counted, its main purpose is precisely to perform this act of aggregation that no individual or group can do. In this sense, the Census is indeed about that elusive level of reality called the social, which emerges into view only through aggregation. Though comprised only of individuals, this aggregate turns out to be much larger in social significance than the sum of its parts. Given all this, it is somewhat beside the point to worry about ‘false information’; indeed, it is hard to figure out what ‘false’ and ‘true’ might mean here. In this sense, and with respect to variables like caste or religion, the Census is something like a mandatory opinion poll. Viewing the Census as an opinion poll is a curious argument. What would happen if such an aspirational logic—of people answering, not factually what is, but what they would like their answer to be—were applied to all questions on the Census?

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INTRODUCTION

The other aspect, apart from the one of aspirational identity, is the elusive aspect of caste names: themselves, in their sheer proliferation, clearly a further aspect of the elusiveness of identity. Deshpande and John suggest further methodologies for working this out. Firstly, the standards of Census accountability must be determined with reference to its role and function. It would be absurd to make the Census accountable in the same way and to the same extent that an individual ethnographer is held accountable for her data. For each produces ‘truths’ that the other cannot, and one does not falsify the other. Secondly, one way out is to give the local Enumerator who arrives at my doorstep some additional responsibilities: for example, followup questions like ‘Is your caste known by any other names in your locality?’, or ‘is your family surname different from yours’? They argue that synonyms for caste names are centripetal rather than centrifugal, that is, they will be tightly concentrated around a central core rather than diverging greatly from it. Local enumerators are almost certain to be able to recognise a family resemblance common to synonyms. Sonalde Desai takes on similar questions, but deepens the technical aspect through an innovative solution for how the database should be structured.26 In 2001, when data was last collected on SC/ST, enumerators were given official state-specific lists of SCs/STs and were asked to check whether the caste identification provided by the household matched the list; and so people enumerated would be marked as being SC or ST only if their caste or tribe was included in the list. The list only included Hindus, Sikhs, and Buddhists as being SC. Inevitably, several problems arose: castes noted by Enumerators did not match the caste list, and so several tribes went under-enumerated, leading to fears of their impending extinction. There was the Enumerator’s tendency to cut corners from an extremely unwieldy list by simply counting many households as belonging to forward castes in order to avoid having to look through the entire list for elusive caste names. What can be a solution for these kinds of problems? Could the Census replace the highly structured approach presently followed with a more flexible approach, in which households are asked to provide their caste identification xxxvi In the Wake of Aadhaar


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that Enumerators could write down and then classify at the data entry phase? Not easy, and a potential classification nightmare. One possible strategy, says Desai, may be to adapt a form used in 2004 for industrial and occupational classification systems: called the National Classification of Occupations (NCO-04), the system contained the following hierarchical structure: Division (10), Subdivision (30), Group (116), Family (439), Occupations (2,945). Under this schema, a bidi furnace operator, for example, would be classified with a code 7,416.45, where the major division is seven (craft and related workers), subdivision is 74 (craft and related workers excluding metal workers, building workers and textile and printing workers), group is 741 (food processing and related workers), family is 7,416 (tobacco preparers), and occupation is 7,416.45 (bidi furnace operator). However, says Desai, if the respondent were to say that he engages in some highly specialised task within bidi preparation that is not included in the list (for example, counting and making bidi bundles), he could be classified as 7,416.90, or ‘tobacco worker not elsewhere classified’. A possible analogous process for caste could therefore be the following: you start with a list of jatis residing through the length and breadth of India, from NSS, NFHS, or other surveys, augmented from other sources where caste data are available, such as marriage advertisements, or lists of caste associations. This list could then be classified by anthropologists into some kind of classification schema, with sub-castes grouped within broader castes, and allowing space for the possibility of the Enumerator encountering a caste for which no predefined category is specified. Such a list should then be sorted by district. The Enumerator can therefore have two lists: one containing about 100 castes most frequently found in the district, and a second containing all castes found throughout India. Given the geographic clustering of castes and tribes in various regions of India, it seems likely that in about 80% of the cases, most respondents would find their caste within the first, shorter list: Garasias will only rarely be found in West Bengal but frequently in Gujarat and Rajasthan.

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INTRODUCTION

Once such a classification list is developed, it could be tested through large nationwide sample surveys, and then possibly incorporated in the 2021 Census. Desai points out that if we don’t start work on creating a full list of jatis and subjatis and including it into an enumeration system, we will not be ready even by 2021. Such a data structure clearly has advantages, in that it can work with relatively minute sub-classifications with relative ease. It does not however begin to address the question of elusive self-interest, or what Baxi wants: indices of deprivation that are ‘consistent with respect and dignity of selfchosen identities of the respondents’. If we are to produce a database that can properly handle the Caste Census, it would need to take on the larger question of identity as Baxi speaks of it—caste as potentially a valuable inheritance and thus an instrument of agency as against an imposition of a compulsory identity. Such an initiative could be a worthwhile object of any ‘Unique Identity’ project, but there appears no evidence in the immediate future of any data resource even beginning to comprehend the technical problems of working with this level of ambiguous identity. We conclude by drawing attention to the fact that neither the NPR’s database nor the AP Food & Civil Supplies Department’s KYR-Plus database, the two that we have come across registering caste, have even begun attempting anything of the sort. KYR-Plus simply lists out SC, ST, BC, OC, and Others from a pull-down menu. And NPR does not even go that far.

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Stresspoint # 6: Data protection/how do I access and correct data about me: The danger of misuse: the danger of data theft. The possibility of targeting from a range of social interests. Is all this data safe? As Sruti Chaganti shows (Chapter 2) in her visits in Andhra Pradesh, although encryption was in place, the fact was that the data being collected was in at least three places. Sorting the data collected occurs when individual Aadhaar numbers and the data collected against them are aggregated into family units in the Registrar’s database. In the enrollment Centres she visited in Andhra Pradesh, common bar codes were attached to the acknowledgment forms of individual members of a family which were then used to sort family membership in the data retained for the use of the Registrar. Where a Registrar was a department implementing a social sector scheme, this aggregation of family membership was deemed necessary for its purposes, since the basic unit of all social security schemes is the family and not the individual. Thus, she writes: at least three copies of all data generated exist: one copy is sent to the UIDAI, one copy is sent to the Registrar and the third is maintained with the Enrolling Agency. While the UIDAI’s Handbook for Registrars states that biometric data is to be encrypted upon collection to ensure their integrity and security, we understood from the enrollment centres we visited in AP that residents can ask for corrections in demographic data up to 48 hours after enrollment. When data is extracted for the UIDAI and the Registrar it is automatically encrypted: however, the system on which the enrollment took place appears to retain unencrypted data.

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INTRODUCTION

This may be in itself a small issue but it certainly generates fears on the ground. It also links to the fact that India has been long criticised for its lack of data protection legislation, something that Rahul Matthan, a leading authority on data protection law, says makes for a significant weakness that would eventually stand in the way of serious offshore outsourcing to the country.27 Until 2008, the only provision that dealt with unauthorised access and damage to data was Section 43 of the Information Technology Act of 2000, which penalised any person who downloaded copies or extracted data from a computer system, introduced computer contaminants or viruses or damaged any data. In 2008, the government of India introduced a new section— Sections 43-A—which, Matthan argues, continues to have several insidious flaws that could affect the development of data protection jurisprudence in the country. While most international data protection statutes distinguish between levels of personal data—specifying different forms of protection for personal information and sensitive personal information, the new IT Act makes no such distinction. Section 43-A applies to all ‘sensitive personal data or information’ but does not specify how personal data, which is not deemed to be sensitive, is to be treated. This becomes a distinct issue in the instance of Aadhaar where, it is clear from the architecture outlined that the data would always be shared between Aadhaar itself and several key Registrars. Under most international data protection statutes, Matthan writes, the person in ‘control’ of the data is liable for the consequences of disclosure, loss, or unauthorised access to such information. This ensures that liability is restricted to only those who actually have the ability to control the manner in which the data is used. However, under the new provisions of the IT Act, mere possession of information and its subsequent misuse would render any person who possesses this data liable to damages. In order to be a truly effective data protection statute, the IT Act 2008 must, he feels, include provisions relating to the collection, circumstances of collection, control, utilization, and proper disposal of data. Matthan then however goes on to make a somewhat curious argument for India.28 For at least the past decade, India’s governments have been collecting xl



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vast amounts of data about its residents, he says. Even though we are dealing with numbers far in excess of anything the Western world has had to handle, we face none of the personal privacy challenges that they suffer. For him the main reason—other than the standard chestnut that Indian society has no use for privacy as understood in the West—is the inaccuracy of the data being collected. For example, up to 20% of government databases could be ghosts— persons who are registered within the database, but who do not actually exist. While the obvious effect is inefficiency in the distribution of public services, an unintended consequence is a lack of trust in the database itself. And so when agencies look to verify identity, they ask for multiple documents, to be doubly and triply sure that the person they are dealing with is who he claims he is. This copying strategy, made necessary by an inefficient data collection process, is what Matthan says has mainly protected us from data theft. Today, he writes, it is hard to steal identity in India, as the thief would need to obtain not just one, but many pieces of identity information. Aadhaar, therefore, as the most ambitious personal identification project ever attempted anywhere in the world, could well create an infrastructure through which public services will be directed more accurately to their intended recipients—and in the process create a new set of problems. By promising accurate and unique identity, it will allow us to rely on just one piece of identity information and thus will strip away the artificial protection that we have relied on all these years, laying us open to identity theft. Several related concerns around data privacy and theft have been echoed by other individuals as well as concerned NGO groups. The September 2010 signature campaign by Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer et al is primarily pivoted on the privacy issue. While it is rumoured, says the petition, that the Department of Personnel and Training is working on a draft of a privacy law, nothing has yet been put out for discussion, and grave concerns exist on the technology’s potential for surveillance, profiling, tracking, and the possibilities of people in power collating information about individuals. The Authority, says the petition, needs to have a clearly stated strategy on data theft, especially since key corporates ‘such as Ernst & Young and Accenture’ may have access to such data. Confidentiality and data theft also concerns Jean Dreze, who In the Wake of Aadhaar


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INTRODUCTION

accuses the Authority that its claim that the data will be safe with the Central Identities Data Repository is a half-truth, since the Authority can authorise ‘any entity’ to maintain it, and as such the data can be accessed not only by intelligence agencies but also by any Ministry. But more important, the UID will help integrate vast amounts of personal data that are available to government agencies with few restrictions. How do I access my own data? How do I correct my data? One definite way forward is offered by the TAGUP (Technology Advisory Group on Unique Projects) Report published in early 2011 outlined a protocol for IT systems for what the government considered ‘mission critical’ projects that possessed ‘immense transformative power (to) change India’s growth trajectory’. The purpose behind TAGUP was to ‘find ways to rapidly roll out these complex systems, to achieve project objectives and sustain high levels of reliable performance’: the focus being on Tax Information Network (TIN), New Pension Scheme (NPS), National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA), the Expenditure Information Network (EIN), and the Goods and Service Tax (GST). TAGUP had fashioned its solution on the assembly of a National Information Utilities (NIU), a class of institutions that would be meant to handle all aspects of IT for complex governmental projects. It would be a clutch of ‘private companies with a public purpose’, making available essential infrastructure for public service. NIUs would compete for Government contracts, and the Government, as a paying customer, would be free to take its business from one NIU to another. Basically, an NIU would make available essential infrastructure for public service: for Government functions to be carried out efficiently, allowing feasible projects to be designed. While NIUs were defined mainly through a set of negations—that they would NOT be the former State, but rather represent a new and benevolent governance that would directly radiate from the technology itself, no longer riddled by an absence of leadership, outdated recruitment processes, or an inability to pay market salaries for specialised skills. It should have total private ownership of at least 51%, with Governmental ownership at least 26%: and so, NIUs should compete for Government contracts, and the Government, as a paying

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customer, should be free to take its business from one NIU to another, if necessary. There are aspects to this that are both controversial and beyond the scope of the point being made here. What may be new here is the capacity of the concept to accommodate a democratic dimension of citizen self-interest, and, arising from that, to find a technological solution for the expression of that self-interest. So, in a chapter titled ‘Openness’, the TAGUP report says that the Government, as a producer of public goods, should release data in welldefined formats electronically, when possible, as prescribed by the Right to Information Act, 2005. This is not only being provided because people should have access to it as a right, but also because it could help innovative firms and individuals to combine various types of data to glean new information that may not have been possible from the individual datasets. Such data, importantly, would be both produced and received by the new citizen: so that citizens would suddenly be entities capable of having their say in the processes of this production. There is a need of a much greater scale of release of unencumbered data, placed into the public domain, of information created within Government. There can be economic data, map data, census data, pollution data, water data, soil quality data, climate data, PIN code data, administrative boundaries data, health data, Government accounts data, etc., which is released by the relevant ministries. Early international experiences of releasing open data using open file formats have resulted in mashups, which combine data from multiple sources and present it in ways that yield new insight, have been encouraging. While this too is in not, in itself a new concept, what is new here is the way citizens are envisaged as both recipients and producers of such data: further, as entities capable of having some say in the processes of this production. The system should therefore have a ‘self-cleaning’ mechanism that is directly linked to citizen self-interest:

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INTRODUCTION

The system (should be) self-cleaning, because it is in the resident’s interest to ensure that the system has correct data, in absence of which he cannot authenticate his own identity. (TIN has seen a gradual increase in data quality over time, as taxpayers realised the benefits of electronic filing and electronic payments). Further, clean data can be ensured by standardization of processes, matching and verifying information in workflows, simple and well defined open data formats, electronic payments and processing, instant feedback to customers, incentives for compliance, and penalization for non-compliance. It is through incentives that data quality can be managed, rather than micromanagement of stakeholders. There is considerable gloss on what are now named ‘self-corrective forces’ derived from society itself: under the chapter titled ‘Accountability, transparency, and self-corrective forces’, the report claims that: A transparency portal for an IT project in Government works as a positive feedback loop. The fact that such a portal is implemented, means that analytics about the performance of the project are generated immediately. As a result, any deviation from expected behaviour is detected quickly and rectified. In case such a portal is not well thought out, potential problems may manifest themselves much later, and may turn out to be difficult to fix. A transparency portal leads to monitoring and feedback at various levels: within the service provider, within Government, and by citizens at large. A contact centre (therefore) closes the feedback loop of self-corrective forces. It establishes multiple channels of communication with all stakeholders, including end-users, for purposes of gathering information and reporting grievances. An effective contact centre is tightly integrated with the IT systems, so that queries and complaints can be dealt with effectively, and information is recorded and updated on a real-time basis. Some of the key features of such a contact centre are as follows: 1. Provide services in multiple languages

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2. Provide inbound channels of communication such as voice, fax, letters, e-mail, and a web portal 3. Provide outbound channels such as voice, fax, letter, e-mail, and SMS messages 4. Available during working hours, or on a 24-by-7 basis, depending upon the nature of the project 5. Deploy key technologies such as a Customer Relationship Management application (CRM), Interactive Voice Response System (IVRS), Automatic Call Distribution (ACD), Computer Telephony Integration (CTI), call logging, quality management system, e-mail response system, and scanning solutions for letters and faxes. And arising from this, the new emphasis on crowd-sourcing as a direct feature of e-democracy: Enabling citizens and beneficiaries of public schemes to directly provide feedback using web and mobile phone-based platforms is a powerful way of involving citizens in improving public accountability. It unlocks the potential of collective wisdom. In addition, the ability to combine spatial and financial data can provide very powerful maps to track the progress of various initiatives and schemes. Among the other schemes of Government, according to TAGUP, to use successful crowd-sourcing means are the Ushahidi, Transparent Chennai, Environment Sustainability Index, Pollution Index, and e-Government’s foundation projects.

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INTRODUCTION

Interestingly, Openness does not always include open source: while Open Data, it is recommended, should use open source operating systems wherever possible, there was need to recognise that the NIU would have to have intellectual property over its source codes and that ‘it may be counterproductive to the business planning and profitability of the NIU to release all source code as open source’.

BIBLIOGRAPHY ‘Targeting in Theory’, Business Standard, December 08, 2005, http://www.businessstandard.com/india/news/targeting-in-theory/231031/. Baxi, Upendra, ‘Caste Census and Constitutional Justice’, Economic & Political Weekly, vol. xlv no. 37, September 11, 2010, pp. 25-28. Bhalla, A.S., ‘Can ‘High’ Technology Help Third World ‘Take-Off’?, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 22, No. 27 (Jul. 4, 1987), pp. 1082-1086. Desai, Nitin, ‘Put the Last Mile First’, Business Standard Oct 21, 2004. Desai, Sonalde, ‘Caste and Census: A Forward Looking Strategy’, Economic & Political Weekly, vol. xlv no. 29, July 17, 2010, pp. 10-13. Deshpande, Satish and Mary E. John, ‘The Politics of Not Counting Caste’, Economic & Political Weekly, June 19, 2010 vol. xlv no. 25, pp 39-42. Dreze, Jean, ‘Unique Facility, Or Recipe For Trouble?’, The Hindu, November 25, 2010 (http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/article911055.ece). Electronic Delivery of Services Bill, 2011 (draft), http://deity.gov.in/content/draftelectronic-delivery-services-bill-2011. Ghosh, Atig, (ed) Branding the Migrant: Arguments of Rights, Welfare and Security, Kolkata: Frontpage, 2013. Himanshu and Abhijit Sen, ‘Who not a Universal Food Security Legislation?’, Economic & Political Weekly, vol. 46 No. 12, March 19 - March 25, 2011, pp. 38-47. Kapur, Devesh, Partha Mukhopadhyay, and Arvind Subramanian, ‘More for the Poor and Less for and by the State: The Case for Direct Cash Transfers’. Economic and Political Weekly, April 12, 2008 http://www.iie.com/publications/papers/ subramanian0408b.pdf. Matthan, Rahul Matthan, ‘Privacy Bill a must to strengthen Aadhaar’, Livemint November 24, 2010. http://www.livemint.com/2010/11/24223047/Privacy-Bill-a-mustto-strengt.html. Matthan, Rahul, http://www.rahulmatthan.com/category/information-technology/ accessed Jan 1, 2011.

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Mehta, Pratap Bhanu, ‘My Caste and I’, Indian Express, May 12, 2010 http:// antireservation2007.sulekha.com/blog/post/2010/05/my-caste-and-i-pratapbhanu-mehta.htm. National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, A cost-benefit analysis of Aadhaar, November 2012. http://macrofinance.nipfp.org.in/FILES/uid_cba_paper.pdf. Natraj, V.K., ‘Why the Census Should Not Count Caste’, Economic & Political Weekly, vol. xlv no. 31, July 31, 2010, pp. 79-80. Nilekani, Nandan, Imagining India: Ideas for a New Century, New Delhi: Penguin, 2008. Pandey, Brijesh, ‘Natgrid will kick in from May 2011. Is the big brother threat for real?’, Tehelka Magazine, Vol. 7, Issue 45, Dated November 13, 2010. Ramanathan, Usha, ‘A State Of Surveillance’, International Environmental Law Research Centre, 2010. (http://www.ielrc.org/content/w1002.pdf). Ramanathan, Usha, ‘Implications of registering, tracking, profiling’, The Hindu, April 5, 2010 (http://www.hindu.com/2010/04/05/stories/2010040554240800.htm). Ramanthan, Usha, ‘A Unique Identity Bill’, Economic & Political Weekly, vol. xlv no. 30 July 24, 2010. Sanjay, B.P., The Role of Institutional Relationships in Communication Technology Transfer: A Case Study of the Indian National Satellite System (INSAT), Ph.D. Dissertation, Simon Fraser University, 1989. Sen, Amartya, ‘The Political Economy of Targeting’, http://adatbank.transindex.ro/html/ cim_pdf384.pdf. UIDAI, ‘Creating a Unique Identity Number for Every Resident in India’, 2009, http:// www.comp.polyu.edu.hk/conference/iceb/content/doc/UIDAI.pdf.

NOTES 1

Ghosh (ed.) 2013.

2

UIDAI, 2009, hereafter UID Working Paper http://www.comp.polyu.edu.hk/conference/iceb/content/ doc/UIDAI.pdf.

3

See Sanjay, 1989.

4

Bhalla, 1987, pp. 1082-1086.

5

Nilekani, 2008.

6

Draft Electronic Delivery of Services Bill, 2011, http://deity.gov.in/content/draft-electronic-deliveryservices-bill-2011.

7

Nitin Desai, former advisor to the Finance Ministry, alerts us to some of the problems we could face: Much of public discussion is on the perceived difference between India and other developing countries, particularly in Asia. The cry is for what is described as ‘world-class infrastructure’ that can support the rapidly growing aspirations of the urban middle class with their cars, refrigerators, airconditioners, shopping malls and air travel. More broadly the focus is on mega projects for urban transportation, highways, skyscrapers, large ports, and power projects. For example, in a recent online article, an adviser to FICCI expresses his anguish at

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INTRODUCTION

the absence in India of anything comparable to the spectacular bits of infrastructure he saw in East and South-East Asia. He then asks for ‘…50 major expressways, 100 key bridges, a dozen airports, five key ports and logistic hubs, ten world-class cities with services that compare with the best in the world, 100 new townships, 20 convention centers, 30 mega power projects etc.’ Is he aware of the fact that the exorbitant cost and poor economics of these showpiece investments were some of the factors behind the 1997 financial crisis? India Inc. needs better infrastructure for energy, supply chain management, and communications. This requires investment in power, roads, and ICT for productive purposes. But industry itself must understand that their future depends also on the last mile and that a substantial improvement there will open huge new opportunities for them. In some areas like telecom, where new technologies have opened up new options, this is working. In others we are still to see results. Private investment is not the magic wand that will spirit away the demons of inefficiency and lack of access. It will go to prosperous areas and lucrative applications where capacity utilisation and chargeable tariffs can lead to high returns. But the poorer areas will need to be served and even with service obligations in private licenses, much of the burden falls on the public sector. The untidy cohabitation of the public and the private does not really solve the problem of the last mile (Desai, ‘Put the Last Mile First’, 2004). 8

Dreze writes: ‘That the UID is, in effect, going to be compulsory is clear from many other documents. For instance, the Planning Commission's proposal for the National Food Security Act argues for ‘mandatory use of UID numbers which are expected to become operational by the end of 2010’ (note the optimistic time-frame). No UID, no food. Similarly, UIDAI's concept note on the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) assumes that ‘each citizen needs to provide his UID before claiming employment.’ Thus, Aadhaar will also be a condition for the right to work—so much for its voluntary nature’ (Dreze 2010: http://www.thehindu.com/ opinion/op-ed/article911055.ece).

9

The plan, according to newspaper reports, is that from May 2011, the National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID) will integrate 21 existing databases with Central and state government agencies and other organisations in the public and private sector such as banks, insurance companies, stock exchanges, airlines, railways, telecom service providers, chemical vendors, etc. Eleven government agencies (including RAW, Intelligence Bureau, Revenue Intelligence, Income Tax, etc.) will be able to access sensitive personal information of any individual—such as bank accounts, insurance policies, property owned or rented, travel, income tax returns, driving records, automobiles owned or leased, credit card transactions, stock market trades, phone calls, emails and SMSes, websites visited, etc. A National Population Registry will be established by the 2011 Census, during which fingerprints and iris scans would be taken along with GPS records of each household. According to the home ministry, the Central intelligence agencies and state police have plenty of information that is not shared or because there is no umbrella organisation to collate all the information, which any or all the agencies can share to generate real-time intelligence. The Natgrid enables quick extraction of information, data mining, pattern recognition and flagging ‘tripwires’ of suspicious or unusual activities (Pandey, 2010). Also see Ramanathan, 2010.

10 Arguing for the CCTNS, Chidambaram is quoted as saying that the ‘police stations in the country are, today, virtually unconnected islands. Thanks to telephones and wireless, and especially thanks to mobile telephones, there is voice connectivity between the police station and senior police officers, but that is about all. There is no system of data storage, data sharing and accessing data. There is no system under which one police station can talk to another directly. There is no record of crimes or criminals that can be accessed by a Station House Officer, except the manual records relating to that police station’. The goals of the proposed CCTNS are to ‘facilitate collection, storage, retrieval,

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analysis, transfer and sharing of data and information at the police station and between the police station and the State Headquarters and the Central Police Organisations’ (http://ncrb.nic.in/cctns. htm). 11 Chidambaram is quoted as saying, at the 22nd Intelligence Bureau Centenary Endowment lecture in December 2009 that such a Centre would be started by end-2010, that 24×7 police control rooms would be set up in all districts. The NCTC was effectively conceived after the 2008 Mumbai terrorist arrack (26/11), but has found widespread opposition from State governments, who have argued that the kinds of sweeping powers that a Central agency is meant to have violates the autonomy of state governments, given that law and order is a state subject according to the Constitution. The initial opposition to the NCTC has also focused on how the agency had been empowered to search and arrest people without keeping the state government, police or anti-terror squad in the loop. 12 As listed in the Census of India website FAQs, the NPR will work like this: it will gather details such as Name, Date of Birth, Sex, Present Address, Permanent Address, Names of Father, Mother and Spouse etc by visiting each and every household. All usual residents (phrase in original) will be eligible to be included irrespective of their Nationality. Each and every household will be given an Acknowledgement Slip at the time of enumeration. The data will then be entered into computers in the local language of the State as well as in English. Once this database has been created, biometrics such as photograph, 10 fingerprints and probably Iris information will be added for all persons aged 15 years and above. This will be done by arranging camps at every village and at the ward level in every town. Each household will be required to bring the Acknowledgement Slip to such camps. Those who miss these camps will be given the opportunity to present themselves at permanent NPR Centres to be set up at the Tehsil/Town level. In the next step, data will be printed out and displayed at prominent places within the village and ward for the public to see. Objections will be sought and registered at this stage. Each of these objections will then be enquired into by the local Revenue Department Officer and a proper disposal given in writing. Persons aggrieved by such order have a right of appeal to the Tehsildar and then to the District Collector. Once this process is over, the lists will be placed in the Gram Sabha in villages and the Ward Committee in towns. Claims and Objections will be received at this stage also and dealt with in the same manner described above. The Gram Sabha/Ward Committee has to give its clearance or objection within a fixed period of time after which it will be deemed that the lists have been cleared. The lists thus authenticated will then be sent to the Unique Identity Authority of India (UIDAI) for de-duplication and issue of UID Numbers. All duplicates will be eliminated at this stage based on comparison of biometrics. Unique ID numbers will also be generated for every person. The cleaned database along with the UID Number will then be sent back to the Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner, India (ORG&CCI) and would form the National Population Register. As the UID system works on the basis of biometric de-duplication, in the case of persons of age 15 years and above (for whom biometrics is available), the UID Number will be available for each individual. For those below the age of 15 years (for whom biometrics is not available), the UID Number will be linked to the parent or guardian. (http://censusindia.gov.in/2011-FAQ/FAQ-Public.html#B). 13 http://censusindia.gov.in/2011-Documents/citizenship_rules2003.pdf. 14 Ramanthan, ‘A Unique Identity Bill’, 2010, pp. 12. 15 Sen, ‘The Political Economy of Targeting’, http://adatbank.transindex.ro/html/cim_pdf384.pdf. 16 Himanshu and Abhijit Sen, 2011, pp. 38-47. 17 Brief history of issues by Himanshyu and Sen: The PDS was universal in 1993-94 but targeted in 2004-05, and NSS data for these years show what happened to leakages. In 1993-94, leakage in rice was 19% which increased to 40% in 2004-05; in wheat, it went up from 41% to 73% and for rice and wheat together, it increased from 28% in 1993-94 to 54% in 2004-05. Per capita per month consumption of PDS rice and wheat remained unchanged (0.99 kg in 1993-94 and 1.01 kg

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INTRODUCTION

in 2004-05) although PDS offtake doubled and subsidy increased even more. If feasibility is judged on the ability to stabilise food prices and in terms of physical and financial leakage, as the RC does, the targeted PDS scores very poorly against the universal PDS by past official assessments. 18 Despite criticisms such as these which have been voiced since the early 2000s, the Government has sought to expand targeting to include, in 2005, dual pricing schemes for kerosene, power and even for petrol, with Indian Oil Corporation proposing cheaper petrol and dedicated pumps for twowheelers. ‘Targeting in Theory’, Business Standard, December 08, 2005, http://www.businessstandard.com/india/news/targeting-in-theory/231031/ 19 Kapur, Mukhopadhyay, subramanian0408b.pdf.

and

Subramanian,

http://www.iie.com/publications/papers/

20 National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, 2012. http://macrofinance.nipfp.org.in/FILES/uid_ cba_paper.pdf. 21 Mehta, 2010, http://antireservation2007.sulekha.com/blog/post/2010/05/my-caste-and-ipratap-bhanu-mehta.htm. 22 Baxi, 2010, pp. 25-28. 23 Natraj, 2010, pp. 79-80. 24 Letter published in The Hindu on August 13, 2010, by Dr. M. Vijayanunni, Former Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India, Justice M.N. Rao, Chairperson, National Commission for the Backward Classes, Prof. Sukhadeo Thorat, Chairperson, University Grants Commission, Prof. Satish Deshpande, Department of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics, Prof. Yogendra Yadav, Political Scientist, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Prof. S. Japhet, Director, Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion, National Law School of India, Bengaluru, Dr. Chandan Gowda, Associate Professor, Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion, National Law School of India, Bengaluru, Prof. Valerian Rodrigues, Political Scientist, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Prof. Ravi Varma Kumar, Senior Advocate and former Chairperson, Karnataka Backward Classes Commission. http://www.thehindu.com/ opinion/op-ed/article568602.ece. 25 Deshpande and John, 2010, pp. 39-42. 26 Desai, 2010, pp. 10-13. 27 http://www.rahulmatthan.com/category/information-technology/ accessed Jan 1, 2011. 28 Matthan, 2010. http://www.livemint.com/2010/11/24223047/Privacy-Bill-a-must-to-strengt.html

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1

The Digital Ecosystem

– The Conceptual Challenge



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Networking-in-Governance: Revisiting The Digital Horizon Dipankar Sinha Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Calcutta

The claim of much modern technology to determine governance needs urgently to be qualified with a number of concerns. On the one hand, it is correct that digital technology is already massively influencing government policy, and is poised to be determinative for policy implementation in the immediate future. On the other, new technology is having social consequences that are often out of step with governance practices. Among the concerns is the discrepancy between networked structures on the one hand, and traditional governance mechanisms on the other. Networks are not only growing faster than governments can comprehend, but they are also accessing definitions for themselves that are elusive to policy. Techno-managerial approaches to administering networks often fail to comprehend the network-readiness of either the government or of communities.

INTRODUCTION

The question of identity, intertwined as much with the self as with individual

and collective existence, and in turn inextricably linked to social, cultural, and cognitive dimensions, may well be one of the most complex issues of all time.1 Such identity becomes all the more complicated when technology is added to it. Notwithstanding the oft-repeated claim that technology is a form of ‘concentrated logic and rationality’ and therefore bears a ‘neutral’ character, the fact remains the 2



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question of that technology is not simply a technological question. For all such new technology, having brought to the inequitable digital divide various claims of an as-yet unseen transformatory potential, it is no longer possible to make any linear, essentialist analyses, or any simplistic and assertions or facile generalisations. On the one hand, it is true that technology is today making major promises and claims that cannot any longer be ignored, such as the following: Unlike traditional brick-and-mortar agencies that are hierarchical, linear, and one-way in their communications style, digital delivery systems are nonhierarchical, nonlinear, interactive, and available twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. The nonhierarchical character. . . frees citizens to seek information at their own convenience.2 On the other hand is the ground reality, especially in developing countries like India. There can be hardly any doubt that the emergence and astonishing pace of growth of new technology in the late modern era has aggravated, rather than overcome, various kinds of fragmentations and insecurities,3 and indeed brought a new edge to social exclusion. While there exists a strong material core to the association of identity with new technologies that guarantee or produce such identity, there is also a symbolic marking, implying how we make sense of social relations and practices,4 that concerns for instance those who may be excluded and those included. This in turn makes necessary a need for developing a new conceptual lens not only to observe the reinvention of identity through the insertion of older versions of identity into new ones, but also to comprehend in the process the changing nature of governance vis-à-vis its citizenry. The moot issue here is not just ‘how’, but ‘for whom’? Yet, the interface of identity and new technology—perhaps because of the severe challenge posed by its very complexity and the near-elusiveness— induces both social theorists and practitioners and activists associated with day-to-day administration and governance to explore newer ways of lending a ‘down to earth’ character to new technology. For several such initiatives and interventions, the primary goal is to establish the legitimacy of new technology, to get it to shed its elitist orientation and its mystified and neutral In the Wake of Aadhaar


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image, and in the process to integrate it into everyday life and link it to the basic needs of ordinary people. The major means by which such a goal may be arrived at is to somehow ensure that its remarkable power is utilised in the service of transparent, accountable and responsive governance, better known by a provocative term: ‘good governance’. The Identity Project, conducted by the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society, Bangalore, takes up the tough task of exploring this problematic link from various vantage points. It has, at centrestage, the concept of the Digital Ecosystem. This concept has been heavily influenced by the natural sciences and is still in the process of being developed. It is based on the convergence of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), telecommunications and media, and propelled by technological advances such as broadband distribution. In it the idea, as viewed by the World Economic Forum,5 is that the users would evolve from ‘mere consumers to active participants’, in a ‘healthy environment that both creates economic value and adds well being to society’. At the same time, it is recognised that emerging Digital Ecosystems, intimately associated with the emergence and growth of networked organisations, are bound to generate ‘many risks and challenges’ and ‘critical uncertainties’ for government policies, even as they present new opportunities for creating social and economic value. This caution is important because the concept is yet to shed its techno-managerial orientation in which even the question of identity is part of the ‘management system’. Thus, approaching and situating the Digital Ecosystem in the social arena is at best an unenviable task, demanding not just meticulous but innovative approaches and methodologies. Not surprisingly, the CSCS project encounters this, as is revealed by its findings based on a vast pool of data and information. We would in the penultimate section of this essay explain our impression of the project.

NETWORKING-IN-GOVERNANCE: BARE ESSENTIALS

With the ascendance of ICT in governance, a specific kind of structural

reorientation and reorganisation is taking place in the domain, particularly since 4



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the 1990s–a period that also coincided with the intensification of market-friendly liberalisation. Networking-in-governance became an inevitable consequence of a concept of development that was increasingly determined by informational modes and their constitutive networks as spaces of flow. At the same time, as an inevitable consequence of such a trend, the material structures of governance in the form of concerned organisations and institutions were also required to acquire ‘inward’ flexibility. Such flexibility should have been of particular concern to the social theorists since, as a vast and growing body of literature shows, such networks are potentially exclusionary in nature. To make them inclusionary would require efficient and effective management and regulation along ways that still need discussion. The question, then, is whether governance in India, in the specific way of initiating such inward flexibility for efficient management and regulation, is keeping pace with the spectacular development of new technology, including its most evident manifestation: digitisation. This very question leads us to yet another vital, and perhaps even more fundamental, question: is the Indian state ready yet for such transformation? While we know that the state of e-readiness takes a lot of time, the fact remains that an attempt needs to be made to trace the sources of tension between the imperatives of governance networking and those of a technology network, keeping especially the fate and the status of the ordinary people in mind. Such a perspective is not based on the assumption that technological networks are to be uncritically celebrated, as techno-optimists want them to be, nor is it based on the techno-pessimist assumption that new technology is either dispensable or, worse, actively harmful. Our major concern stems from neither, but rather from the idea that such networks need to being scrutinised to understand to what extent they are synchronised with the norms of effective governance in order to be utilised to expand new opportunities in the realm of human development, welfare, and wellbeing. Technology, governance, and human development are now the central concepts in the contemporary discourse and practice of development. At the same time, they constitute the ‘hot agenda’ of the state-of-the-art



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social science research. Social science researchers from various disciplinary vantage points seek to explore these distinct, but intimately connected, concepts to measure the potential of public policy formulation and implementation. Clearly, the Indian case has clearly much potential for exploration and theorisation. The case for globalising India, which has been going through a phase of transition both in governance and technological spheres since the first decade of the new millennium, also causes the spillover of policy discourse into larger public discourse. The shrill voice and the frequency with which various stakeholders, deciding our fate, would utter ‘good governance’, ‘inclusive technology’, and ‘participatory development’ should have made us believe that we are in safe hands. But there is a catch, and the catch is not just that it is often hollow rhetoric. A deeper and more intense investigation could reveal fundamental flaws in the perception of the stakeholders themselves, who tend to ignore the vital point that technology needs to be at the service of people and not people at the service of the technology. The root of the problem is perceptional as well as experiential, and it lies in overestimating technological networks at the cost of human networking—the base of effective governance.

Dr. Amod Kumar, Mother NGO, St. Stephen’s Hospital, New Delhi.

The question is not just about access to such networks: stakeholders tend to forget that content is just as important when technology networks are being brought closer to governance. This is especially so when stakeholders make it a habit of informing us of the importance of making India a Knowledge Society.

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The UNESCO Report on Towards Knowledge Societies6 categorically draws attention to exclusionary trends vis-à-vis the information network, saying that ‘(It) is not only a question of access and connectivity, but also of content. It results from the knowledge divide as much as from the digital divide.’ Various tension zones rise in the transitional phase in which India now finds itself. Even if we accept the key indicators of ‘good governance’ as these are being listed, the question nevertheless remains, ‘governance for whom’? If the instant reply is that it is meant for the ‘people’, we are still left with the question ‘how to do it’? If the answer is, as is often the case, ‘through networks’, it is too general and vague a description. Manuel Castells,7 who has arguably done the most powerful theorisation of networks, points out that a network is simply a set of inter-connected nodes. It may have a hierarchy, but it has no center. Relationships between nodes are asymmetrical, but they are all necessary for the functioning of the network—for the circulation of money, information, technology, images, goods, services, or people throughout the network. The most central distinction in the organisational logic is to be or not to be—in the network. Be in the network, and you can share and, over time, increase your chances. Be out of the network, or become switched off, and your chances vanish since everything that counts is organised around a worldwide web of interacting networks. We have before us a growing number of graphic illustrations on the changing ambience that a network-induced process brings to the arena of policy making. For yet another question preoccupies the mind of an analyst: is the mode of governance in India keeping pace with the networking ambience? Living in the days of globalisation, marked most fundamentally by the extraordinary contraction of space and time, we can no longer take refuge in conventional, if not outmoded, arguments that we live in a different world detached from the one visualised here by Castells. Nor can we go for the argument that being a developing state we still have sufficient time left to adjust ourselves to such a huge process. In a world that habitually and contemptuously dismisses late-starters as ‘laggards’, such a wait-for-a-while argument does not have credibility. The imperatives of the contemporary notion of governance and those of new technology are based on the ‘do it now’ dictum. In the Wake of Aadhaar


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Perhaps sensing this problem and realising at the same time the danger in making it public, several concerned stakeholders have attempted to assure that all is well with our technology networks and networking-in-governance. As a strategy to obliterate the questions posed above, they do not hesitate to aggressively publicise the creation and promotion of ‘networking’ in technocratic and techno-scientific terms that celebrate ‘technological progress’. The strategy serves the interests of stakeholders but often hides inefficiency in ensuring either the effectiveness or legitimacy of governance. Let us assert here that, contrary to a widespread technocratic perception, technology is not neutral. It is usefully pointed out by MacKenzie and Wajcman8 that while the physical object of technology is perhaps neutral, patterns of both privilege and exclusivity inevitably arise when it gets embedded with the knowledge of which technology is used and how it works, which in turn becomes a major concern of governance. Wajcman herself gets the point directly: ‘We are concerned that this view of technology, as an external, autonomous force exerting an influence on society, narrows the possibility for democratic engagement with technology’.9 Technology has no consciousness or will of its own. Its mode of utilisation is governancebound by the will and indeed whims of political actors and bureaucrats who are directly in the business of governance. Nor are governance and development neutral ideas and practices. Politically speaking, any attempt to pose their neutrality—anywhere in the world but especially in developing societies—obfuscates the increasing clamour for bias in favour of the poor and marginal segments of the population. Such an attempt, in the ultimate analysis, is what also exacerbates tension zones, society being divided into ‘us’ and ‘them’, between the technology-rich few and the technologypoor many. When technology-induced networks bypass both people and social spaces, ordinary people can and do get trapped, downgraded and wasted. The whole process can often to severely diminish the credibility of the act of governance, risking the veritable transformation of society into a wasteland. It would be relevant to recall Bruno Latour’s meaningful assertion—‘technology is society made durable’.10 To return then to the idea of flexibility, to technology-induced networks as spaces of flows, over spaces or places that are products of an informational 8



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mode of development: such a mode in turn clearly has intimate links with both the Information Revolution and with global capital. Information can be both the raw material as well as the true outcome of global capital circulation. Of particular importance in our discussion therefore is the fact that the prime feature of information, and the informational mode of development, is its inward flexibility and tendency towards decentering. Castells’ excerpt above drops enough hints about such trend. But as Castells elsewhere also reminds us,11 the network architecture is ‘dynamic, open-ended, expansive. . .’ And, we may add, the key component of the informational mode of development is interactive rather than institutional. This does not imply that institutions in this mode would be out of circulation. Rather, they are required to adapt themselves to the new ambience and to new practices. This is precisely where the task of stakeholders becomes so crucial. Let us now return to the question we asked above: is the Indian state ready for such transformation? Castells further warns us that ‘networks are potentially exclusionary, if not absolutely managed and regulated’.12 The words are prophetic because the current scenario in India shows that their adequate management is a tricky, dicey and delicate task, especially in a class-divided, caste-divided, gender-biased society further aggravated by a growing, rather than reducing, disparity between rich and poor.

S. Kurberan, Consultant, Society for the Elimination of Rural Poverty (SERP), Hyderabad: discusses at some length the smart-card system of payments for NREGA in the state. He provides an overview of the process followed for payments. Kuberan is skeptical about some of the biometric data already available with the A.P. State being used, but expects that things will now improve with the arrival of the Aadhaar connector. In the Wake of Aadhaar


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It is worth remembering perhaps that governance is not just about universal and abstract rules and norms. It entails concrete collective action. Networking, as a key mechanism of governance, calls for inter-related organisational transformation to integrate differentiated actor systems and to adjust to problems that cannot be tackled by formal institutional configurations. The proponents of ‘good governance’, too numerous to be mentioned separately here, have been advocating open, transparent, responsible, accountable, and predictable policy making through economic deregulation and political decentralisation. The questions still stubbornly remain: is governance being ‘distributed’ appropriately in an inequitable society like ours? The task is not limited to the state, but the fact remains that the state has the prime responsibility, and irrespective of the abuses hurled against it, remains the dominant agent of authoritative allocation of values, whether through its bureaucracy or through its army. However, as I have explained elsewhere,13 when the Indian state is at best no more than an information-generator and can at its worst indulge in detention incommunicado, communication—as the process of generation, circulation and negotiation of meanings—is often sacrificed at the altar of expediency. So can the effectiveness of governance be, given that effectiveness cannot survive without communication, as Laumann and Knoke show when dealing with the participation of actors in the policy making process and revealing the central position, in such participation, of communication and the resource exchange network.14 One can discern, at this stage, two vital points regarding what we may call the network-readiness of both stakeholders and citizens. First, even in some of the examples where networking-in-governance is being implemented in a reasonably efficient manner, the major thrust remains technological in nature, with citizen participation acknowledged as ‘very important’ but viewed more as a ‘future task’, rather than a current imperative. Second, in the other extreme worst case scenario, such networking is sought to be implemented in a manner in which citizen participation does not enjoy even minimum recognition.

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Interview with Aadhaar-enrollee Birsi, in Ratu block, Ranchi, who feels that having an Aadhaar “card” will help her stand for Panchayat elections next year, since she needs some form of identification. She also has ideas of doing certain things for her village if she indeed gets elected as the Panchayat Pradhan.

COSTS AND FAILURE

Let us, instead of scattering our examples, refer to a single report. The University

of Manchester report by Richard Heeks, titled eGovernment for Development: The Impact of eGovernment Failure,15 explains why many e-government projects in developing and/or transitional countries fail. It has general significance to our discussion because it directly reviews the role of the stakeholders engaged in networking governance. I focus on one section, which asks this question: what are the costs of such failure?—to take my argument forward. The report identifies six potential costs whenever there is an e-failure: 1. Direct Financial Costs. The amount of money invested in equipment, consultants, new facilities, training programmes, etc. 2. Indirect Financial Costs. The money invested in the time and effort of public servants involved. 3. Opportunity Costs. Better ways in which that money could have been spent, if it wasn’t spent on the e-government failure.

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4. Political Costs. The loss of ‘face’ and loss of image for individuals, organisations and nations involved in failure. 5. Beneficiary Costs. The loss of benefits that a successful e-government project would have brought. 6. Future Costs. An e-government failure increases the barriers for future e-government project, through loss of morale of stakeholders, particularly e-government champions, who may defect to the private sector or overseas, through the potential loss of credibility and loss of trust in e-government as an approach to change, and as a result, risk aversion among some stakeholders and support for those with vested interests in the status quo. The report notes that a key problem among e-government practitioners is lack of awareness of these costs. Most costs are intangible; few are measured in the event of e-government failure, and such failure is typically ‘hushed up’. This also explains why, despite the high prevalence of failure and its high costs, officials and politicians are generally across the board keen on e-government. A further consequence is that few e-government failures yield any sort of learning, since knowledge about failure is never either captured, transferred or applied. As a result, mistakes are wastefully repeated.

Interview with Aadhaar enrollee Roshan Lal, at Mandi, Himachal Pradesh. The enrollee’s problem is that his wife’s name has been incorrectly put, and he does not know how he should proceed to get it corrected. He believes that Aadhaar can change many things about everyday life, but has yet to see any of the claims being advertised on large posters actually taking place. 12 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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Why are stakeholders resistant to learning? Apart from the fact that learning is hard, there are other factors at work. 1. Irrelevance of success/failure. Often stakeholders are only interested in association with the inception of high-profile e-governance projects, not with either their implementation and or their outcomes. Others see the project as a means of directing investments to local IT firms, not as a means to achieve e-government goals. In these and similar cases, the outcome—whether the project succeeds or fails—is of almost no importance to stakeholders, so they have no interest in trying to learn in order to do better next time. 2. Fear of exposure. Often stakeholders fear that a learning process will expose their shortcomings: their ignorance about Information and Communication Technology (ICT), their self-serving behaviours, their corruption and so forth. They will thus resist a learning process. 3. Cultural inappropriateness. In some organisational or national cultures, it is acceptable to admit and learn from failure. In others, it is not: failures are to be ignored or denied, and are certainly not to be discussed for the purposes of learning. 4. Skewing of incentives. In some situations, there could be incentives for ongoing failure. For example, with some e-governance applications, ‘success’ may mean that the public agency is downsized or loses financial resources because of its efficiency gains. By contrast, failure may mean maintenance of resource levels, or even continuing investment in renewed e-governance efforts. Likewise, vendors and consultants may see ongoing income from failures in a way they would not if an application succeeds. In such cases, stakeholders may not want to learn how not to fail; they want to continue failing. Alongside this may be a lack of incentives, such as audit, censure, litigation, that may encourage learning from failure. 5. Stakeholder absence. By the time an e-governance project ends, key stakeholders have often moved on to other jobs/projects and have no continuing interest in the original project. In the Wake of Aadhaar 13


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6. External ownership. Related to a number of the above causes, e-governance projects are sometimes driven from outside government and even from outside the country—e.g. by foreign donors or by foreign consultants or by multinational vendors—and are not owned by local stakeholders, who therefore feel disempowered or disinterested in any learning process. 7. Environmental instability/uncertainty. A characteristic of developing/ transitional countries is the relative instability of the social, economic, political environment. Such a situation reduces the value of, and incentives for, learning since often the ‘goalposts will have moved’ from one e-governance project to the next. It is important to add here that the mode of governance in India has had greater thrust on information dissemination and less on information gathering. Added to it is the culture of secrecy with the Right to Information (RTI), despite having gained legal recognition in recent times, not being taken seriously enough by stakeholders. The scant regard for non-interactive technology on the part of stakeholders also complicates the problem.

Jitender Singh and other representatives of the IL & FS at the Una enrollment centre, Himachal Pradesh talk about the uses of the UID once the numbers are issued. They also speak about the number of districts they cover with details such as number of centres, number of booths in each centre. Procedures of enrollment, including managing crowds, and the routines of operators are discussed.

For ordinary people, at the other end of the spectrum, technology is marked by physical and mental barriers—with the result that it is either mystified or is treated with excessive awe. The promotion of technology as 14 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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a ‘magic wand’, often laced with high rhetoric, undermines the growth of an efficient work culture, localisation of content and so forth, all of which are needed to make it an effective instrument for networking. In brief, the technology-based upgradation of services receives wide publicity as ‘e-governance’, and popular perceptions are sought to be moulded by it. In it the ‘e’ hijacks governance. On the learning approach to examples of e-government failure, the Manchester University report recommends four major steps. These steps further explain our contention that networkingin-governance is both a learning process and a continuing one, marked by the need to methodically cover a select number of consecutive steps: 1. Recognition. Recognise that failures exist, and that they provide opportunities for generating knowledge. 2. Capture Knowledge. Find ways to capture the knowledge generated by the project. Ways of doing this include regular review meetings during the project; post-project evaluation meetings; and commissioning specific ‘learning reports’. However, stakeholder motivation is critical. 3. Transfer Knowledge. Find ways to move the knowledge from where it is captured to where it is needed. Ideas include: have project staff train others; hold informal ‘lessons learned’ meetings that mix staff from the failed project with others etc. Think of the transfer process as a ‘knowledge market’ with buyers and sellers of knowledge (sellers being those who have learned from the e-government failure). Motivation will again be critical. Sellers must want to sell their knowledge, and buyers must want to buy that knowledge. Are suitable incentives in place to encourage buying and selling? 4. Apply Knowledge. This is hard to organise. Staff will apply knowledge if it is useful to them; and will not if it is not. Some governments build into new e-government projects a ring-fenced time that is allocated solely to ‘learning lessons from the past’. Both the costs, and the steps to be followed, reveal that while the technological divide often threatens to come in the way of social, political and economic In the Wake of Aadhaar 15


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entitlements, it is at the same time possible to both recover lost ground and to humanise networks of governance and technology. It becomes important to assert that there is nothing ‘exclusively’ spontaneous about either electronification or the digitisation process; both are bound by preconditions and relations, though not necessarily of the same kind, produced at transnational, international, national and local levels. At the same time, both processes seek to unleash a control mechanism with the purpose of influencing and shaping the society that situates them. This results in a ‘tugof-war’ between the networking process and society. However, a note of caution is perhaps necessary. While analysing both the costs and the sources of failure, it becomes important to be cautious about the temptation to explain them away solely in terms of ‘defects’ either in the ‘deployment mode’ or in the ‘implementation process’ (or both). The problem could perhaps lie in information itself being conceptualised and analysed in a narrow way. Tracing the epistemological roots of such closure vis-à-vis the perspective on ‘classificational’ information, Maruyama suggested that it is sourced from the idea that some kinds of information has an objective meaning which is universally understandable, and can make sense without reference to other kinds.16 A typical ‘economic perspective’ on information, for example, evaluates it as the most powerful factor of production and the most valuable resource. A typical ‘social perspective’ relates information and ICT to enhancing consciousness about one’s own ability among members of society. A typical ‘cultural perspective’ would call for the promotion of information values for a reorientation of individual and collective values. In a typical ‘political perspective’, information would be hailed as an enabling force and ICT would become an empowering infrastructure. The basic epistemological assumption common to all these ‘segmented’ perspectives is that the universal circulation of information, backed by the astounding reach and power of ICT, will surely expand the universe of ‘development’, and will equally surely lead to the birth of a whole new world. Hype sets in when ICT is perceived superficially, and made to lend legitimacy to policy by hiding its problems and crises from the public arena.



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‘The Emmigannur Weavers’ Cooperative Society goes back a long way: it was started in 1938 by Machani Somappa, himself a weaver, and later (in 1940) one of the founders of the MGB Group, later known mainly for their surface cargo transport business. The declining conditions of the cooperative society are paralleled with the arrival of newer kinds of debt, new (mostly unskilled) jobs, and an entirely new economy. The sheer number of cards, loan documents, and ‘scheme books’ pose new challenges to the sustainability of traditional skills.

An organic growth of (new) technology, mentioned in the preceding section, requires an organic view of information. Such information has to take into account two points: i) the information that lies with people at large, which they seek to disseminate to others, including to policy makers; and ii) the information that they lack, either partially or completely, and which they seek to receive from others, especially from policy makers. These two points are, I suggest, inextricably mixed with the felt needs of the people concerned. But under the technocratic impression that information is something ‘already there’ and only needs to be fed into the system, Indian policy makers are more guided by the idea of ‘universal access’ to new technology: an idea in vogue primarily in transnational marketing strategies that often masquerade as development strategy. New technology-induced digital inclusion, based on an open-ended approach, is therefore not simply a matter of cosmetic tinkering: to bridge gaps here and there or to squeeze technology into the lives of the people in one way or another. It is required that technology be accessed meaningfully and appropriately, and that it provide adequate and multi-level opportunities. This makes it imperative for relevant content to be produced, based on the specific



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needs of the people concerned. Then again, the context can be meaningful, appropriate and relevant only when stakeholders are ready to embark on a ‘reality check’ based on the nature and availability of local resources, local knowledges and local skills. One of the major problems that even well-meaning proponents of ICT show is that they are more concerned with the incidence of the Digital Divide rather than with digital inclusion. As a result, more often than not, wellmeaning initiatives based on a ‘we know it better than them’ stance, tend to impose new technology, rather than making any attempt to develop them organically, i.e. in accordance with the needs, priorities, aspirations, skills, and knowledge of the recipients. A report titled Inclusion in the Information Age: Reframing the Debate reinforces the point: To foster participation and involvement, the technology must meet people’s needs—not define those needs. Information technology can help people in their day-to-day lives if it is designed and structured in such a way that it helps answer their questions and solve their problems. Otherwise it becomes a barrier and a source of frustration. This is the danger of what some refer to as the ‘over-wired’ world. It is important to understand that individuals have different needs. A one-size-fits-all may help some—and increase their participation and involvement—but will block others. By focusing on ‘demand-pull’, rather than ‘technology-push’, we can better tailor the technology to meet individual needs.17

CSCS PROJECT: TOWARDS A NEW DISCOURSE AND VALUE ADDITION

Referring specifically to the CSCS project,

what is especially significant about it is that it has relied on extensive field-generated data to bring to the fore various issues, questions and problems, including those which have no immediate solutions in sight. Two prime features of the project are noteworthy. First, being 18



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in the field, combining collection of data with the ‘feel’ of the locale, facilitates not just academic analyses, but before that, taking stock of the public perception of the issues concerned. It takes studies beyond the run-of the-mill surveys and lends to them a higher status, both methodologically and epistemologically. I shall selectively and briefly discuss various segments of the project, but before I do it let me refer back to the broader conceptual framework itself, with specific reference to the notion and practice of networking. The Identity Project seems to be initiating, amidst various roadblocks and negotiations, a new discourse of digital inclusion in which both the opportunities and constraints are accorded due importance, and its goals investigated within both formal and informal settings. We may at this juncture present an overview of the project. If we consider its various segments, the tendency to go beyond the black-box of the technocratic and managerial approaches is evident. Let us in this context refer to the segment on financial inclusion. The project makes it clear that financial inclusion is much more than what is often (erroneously) made synonymous with it: micro-credit. While micro-credit is an important component of financial inclusion, its promotion at the cost of other components has created a severe imbalance in the financial inclusion policy, which in turn has created a yawning gap between the demand side—the urge to borrow from banks—and the supply side—the expansion of banking service and product portfolios. In its inclusive orientation, the project follows UNDP’s approach to financial inclusion and asserts that ‘inclusion’ has to go beyond financial inclusion and should encompass livelihoods, economic and social inclusion. Pointing to the deficiency of the key formal organisations, especially the banking sector, the project acknowledges the challenge at hand by the contention that the ‘nuances of implementing financial inclusion are more complex with different dynamics seemingly at work.’ At the same time, the project finds a silver lining in the relative success of the Business Correspondents and/or Business Financiers, at least in the context of rural Andhra Pradesh, despite the indifference of the banking sector. The critique in this case emerges from the peculiar scenario in which, on the one hand, the micro-finance companies go for multiple lending to finance ‘everything and anything’ without either In the Wake of Aadhaar 19


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adequate homework on knowledge of borrowers, and, on the other hand, have a zero-tolerance policy on providing (re)payment relief to borrowers. The scenario is even more complicated with the lack of any avenues for arbitration. On the creation of the UID/Aadhaar network, the flagship project of the Government of India, which has generated lot of debates in the public domain in India—with issues as wide ranging as invasion of privacy, construction of surveillance society, lack of legal foundation, marginalisation of the public distribution system (PDS), ‘othering’ of migrants, marketing of biometric system and so forth—the project adopts a much more optimistic stance. It pins its optimism on a more careful government and more watchful civil society organisations in making the UID work from bottom-up—from the grassroots-level beneficiaries themselves. Regarding yet another segment of the project, the PDS, especially in focusing on two attempts at restructuring it in the 1990s—the Revamped Public Distribution System Approach (1992) and the Targeted Public Distribution System (1997)—the project has brought to the fore the contentious issue of food security. In its focus on the monitoring of the PDS in Tamil Nadu, the project justifiably refers to the need for a combined approach in which state-of the-art technology along with various biometric measures, are to be simultaneously utilised with community-level monitoring and various vigilance movers at the groundlevel. While also appreciating the role of Aadhaar in effecting portable identification for beneficiaries, a cloud-based management system-led tracking of foodgrain movement, and possible confirmation of entitlements through electronic transfer, the project warns that the ‘real problem’ would be to resolve the supply side issues, such as predicting the demand for food supply articles for a floating beneficiary base. On the provocative notion of ‘privacy’ the project provides a fillip to the ongoing debate with its submission that, while the overwhelming portion of the privacy discourse ‘targets governments, corporate players, advertisers, and other actors who perform overt surveillance on our digitally public data’, it fails to recognise that ‘at the end of the day, people are looking



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at privacy from each other.’ It calls for a more nuanced debate on privacy with the advent of digital technology and online activities. The project acknowledges the importance of the database in governance, and therefore it does not reflect any inherent opposition to databases being an instrument of ‘surveillance’ of citizenry. However, it expresses serious concerns about ‘incrementally designed’ databases, which mostly occur as instant responses to developments. This contingency method, the project finds, results in inaccurate and incomplete data, inappropriate disclosure, access and security vis-à-vis data—all of which are supposed to have an adverse effect on privacy. The project prefers a more methodical and meticulous construction of databases, with due importance provided to potential and planned interoperability among government databases. It provides a series of recommendations for this purpose. There are certain areas in which the contentions of the CSCS project invites doubts, counter-points and further queries, which is a healthy sign for democratic governance. Thus, for instance, the findings of the case study conducted in Tripura, a state of the North-East, which has been at the forefront of enlisting people for the UID. To the author of this essay, the reason for such a rush for enlistment might be more complex than what is found in the study, and there might well be counter-images of the state against what the project pitches in—the growing image of the state as ‘the modern, liberal, techno-centric face of Tripura’. However, the attempt to capture the constitution and reconstitution of identity amidst negotiations with an ascending market is interesting, and warrants more intense study on the state itself, preferably in a comparative framework with other states. In arguments provided in the segment on the digital identity of the homeless, the project rightly plays on the dialectics of what it calls ‘digital legality’ and ‘dubious legality’. However, while looking for the ‘stability of the proposed digital identity’ it still leaves a vital question wide open: can identity be digitised at all?—or will it be, at best, only certain segments? Digital fanatics who hail the technology as the ‘last stage of modernisation’ often tend to reduce us to digitally mediated signifiers of human body and agency. And, apart from other concerns, despite increasingly shrill claims of ‘unfailing In the Wake of Aadhaar 21


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precision’, several doubts and apprehensions remain about whether such claims even work. One finds a number of positive traits in the collage of material produced by the CSCS project. First, in putting the concept of Digital Ecology at the centre stage and therefore recognising information flows as core components of the information ecosystem, the project provides a primacy to information which, paradoxically enough, is often overlooked in the zeal to publicise digital inclusion unilaterally on the basis of deployment of ICT. It is because the underlying premise of the findings of the project reinstates the argument that the act of digital inclusion is inseparable from broader inclusive practices, that make it possible for them to argue the necessity for a democratisation of information flow. Second, in locating both the possibility of inclusion and exclusion, whether of individuals, families or communities—with continued emphasis on the ‘last mile approach’—the project desists from putting excessive stress on access as the end-all and be-all of digital inclusion—and advocates availability of meaningful, appropriate and relevant content and opportunities for use and participation. Third, it does not either undermine or denigrate the potential of non-users of new technology by branding them as ‘laggards’, and it pays due regard, directly or indirectly, to the differential outcome of the use of new technology. Fourth, it generates the idea that acceptance of state-of-the-art technology by ordinary people is a matter of introduction, familiarising them with new opportunities created by making them participants in the process. This also minimises the excessive influence of the intermediary of expertise. Fifth, based on a number of case studies, the project highlights a number of best practices which leave very useful clues for further development. Sixth, it avoids the unnecessary and somewhat dangerous stance of negating the significance of traditional ‘off-line’ modes of communication, which make the project different from excessively ‘radical’ perspectives advocating the disposability of the non-electronic modes of communication. Last but not the least, most vitally, the project has enough clues that leave scope for further and richer theorisation on the theme. Expansion of such scope has lot of importance, especially if one considers how Van Dijk, one of the most consistent analysts of the digital order, 22 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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expressed his dissatisfaction at the lack of theorisation on the digital divide, lamenting that it has remained at a descriptive level, centering around the demographics of income, education, age, sex, ethnicity and so forth, and has not really addressed deeper social, cultural, and psychological causes.19 He precisely emphasised the need to relate the digital divide to a more general theory of social inequality, and thus to other types of inequality or even to the concept of human inequality in general. I would add that there is no other way but this to lessen the dominance of the technocratic and technicist approach to the theme.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

It is common knowledge that overzealous exponents of the digitisation process

tend to promote and publicise ICT in a manner which is by itself a power-laden ‘top-down’ process, marginalising skeptical and critical expressions. Most often in the name of bureaucratic and technocratic efficiency, and having an excessive faith in the regime of precision, critical perspectives are dismissed contemptuously as ‘aberrations’. This not only leaves the technology question out of public scrutiny but on a broader scale undermines values, rights, freedoms and privileges that have been associated with a democratic polity. This process results, as Habermas argues,20 in the colonisation of our imagination, even a colonisation of the very life world dedicated to transmitting cultural norms and integrating various social spheres. Such colonisation through technicisation invariably takes its toll—by threatening, minimising and ending the traces of diversity, dissent, protest and resistance—not only in political institutions but also in aesthetic and expressive institutions.21 It is in this background that the project makes its own contribution to finding means by which to bring back the power of new technology within the ambit of public scrutiny, in which acting and transacting citizens are supposed to have a significant role. In the process, it lays bare the need for addressing the emerging horizon marked by the advent of digital technology in governance and the consequent reconfiguration of practices, relationships, obligations and so forth.



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REFERENCES Bauman, Zygmunt, Identity, Polity Press, Cambridge, 2004 Castells, Manuel, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture Vol. I: The Rise of the Network Society, Blackwell Publishers, Cambridge MA., 1996. Castells, Manuel, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture Vol. II: The Power of Identity, Blackwell Publishers, Cambridge MA, 1998. Habermas, Jurgen, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, MIT Press, Cambridge MA, 1989. Heeks, Richard, eGovernment for Development: The Impact of eGovernment Failure. Institute of Development Planning and Management. University of Manchester. Website: www.egov4dev.org/topic1.htm Jarboe, Kennan Patrick, Athena Alliance, Washington DC, 2001. Latour, Bruno, “Technology is Society Made Durable” in J. Law ed., A Sociology of Monsters: Essays on Power, Technology and Domination, Routledge, London, 1991. Laumann, Edward O. and David Knoke, The Organisational State. Social Choice in National Policy Domains, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison/Wisconsin, 1987. MacKenzie, D. and Judy Wajcman eds., The Social Shaping of Technology, Open University Press, Buckingham, 1999. Maruyama, M. “Information and Communication in Poly-Epistemological Systems”, in Kathleen Woodward (ed.), Myths of Information, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1980. Sinha, Dipankar “On Forgetting History: ICT and Colonisation of Politics in Post-colonial India” in Amiya K. Bagchi, Dipankar Sinha and Barnita Bagchi eds., Webs of History: Information, Communication and Technology from the Early to Post-Colonial India, Manohar, New Delhi, 2005. Sinha, Dipankar, “Information Society as if Communication Mattered: Revisiting the Indian State” in Bernard Bel, Jan Brouweret al. eds., Communication Processes Volume 1: Media and Mediation, Sage Publications, New Delhi, 2005. Sinha, Dipankar, (De)Politicising Development: Towards an Inclusionary Perspective, Working Paper 19, London School of Economics, Department of Media and Communication, London, 2010. UNESCO World Report. Towards Knowledge Societies, UNESCO Publishing, Paris, 2005. Van Dijk, J. 2006. “Digital Divide Research, Achievements and Shortcomings”, Poetics, 34. Wajcman, Judy “Addressing Technological Change: The Challenge to Social Theory”, Current Sociology, Volume 50, Number 3, May, 2003. West, Darrell M, “Global Perspectives on E-Government” in Viktor Mayer-Schonberger and David Laze eds., Governance and Information Technology: From Electronic Government to Information Government, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2007. Woodward, Kathryn ed., Identity and Difference, Sage Publications-Open University Press, London, 1997.



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NOTES 1

Kathryn Woodward observes: Identity can be seen as subjective positions and social and cultural situations. Identity gives us an idea of who we are and of how we relate to others and to the world in which we live. Identity marks the ways in which we are the same as others who share that position, and the ways in which we are different from those who do not. Woodward 1997, pp. 1-2.

2

Darrell M West, 2007, p.1.

3

Zygmunt Bauman, 2004.

4

Woodward (ibid), p. 35.

5

www.weforum.org/reports/digital-ecosystem-convergence-between-it-telecoms-media-andentertainment-scenarios-2015.

6

UNESCO World Report. Towards Knowledge Societies, UNESCO Publishing, Paris, 2005.

7

Castells, 1996.

8

MacKenzie and Wajcman 1999.

9

Wajcman, 2003.

10 Latour, 1991. 11 Castells, 1998. 12 Castells, 1998. 13 Sinha, 2005 (a) pp.245-64; Sinha, 2005 (b), pp.135-61. 14 Laumann and Knoke, 1987. 15 Heeks, www.egov4dev.org/topic1.htm 16 Maruyama, 1980, 28-29. 17 Jarboe, 2001, p.2. 18 CSCS Project, www.identityproject.in/ 19 Van Dijk, 2006. pp. 221-235. 20 Habermas, 1989. 21 Sinha, 2010, www2.lse.ac.uk/media@lse/research/mediaWorkingPapers/pdf/EWP19.pdf



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The Measure of a Number Sruti Chaganti Dept. of Anthropology, Johns Hopkins University, and former Associate Fellow and Project Coordinator, The Identity Project

The essay outlines in some detail the actual step-by-step procedures being employed by the Aadhaar procedure in India. It tracks back some of these procedures to the origins of the National E-Governance programme, and compares the history and original imagination of different government schemes, especially the financial inclusion and direct cash transfers mechanism, to their present execution. It also describes some of the field-level findings of the project in Jharkhand and Andhra Pradesh.

OVERVIEW

From early days in discussions with the Knowledge Commission when a

unique identity was thought necessary to consolidate the many ways in which a person is identified by the state (such as the Voter ID, Driving License, PAN Card, Passport, etc.), the Unique Identification (UID) project of the Government of India has evolved significantly. While consolidation or aggregation of information across various domains of state action will eventually indeed become possible with the UID, the key to understanding the socio-economic-cultural transformation that the UID could be a potential harbinger of, lies in its own deeply rooted impulse for disaggregation.

The UID, or the Aadhaar number, does not substitute for any other identifying mechanism either in existence or that could potentially be introduced in the future—for example, the ration card as it exists now, or



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the smart ration card that various state governments plan to introduce after Aadhaar. The Aadhaar number is issued against a finite (and rather thin) set of demographic information (resident’s name, address, gender, age, name of parent/guardian in case resident is below 5 years of age) and rather extensive biometric information (photograph, two iris scans, ten fingerprints; as biometric technologies evolve and become more cost-efficient these fields could potentially be replaced by other biometric indices such as heart rate, genetic fingerprint and so on). Enrollment into Aadhaar thus is not the accession to a good, claims to which can be made and disputed. It does not enable one to be a citizen, in the manner in which a driving license enables one to drive—rather, it merely links the resident to a number via her biometrics. Unique identity is thus established every time the resident accesses a service by verifying her Aadhaar number against the biometrics linked to the said number. The novelty of the UID lies in this premise, that the value of Aadhaar lies in its repeated authentication, and its generative potential bears closer investigation.

AADHAAR ENROLLMENT A. De-centralised Enrollment: UIDAI—Registrar—Enrollment Agency While the UIDAI is charged with the responsibility of coordinating enrollment procedures across the country, with setting up the technological processes for enrollment, data processing and maintenance, and for prescribing technological processes for authentication, the coordination of enrollment into constituent units, defined not by geography but by service delivery, is a function of various Registrars.1 UIDAI enters into a Memorandum of Understanding with individual state governments and with various panIndian agencies (for example, various banks, the LIC, the Department of Posts, IGNOU, the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, and so on) for the enrollment of all residents into a single database. Registrars are thus



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multiple, with the same geographical area often being the field of operation of more than one Registrar.2 Where the MoU is with a state government, the Registrar is typically a department or an agency of the state government; thus, Registrars in Jharkhand are the Rural Development and Urban Development departments, while in Andhra Pradesh it is the Commissioner for Food and Civil Supplies. The task of physically enrolling residents is that of Enrollment Agencies appointed by the Registrar, either by inviting tenders from private enterprises empanelled for the purpose with the UIDAI,3 or through its own agencies (such as fair price shops). In Jharkhand and AP, private agencies have been enlisted for the task. Enrollment Agencies, in turn, set up enrollment centres with separate stations comprising of a computer, a fingerprint capture device, an iris capture device and a digital camera at a minimum. The Enrollment Agency is responsible for the establishment and maintenance of enrollment centres, for the procurement of certified biometric devices, for the employment and training of enrollers, for physical enrollment, and for data transfers. B. Financial Assistance to Registrars The enrollment of residents is under a financial incentive model, with the incentives provided partly by the UIDAI and partly by the Ministry of Finance. For the first 10 crore enrollments, the UIDAI remunerates the Registrar ` 50 for each resident enrolled and issued with the Aadhaar number. Enrollment Agencies quote price per enrollment in the tenders submitted to the Registrar—prices quoted can vary from ` 23 per enrollment (Smart Chip Limited’s price for Hyderabad district) to ` 40 (Smart Chip Limited’s price for enrolling on behalf of State Bank of India). The profitability of operations for the Enrollment Agencies depend on the number of enrollments in a day and, as we witnessed in the enrollment centres we visited in Hyderabad, every effort is made to complete an enrollment within 4-6 minutes. In accordance with the recommendation of the XIII Finance Commission, to incentivise BPL residents to enroll with the UIDAI, the Ministry of Finance 28 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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disburses ` 100 to state governments for every BPL person enrolled and issued with the Aadhaar number. State governments can choose to either pay the money out directly to the individual or use it to create facilities for minimising cost of registration to the enrolled. Additionally, the UIDAI provides a topup grant to state governments for enrolling BPL+ residents, defined for the purpose as Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY) beneficiaries. The UIDAI also provides state governments with assistance towards building ICT infrastructure for correlation of existing systems and databases of Registrars with the UID database and for their inter-se integration. The costs supported include: (i) procurement of hardware and software; (ii) engagement of consultants to advise on integrating systems, standardising data elements and seeding Aadhaar numbers in them to collate and correlate the various databases; (iii) engagement of software companies to perform the actual task of integration; and (iv) development of cloud applications at the national level for social sector schemes. Each state government can thus apply for ICT assistance upto ` 10 crore (calculated at ` 2 crore for 5 applications) while the Central government is entitled to assistance upto ` 100 crores (calculated at ` 20 crore for 5 applications). The criteria for a proposal from states or the centre qualifying for support include the number and profile of beneficiaries of the scheme sought to be made ‘UID ready’, its financial outlay, spin-off effect, and potential for use of UID authentication services. Registrars are also permitted to generate additional revenues by collecting information in the enrollment process on behalf of other governmental agencies; thus, the AP Registrar earns ` 40 from the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas on every family’s LPG connections it secures details of at the time of enrolling residents. C. Enrollment Process (a) Demographic Data Capture The difference between the enrollment process in Jharkhand and Andhra Pradesh lies in the nature of the pre-existing database upon which the UID database is built—while in the former there isn’t one, the latter has a fairly In the Wake of Aadhaar 29


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comprehensive ration card database that was updated and digitised in 2004, with cards issued against iris biometrics of cardholders. The data, not having been de-duplicated at the time of collection, constitutes an idle database held, but not used, by the government. Where there is a pre-existing database, as in the Andhra Pradesh instance, demographic data from the same is imported into the Aadhaar application software and checked for any corrections by the operator at the Enrollment station. Where there is no pre-existing database, residents fill out their demographic data in Enrollment Forms containing KYR fields as prescribed by the UIDAI, comprising of information regarding (i) name of resident; (ii) name of mother/father/husband/guardian; (iii) date of birth/age; (iv) gender; and (v) residential address. In addition to demographic data, two additional sections on the Enrollment Form pertain to (a) Financial Inclusion; and (b) the National Population Register (NPR). Thus, every resident being enrolled for an Aadhaar number is asked if she wants to either open a UID enabled bank account or link her existing bank account with her Aadhaar number. If the resident has been surveyed for census, then she is also asked to provide her NPR receipt number in the Enrollment Form. Registrars are also permitted to require residents enrolling for Aadhaar numbers to furnish additional information for their own purposes—also known as KYR+. In the Andhra Pradesh instance, KYR+ includes information regarding caste membership, NREGS Job Card No., SHG No., Pension Card No., bank account details, LPG connections, etc. KYR+ may contain some mandatory fields and some non-mandatory fields. However, from what we witnessed at the enrollment centres we visited, residents do not seem to distinguish between the two, nor are they appropriately advised at the Enrollment Centre. Thus, while in the UIDAI mandated Enrollment Form, the resident is asked to volunteer her bank details, in the AP KYR+, residents are asked to furnish their bank account details, without any discernible distinction between it being a mandatory or a voluntary field.



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Mr. Shailendra Rao Nalige, General Manager of Comat Technologies, the designated Enrollment Agency for Mysore, says he has yet to see a single person asking for his bank details to be not disclosed. He speaks about the general lack of knowledge of people’s right of privacy.

Mr. Shivaram Prasad Prasad, who heads the Hyderabad Aadhaar enrollment operations of Smart Chips, a subsidiary of Morpho, speaks about the ignorance of Indian people about privacy. He proposes that since the matter seems only to concern educated people, going forward it was possible that their concerns wuld be addressed. Right now, the mandatory and non-mandatory questions are clearly indicated, but people do not see the difference. In the future, there was always the possibility of new technologies arriving that could permit demographic data being entirely confidential.



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An unnamed financial analyst at Oracle who has come for Aadhaar enrollment to a centre says he has no idea what the UID promises to accomplish. He is asked several questions about whether he pays tax online, has a gas connection, ration card etc. At the time of enrollment he chose not to link his bank account with his Aadhaar number; not knowing why they would want it linked.

The only data verified at the time of enrollment is that of identity and address. Verification is either through the provision of documents establishing the same, scrutinised and signed by the Registrar’s representative at the Enrollment Centre, or through Introducers authorised by the Registrar to authenticate the identity and address of a resident not having documentary proof of the same. In Jharkhand, the government has authorised all district, block and panchayat officials as Introducers, whereas in Andhra Pradesh, MPs, MLAs, MLCs, gazetted officers of state and central governments, elected representatives in panchayati raj institutions, mandal revenue inspectors, village revenue officers, postmen in their respective jurisdictions with the concurrence of the postal department, authorised representatives of reputed NGOs and civil society outreach organisations to cover the homeless, street children, beggars and such disadvantaged sections of society, are capable of being Introducers. To be able to perform the function of an Introducer, however, the person has to be enrolled into the UID database and issued with her Aadhaar number. (b) Biometric Data Capture Biometric data collected at the time of enrollment includes the resident’s facial image, ten fingerprint impressions, and two iris scans. While provision is made to record the fact of a resident missing a finger or an eye, in the enrollment 32 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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centres we visited in Jharkhand and Andhra Pradesh, we witnessed high rates of failure in recording accurate biometric data. Age, abrasions, dirt, oil stains, etc. impeded the recording of fingerprint impressions—the software requires a high level of clarity in impression before it is recorded, but after four failures in obtaining a clear impression it can be manually overridden to record impressions with very low clarity (sometimes as low as 20–30% of the standards used by the software as measure). The successful recording of iris scans is often impeded, as we saw in Jharkhand, by the resident’s discomfort in looking into the scanner at the appropriate angle.

Biometrics of old woman in Jharkhand being taken. She constantly fails various tests, until she is finally, almost forcibly, enrolled.

(c) Data Custody and Transfer The enrollment process for the resident comes to a close with the generation of a summary of the data collected which is to be verified and consented to by the resident. This Acknowledgment Receipt bears the Enrollment No. of the resident, which number, unlike the randomly generated Aadhaar number, bears the unique code of the Enrollment Agency, the Enrollment Centre and the Enrollment Station and the date and time at which the enrollment took place. The Registrar is entitled to retain all data collected, including biometric, and a copy of the same is transferred to the UIDAI either via memory sticks sent through India Post or by its direct uploading to the CIDR. Internet connectivity at every enrollment station is thus available at periodic intervals. In the Wake of Aadhaar 33


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After de-duplication of the data, the CIDR issues Aadhaar numbers and makes these numbers available to the Registrar against the Enrollment Nos. recorded in the data retained for its use. Further sorting of the data occurs when individual Aadhaar numbers and the data collected against them are aggregated into family units in the Registrar’s database—thus in the enrollment Centres we visited in Andhra Pradesh, common bar codes are attached to the acknowledgment forms of individual members of a family which are then used to sort family membership in the data retained for the use of the Registrar. Where a Registrar is a department implementing a social sector scheme, this aggregation of family membership is deemed necessary for its purposes, since the basic unit of all social security schemes is the family and not the individual. Thus, at least three copies of all data generated exist: one copy is sent to the UIDAI, one copy is sent to the Registrar and the third is maintained with the Enrolling Agency. While the UIDAI’s Handbook for Registrars states that biometric data is to be encrypted upon collection to ensure their integrity and security, we understood from the enrollment centres we visited in AP that residents can ask for corrections in demographic data upto 48 hours after enrollment. When data is extracted for the UIDAI and the Registrar it is automatically encrypted: however, the system on which the enrollment took place appears to retain unencrypted data.

AADHAAR AUTHENTICATION A. Delivery of Citizen Services The implementation of the UID is one ‘Mission Mode Project’ among 27 identified in the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) stemming from the recommendations of the Second Administrative Reforms Commission (ARC) and funded by a loan from the World Bank. While earlier e-Governance initiatives in the ‘80s and ‘90s focused on automation of internal government 34 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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functions with some limited citizen interfaces, the NeGP focuses on integrated service delivery across government departments and jurisdictional barriers (such as central, state and district administrative divisions) to citizens and businesses. The core infrastructure envisaged for such integrated service delivery comprises of the establishment, in each state and union territory, of: 1. SWAN or State Wide Area Network to extend connectivity for voice, video and data communications linking State Headquarters with each District Headquarter and the latter to each Block Headquarter. 2. SDC or State Data Center to integrate government applications and databases in a central data repository and to provide an integrated user interface for the online delivery of services. (In addition, a National eGovernment Data Center is also under construction.) 3. CSC or Common Service Center to bridge the last mile in service delivery. More than 1,00,000 internet-enabled CSCs serving over 6,00,000 villages are envisaged as access points for users requiring services from the government. These services include those provided by revenue departments (copies of record of rights, mutation certificates, caste and income certificates, etc.), municipalities (birth/death certificates, water and sewerage connections, utility payments, etc.), and under the various social sector schemes of the government (run by the rural and urban development, health, family and women welfare, food and civil supplies departments among others). The NeGP is envisaged as a publicprivate partnership with the government bearing the cost of the fixed infrastructure envisaged under it while private agencies undertake the task of building its different components. CSCs are intended as composite service points run by village level entrepreneurs and providing not only access to government services for a fee but also a range of telecom enabled social services in agriculture, education and health, and private services such as financial products, entertainment, etc.



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UID-based biometric authentication is considered crucial at two points in service delivery: 1. at point of access in the CSC to verify the identity of the person requiring a service and 2. at the point of interfacing with the SDC via the Service Delivery Gateway (used to route messages across applications and databases) to maintain a transaction log. B. Biometric Authentication Applications for state and private enterprise That the UID only guarantees identity and ‘not rights, benefits, or entitlements’ is by now rather well-known. And yet, the UID is supplemental (for now at the very least) to other forms of identification, whether documentary or biometric. Unlike the latter however, the UID has the potential to create a feedback loop wherein information is aggregated in its every use. In order for the UID to function as an identifier at all, and therefore for such a feedback loop to come into existence, various service providers need to adopt UID-based biometric authentication procedures. And here the UID creates a level playing field—authentication applications can be built into any level of service provision, by any service provider (whether state or market). Thus market applications for UID authentication could be built for mobile phone companies, credit card agencies, airline ticketing counters, corporate offices, hotels, etc. Authentication applications can be built for the state at various levels of its operation. In Jharkhand, for example, UID-based authentication is sought to be introduced for five social security schemes at the outset; NREGA, Pensions, School Stipends, PDS, and Mid-day Meals. While the first three are envisaged as direct UID linked bank transfers (more on this in Section C below), the latter require authentication applications to be integrated at points of access to these subsidies, such as the fair price shop (to authenticate identity and establish entitlements in case of PDS) and in primary schools (to record attendance of BPL students in case of MDM). Authentication 36 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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applications are also sought to be integrated at pre-payment stages, as for instance in the case of NREGA, to record attendance at work-sites. UIDAI primarily envisages that Aadhaar numbers will be authenticated online by the CIDR on a real-time basis. However authentication applications can potentially also be smart-card-based, as is in fact the case in Andhra Pradesh. Well before UID enrollments commenced in the state, the government had already adopted biometric-based smart card payments for NREGS and Social Security Pensions. These payments are disbursed after matching the fingerprint of the beneficiary with the fingerprint recorded in the smart card. The state government, after commencing work on UID enrollments, now proposes to issue a multipurpose Aadhaar linked smart card for offline biometric authentication at point of sale/service delivery. In the first instance, the smart cards will incorporate PDS entitlements along with names and three fingerprint biometrics (right thumb, left index finger, right index finger) of all family members. A pilot project is underway in Maheshwaram Mandal in Ranga Reddy District to test the point-of-sale biometric card readers. From what we saw in the Tukkuguda fair price shop, smart cards issued by the Food and Civil Supplies Department differentiate between BPL card holders (white smart cards) and AAY card holders (yellow smart cards). It is expected that the Rural Development Department will be the next to integrate its benefits with the multi-purpose smart cards.

Tukkaguda Fair price Shop. Aadhaar-enabled distribution of rations on a smart card issued by the State Government is in full swing.



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C. Financial Inclusion and Direct Cash Transfers A key authentication function the UIDAI envisages is in aggregating and achieving economies of scale in micropayments at the last mile. Micropayments refer to transactions of very small amounts conducted by governments (welfare departments managing social security schemes), banks and nonbanking financial institutions (such as microfinance institutions) with the rural poor. Consolidating efforts already underway in this regard in various domains, the UID envisages a potential link between direct cash transfers in welfare schemes run by the government and the renewed impetus towards financial inclusion. Financial Inclusion Mark I, or the era of social and development banking inaugurated with the nationalisation of banks in 1969, had as its objective the inclusion of excluded economic sectors, social groups and regions into the formal financial system. It was characterised by two main policy imperatives: (i) setting up bank branches, and special purpose government sponsored institutions, such as cooperative banks and regional rural banks, in areas with underdeveloped banking infrastructure; and (ii) priority sector lending, or directed bank credit at regulated rates of interest to economic sectors (such as agriculture, small scale industry) and social groups (such as socially and economically backward sections, including dalits, scheduled tribes, and minority groups) that had no access to formal credit. Financial Inclusion Mark II envisages more: the expansion of the formal financial system via the bringing into circulation monies traditionally outside the system, the creation of new financial products and the use of technology in achieving economies of scale. The Report of the Committee on Financial Inclusion (or the Rangarajan Committee, 2008)4 defines financial inclusion as entailing ‘delivery of banking services and credit at an affordable cost to the vast sections of disadvantaged and low income groups. The various financial services include savings, loan, insurance, payments, remittance facilities and financial counselling/advisory services by the formal financial system’. Using this definition as its basis, the union government launched, in February 2011, its programme for financial inclusion titled ‘Swabhimaan’. The 38 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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Indian Economic Survey 2010–11 describes the programme as ‘an innovative scheme to take banks to the doorstep of the rural poor instead of the latter having to go in search of banks. The idea is to have business correspondents, or bank-saathis (who may be the local merchant) armed with electronic handheld devices, which can recognise the bio-markers of bank customers. The customers can then deposit and draw money directly from the bank saathi, without having to travel long distances to get to the nearest brick-and-mortar bank branch. The programme will be making use of Aadhaar which will make it possible for individuals to establish their identities in any part of India’. It is this space of operation of the business correspondent, between the bank customer and the brick and mortar branch, now enabled by UID-based biometric authentication, in which the financial services sector in India seeks to find its traction and scope for expansion. Business Correspondents (BCs) first appeared on the horizon in the policy documents of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in 2005–06, when they were allowed to provide financial and banking services as agents of the bank at places other than the bank premises. Banks were allowed to appoint non-governmental organisations, micro-finance institutions (other than Non-Banking Financial Companies) and other civil society organisations as Business Facilitators (BFs) or BCs. While BFs were restricted to the performance of facilitation services such as collection and processing of loan applications, verification of identity/data, creating awareness about bank services and products and such like, BCs could additionally function as conduits for cash flows, such as the disbursal of small value credit, recovery of principal/interest on loans, collection of small value deposits, sale of micro-insurance and mutual fund/pension products, and delivery and receipt of small value remittances. The premise was that BCs would enable a person at the last mile to open a no-frills bank account for the provision of deposit services to begin with and would subsequently widen the coverage of activities, which would also serve to make the operation profitable. But as the Report of the Working Group to Review the Business Correspondent Model (appointed by the RBI in 2009)5 observed, the majority of no-frill bank accounts opened by BCs are mainly one-way conduits to route government social security payments. In Andhra Pradesh, for instance, the In the Wake of Aadhaar 39


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government routes NREGA payments and social security pensions via BCs appointed by banks and post offices in its 21 districts. And so, the Working Group noted, as things stood, BCs were unprofitable propositions for the following reasons: (i) the majority of these no-frill bank accounts remained unoperational, and did not allow for diversification of operations; (ii) BCs were not allowed to charge a fee from customers; bank commissions, the source of their revenue, was not adequate for their operational costs and to turn a profit; (iii) the process of manual settlement of transactions with the bank at the end of each working day was cumbersome and time-consuming. In view of this, predictably, the Working Group recommended that: (i) BCs be permitted to move beyond merely channeling deposits, to expand the range of services they offer to include small savings, micro credit, micro insurance, small value remittances; (ii) they be allowed to collect service charges from the consumer; and (iii) that technology solutions be devised to permit inter-operability among banks, and to simplify the functioning of BCs. The Working Group also proposed that the range of entities who may be appointed as BCs be expanded to include: (i) kirana/medical/fair price shop owners; (ii) Public Call Office (PCO) operators; (iii) Petrol Pump owners; (iv) agents of small savings schemes of GOI/insurance companies; (v) retired teachers; (vi) authorised functionaries of SHGs linked to banks; and (vii) non-deposit-taking NBFCs (in the nature of loan companies) whose microfinance portfolio is not less than 80% of their loan outstanding. In its strategy paper titled ‘From Exclusion to Inclusion with Micropayments’, UIDAI proposes an ‘integrated’ technological model, which will ramp up and transform the nature of BC operations. The model is, needless to say, premised on UID-based biometric authentication, and involves consolidation in three domains: 1. It is the UIDAI’s contention that existing Core Banking Systems (CBS) in banks required for electronic transactions, equipped as they are for accounts with multiple features, do not lend themselves easily to no-frills 40 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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banking. It suggests instead that no-frills accounts should be hosted on a separate platform, perhaps even outsourced to a low-cost depository. 2. Enabling a UID-enabled payment switch to allow a rural customer holding an account with any bank to transact with a BC holding an account with any other bank. The basic infrastructure for payment switches is provided by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) formed to switch all retail transactions and fund transfer transactions in India to a central infrastructure, with an Automatic Clearing House to process inter-bank transactions for ATMs, etc. The UIDAI proposes to supplement this structure with biometric authentication for micropayments, expansively defined to include cash payments, withdrawals, balance queries and fund transfers, transacted through micro-ATM devices held by BCs. 3. The direct deposits of government benefits into the bank accounts of beneficiaries. The UIDAI envisages that every government department will periodically generate a list containing UID numbers in one column and the amount accruing to the person bearing said UID number in another column. This list is then forwarded to the bank holding the government department’s accounts which will then via the Automated Clearing House of the NPCI forward to benefits to the UID-linked customer’s bank account. Currently, direct cash transfers of government benefits function under a more disaggregated and localised structure, even where disbursal is based on biometric authentication, as for example in Andhra Pradesh, where smart cards with biometric payloads have been introduced separately for beneficiaries of social security pensions and for NREGA beneficiaries. While the UIDAI proposes to consolidate cash transfers of all government benefits to a beneficiary in a single bank account, efforts are underway to convert all social security schemes, especially those currently being implemented as subsidy schemes, into direct cash transfers. Thus, for example, the Economic Survey of 2009–10 suggests that food, fuel and fertiliser subsidies should be; (i) converted into direct cash transfers; and (ii) decoupled with price control. Thus, BPL



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beneficiaries of PDS would be handed coupons equivalent to the financial value of the subsidised grain they would otherwise be able to purchase, which they would encash at any store selling grain at the market price. To encourage store owners to take on the additional labour of encashing the coupons in a government department/bank, the owners would be incentivised by way of being able to encash the coupons for an additional 2% of their value. Similarly, the Survey suggests that rather than subsidise the production of fertilisers, the government should transfer the subsidy directly to farmers; the argument is that this will make fertiliser production more competitive, and therefore of better quality, giving farmers more ‘real’ choice and better quality in buying fertilisers. It will also mean that, as in, progressive taxation, richer farmers will not be entitled to any fertiliser subsidies, while government could potentially fix quotas such that small farmers will be subsidised for a larger fraction of their farming needs, while the converse will be true for larger farmers. In both cases, i.e. the food and fertiliser subsidies, the Survey argues that an efficient method of ‘truly’ identifying the poor will be necessary, and the UIDAI will come to its aid in this regard. Acknowledging the fact that the UID will not, in itself, have information on people’s poverty status, the Survey proposes that supplemental information on the person’s BPL status, landholding, etc. will need to tagged to the UID number. It can be argued that the expansion of the formal financial system envisaged in this notion of Financial Inclusion thus is premised on the expansion and consolidation of direct cash transfers by the government, thus vastly expanding and inducting into circulation the financial flows to the bottom quartile of the population, which could then very well be the basis on which financial intermediaries will expand the range of financial products that may be offered ‘profitability’ at the last mile. These financial products, primarily loan based products, will then become the basis of securitisation and onward trading in financial markets. Apart from the aggregation and economies of scale that the UID holds out the promise of, the feedback loop that is necessarily generated every time Aadhaar is authenticated, will be the first step in generating credit histories of customers that are so crucial 42 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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in the expansion of the financial services sector. These credit histories, in themselves, will become a source of value as tradeable commodities.

NOTES 1

Engagement of Registrars: http://uidai.gov.in/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=15 6&Itemid=168

2

MOUs signed with Registrars across India: http://uidai.gov.in/index.php?option=com_content&view =article&id=148&Itemid=169

3

Aadhar Enrollment: http://uidai.gov.in/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=148&Ite mid=41#EEA

4

Report of the Committee on Financial Inclusion, C. Rangarajan (Chairman), 2008 (http://www. nabard.org/pdf/report_financial/full%20Report.pdf

5

Report of the Working group to Review the Business Correspondent Model, P. Vijaya Bhaskar (Chairman), 2009. http://www.rbi.org.in/scripts/PublicationReportDetails.aspx?UrlPage=&ID=555



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Naming The Problem: Or, Thinking Like The State Ashish Rajadhyaksha Senior Fellow, CSCS and Principal Investigator, The Identity Project

The essay posits a triad, of new kinds of state benefits, new definitions of economic and social rights, and new technologies, to track the recent history of digitisation by the Government of India. The history explores both the problems that technology has commonly posed to the Indian state—in often being unassimilable without major social transformation—as well as the technophilia of the state, in using state-of-the-art technology to leapfrog over old social barriers. It ends by speculating on whether the present juncture is another instance of such technophilia, or whether it constitutes a radical break. I am anxious that we should reach our people in the villages as well as in the towns with some kind of a record of the work that has been done and that is going to be done. . . It is not enough to give just a glimpse of something being done. It should be a longer and more educative picture and it should be taken in mobile vans to remote villages. . . By this means also, we shall produce that understanding enthusiasm that we wish to develop and, at the same time, a certain unity in our national planning. . . Ultimately, what counts is the approach to our rural millions —Jawaharlal Nehru, quoted by B.P. Sanjay1 Backward sections do not always derive adequate benefit because of traditional barriers in the free mixing of castes and sexes in the rural community. Women, artisans, landless labourers, and Harijans are represented rather sparsely in the audience. Pre-tuning of the sets to only one particular wavelength, which is generally the case, makes 44 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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entertainment limited and the village listeners remain unsatisfied. A large number of sets installed, in many cases between 50% and 70%, are generally out of commission for want of minor repairs, replacement of battery etc. Lack of adequate maintenance arrangement is the biggest single obstacle in the way of community listening —R.K. Chatterjee on early ‘rural radio listening forums’ in Maharashtra in the early 1950s.2

THE AILAWADI PARADOX

In 2007, the former Chairman of the Haryana Electricity Regulatory Commission, V.S. Ailawadi, was changing his wires.

An electricity regulatory body is a quintessential example of what India has come to define as a ‘last mile solution provider’. India’s Central Electricity Regulatory Commission describes its mission statement as ‘intended to promote competition, efficiency and economy in bulk power markets, (so as to) improve the quality of supply and promote investments’. A crucial part of its purpose is therefore to ‘advise government on the removal of institutional barriers to bridge the demand supply gap and thus foster the interests of consumers’. In saying what he felt on the new role of such an entity, and its equally massive behemoth cousins in telecom, Mr. Ailawadi was in 2007 pushing the limits of both institutional barriers and what their removal could now mean. Version 1 of Privatisation—to be summarised in one word, anti-Statism— was still in the air. ‘The problem of last mile connectivity for ushering in the second telecom revolution’, thundered Ailawadi, ‘can never be resolved as long as the huge infrastructure created with public money, comprising copper wire and optic fibre, remains under-utilised’. ‘Various technologies like WiMAX, W-CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) and broadband over power lines (being) touted as alternatives’ cannot work to their full capacity. The only possible solution is to unbundle the local loop. Such unbundling would In the Wake of Aadhaar 45


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bring in competition for wireless applications and broadband services not just for 45 million landlines but also for 135 million mobile users of various service providers. So why wouldn’t the big public behemoths agree to private access to their distribution pipelines? Mr. Ailawadi pours scorn on BSNL Chairman and Managing Director A.K. Sinha’s statement that ‘We have built the infrastructure and why should anyone else use it? Will they pay for the salaries of the employees?’. ‘Only in India do we treat our PSUs like sacred cows’. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has yet to come out with effective regulations for addressing the interconnection problems created by the incumbents, and the incumbents continue to delay links to their points of interconnection. The issue of congestion, for Mr. Ailawadi, is only due to the lack of adequate inter-connect points by BSNL/MTNL, although these State behemoths obfuscate this issue ‘on the plea of shortage of space or equipment’.3 The more things change, the more they remain the same. In 2011, we are using very different language to speak of State-corporate collaborations from what Privatisation Version 1 used, but in curious ways a central paradox remains as intact as ever. I want to immortalise this Mr. Ailawadi by naming the paradox after him, for I propose that his short statement sums up three key contentions that appear to be still relevant to a theory of State that I think he was trying to propound, and which I think is still relevant despite the changed circumstances of the past five years. First, his contention that the only way that key assets such as telecom (spearheading State benefits as a whole) can be delivered to people at large, and especially to people in India’s rural areas, is by opening them up to the private sector. By this he also includes an informal sector, of agencies poaching on underutilised State assets—legally or illegally. Such an emphasis on the private sector is mainly because India’s State agencies—the ones who are sitting on large underutilised resources—have lost their capability to utilise these resources, and have also lost their democratic capacity to make them available to those who could have made better use of them. Why 46 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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they had apparently lost this capability is, at this time (and at this stage of the argument) unknown. Second, therefore, the only way the State versus private players issue could be comprehended was through the language of antagonism: private players are, for him as for all those crawling out from statist woodwork spouting hyper-privatisation language, inexorably posited in opposition to the State. To Ailawadi’s argument, this opposition, this inbuilt antagonism, is a given. The State cannot deliver; Ailawadi therefore wants access to State assets, and he wants them cheap. On their side, State corporations want private players out of their backyard since they would certainly not pay State government employees their salaries. It is however a third contention that truly concerns this essay. Despite their pre-programmed antagonism, what brought both State corporations and private competitors startlingly together in those days was their common understanding of what needs delivering: that the last mile problem constituted purely a unidirectional delivery mechanism for services. On this procedure both Mr. Ailawadi and Mr. Sinha appeared entirely united. They did not dispute what needed to be delivered. The only dispute was over who delivers better. Apart from wanting private access to the unbundling process of the local loop, Mr. Ailawadi is curiously disinclined to interrogate technological statism itself, or to in any way unbundle the reason for why the State made such a major investment into telecom infrastructure in the first place. How, one may ask both of them, did the Indian State come to acquire such significant infrastructure assets, presumably dating back to times when the last mile had not even been envisaged in the way it is today? Why, the sequel question could be, is the Indian State—having assembled such assets—now so thoroughly discredited so as to be rendered incapable of either using them well or delivering their benefits to the very people for whom they were meant? How did the State’s investment into major communication technologies over the centuries, presumably going back to telegraph wires, find itself so uncannily become today’s major gatekeeper of access to the ‘people’? Was an obsolete theory of the State, naming it the only entity capable of representing the people, propping up an obsolete technology, or In the Wake of Aadhaar 47


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was it the other way round? In other words, was the problem merely political, or can we now read another history into the Indian State’s investment into technologies of communication? Let us speculate for a moment on what might have happened had Mr. Ailawadi’s wildest dreams actually come true in 2007: and private players had simply taken over BSNL/MTNL’s networks. Would the new private corporations then have simply stepped into the shoes of the old State, and simply done the State’s job better (more efficiently, without corruption etc.)? Or would such private players have needed to significantly transform the technology they had inherited (and perhaps change the imagination of the State that they inherit)? Can it be, taking the argument further, that alternative technologies ‘like WiMAX, W-CDMA and broadband over power lines’ are unfeasible not only because they are too expensive, but because technological alternatives do not solve the real problem that faces us, namely the obsolete imagination of the State? Is the last mile, then, committed primarily to a retrospective historical reconstruction, dismantling and renegotiating a State-shaped barrier to true access to ‘the people’? There are, I propose, significant consequences to the question of whether private corporate interest simply does an existing State’s job better, or whether the very nature of the State is itself in renegotiation in all these processes. At stake is the retrospective significance of India’s history of technological bypassing—or crafting new technologies so as to go round State hurdles, as transistorisation did in the 1960s to bring us commercial radio, or the audio-cassette recorder did in the 1970s to become the quintessential smuggled object against which the Emergency would justify itself, or satellite television of the 1980s and the internet of the 1990s—as against its opposite, technological appropriation of new technologies by the old state. There is also the question of what it is that technology is servicing here. This essay follows the career of an a priori contradiction: one that only mandates a State mechanism to perform an act of delivery, and then 48 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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disqualifies the State from performing that very act effectively. This contradiction, I will now name as the last mile problem. In other words, I will suggest that the problem of the last mile is a conceptual hurdle, not a physical one. As I argue in the following chapter, put one way the last mile is unbridgeable; put another, it is being bridged all the time. The manner in which it is usually bridged often forms the grey zone of State operation, and such bridging has historically occurred either through the process of bypassing or appropriation. Conventionally, therefore, the last mile problem is something of a litmus test of the State’s capacity to maintain its authority while at the same time modifying such authorised purpose so as to permit technologies that can bridge the last mile to come under its ambit, sand in the process turn legitimate. In systems that do provide alternative conduits by which to bridge the last mile—such as communitarian, or market-driven solutions, for example— the State conventionally seeks out two phenomena that can bridge the gap: a miracle technology capable of doing so, and a legal resolution for using such a technology for suturing a social gap that the technology shall somehow overcome. In themselves, these initiatives are not always anti-Statist, in contrast to the conventional Ailawadi paradox dedicated to discrediting the State; rather, they provide the means by which the State refurbishes itself through technological renovation. The paradox that is generated nevertheless poses further issues of how key functions of any new technology become selectively useful for State apparatuses, requiring functions other than the ones selected to be either banned, or made ineffective. This is a good time to be asking the question in India. The technological flavour of the month is the biometric device. The Aadhaar expects to provide every Indian with a biometric record, thus providing them with an identity. From health to financial inclusion, from public distribution systems to the functioning of rural schools, every State benefit we can think of is looking to see how it is affected by this miracle technology. It is not the first time in modern India that we have invested the latest available technology with miracle powers. And yet, it could be that this time round, the link between In the Wake of Aadhaar 49


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technology and State is being reinvestigated, and re-forged, in a way that the UIDAI’s technological ancestors—radio, terrestrial, and satellite communications—may not have done.

TECHNOLOGICAL GOVERNANCE

Around the early 1980s, Marathi playwright Vijay Tendulkar was thinking

of writing a play on a real life episode set in the Emergency in Maharashtra in 1975, among the Pardhi tribal community of the State. Maharashtra’s Pardhis, a nomadic community of hunters (Paradh in Marathi means hunter), are a miniscule group, many of whom typically survive either as labour or as beggars in the city. It appeared that in the early days of the Emergency, some representative members of the community were told that the radio had announced that the government of India had declared special benefits for India’s scheduled tribes. It didn’t really matter what the benefits were: the community had been mentioned on the radio by name: it had been recognised. They quickly got hold of a transistor, heard this announcement on the news not once, but thrice in a row. They then took the transistor, dumped it on the table of a bewildered Forest Officer and eventually the local police, and demanded the announced benefits with immediate effect. The local authorities, themselves unaware of any such State policy and in any case historically inimical to the Pardhi community (it remains a ‘criminal’ tribe as listed by the notorious 1871 British Act), effectively told them to get lost. As tempers rose, the entire simmering discontent among the community peaked into a rare full-scale uprising, the looting of the police station and other government property. Tendulkar himself was of course very interested in ways by which people could take the law into their own hands and then be as fully violent and merciless as their historical oppressors, but here was a further element in the script of primitive justice: the transistor radio, linking the remote Pardhis directly to the Central Government in New Delhi, bypassing the entire local State administration and, we might add, declogging the system in the process. One could read a new revolutionary social collusion between the Centre 50 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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and its extreme periphery, as it overcame the intermediary roadblock that was incapable of reproducing the efficiency of the new and comparatively untainted communications system. It is probably a commonplace in the theory of political science that modern State structures are assembled on the back of modern technology. There has been significant work on how, say, modern communications systems shaped the apparatus of the modern State, how the railways, the telegraph, the radio and the satellite, and of course the atomic bomb, provided the means by which instruments of modern governance came to be assembled. There has also been, therefore, some conversation between theories of technological usage—or how, and in answer to what need, specific technologies came to be invented—and the political needs of State governance. It follows, therefore, that the purpose for which technologies are meant—the ‘how-to-use’ instruction manual for technologies of governance—would be semantically linked to parent concepts derived from State ethics. It also follows that the connection is not always easily made: technologies at their origin either violate State protocols—as almost all major technologies inevitably do at their point of origin (and we can recall that Xerox machines, fax copiers and satellite transmission all posed considerable difficulties for State operations at the time they were invented, and all of which have been, at some stage in their career, declared illegal)—while other technologies that are custombuilt for State governance, such as Electronic Voting Machines, for instance, or several technologies of e-governance, have had to gradually disentangle themselves from an overdetermined a priori purpose to achieve their full technical potential. At best, then, the fit between technology and governance has been a complicated negotiation. What happens then, when technology either exceeds the stated purpose of its use or deviates from that purpose: in either instance fitting only uncomfortably within the declared purpose of a State? One of the ways by which, from the numerous far-out technological innovations that for example pepper the Controller General of Patents, Designs, and Trademarks, some get selected for further use while others get discarded, lies in their capacity to state a In the Wake of Aadhaar 51


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social purpose, a means for translating that purpose into technology and to finally demonstrate its intelligibility either for the State or for the market. For either use, it must follow that the statement of technological usage needs as much to be a delimiter of possibility as a description of that possibility: the how-to-use manual always has significant fine print on how one may not use new technology. Using technology against its grain, making it do things it is not meant to—whether this is the upturned bicycle used by Malegaon’s powerloom weavers for a loom, or a torrent programme that uses spare processing capacity from computers—inevitably allows us to bring to the phenomenon insights well known to political science ever since Partha Chatterjee first showed how the Indian State first come to exist and only then produced, over the years, the ethical preconditions for its existence. The purpose of my argument is to generate a debate that has not taken place sufficiently, in the role (communications) technology may have had in defining the ethical preconditions for the concept of the State in India, in the way technology defines an intended (as against an actual) social use. I hope to set up a conversation, thus, between political science and communications theory to see how technological governance—or how States use technologies as a means by which to deliver their benefits to citizens—could throw light on a theory of technological usage as a means of State practice.

THE LAST MILE ECOSYSTEM

My argument will therefore make specific use of what has widely

come to be called the ‘last mile problem’ in India, and in many parts of the nonWestern world. What is the last mile, and why does the last mile typically come to be almost always attached with the suffix ‘problem’? Indeed, it is almost less a problem than a lament, referring typically to the notorious incapacity of delivery mechanisms in India to reach their intended beneficiaries. Whether they be Tsunami victims who never get food or clothing because some middleman has hived them off, or potential telecom users in India’s villages, it has become a standard truism 52 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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to say this: targeted benefits do not reach their destination, and they do not do so because of distortions at, not the sender’s but the recipient’s end. These could be physical distortions, such as benefits not physically reaching targets, as in relief measures, or they could be distortions of intentionality: where they do reach but are found not to translate into intended use. So where is the failure? Is it a failure of implementation or of the model itself? For the State, the intentionality issue is often a variant of the horseand-water metaphor: for beneficiaries, it is equally often a mismatch between problem and solution. At one level, the State both plays the role of the provider of the delivery conduit (without whom it is impossible to reach any beneficiary at all), as well as the ‘noise’ factor that distorts the conduit. At another level, where the market now starts to provide its own distortions, the ‘last mile problem’ begins to implicate further concepts, such as Indian society’s famed ‘impenetrability’, its opacity, its resistance to external impetus, and the ensuing difficulties posed to the ‘percolation’ theory by institutional corruption, power hierarchies, etc. What is the purpose of Aadhaar? Enrollees across the country have no idea, but widely assume that it is going in various dramatic ways to change people’s lives.

A fish seller in Agartala.



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A cultivator in Uttar Majlishpur, Tripura.

A resident in Amb village, Himachal Pradesh.

When we began this project in 2009, its conceptual ambitions were simpler: we had hoped to outline some kind of social-historical account of the last mile. We would do so with a fundamental assumption: that in making the last mile a purely, or at least substantially, technological issue, the Indian State was founding its very raison d’etre on a misapprehension. I would challenge the assumption that this curiously resilient barrier to the people was at all technologisable. We were set to interrogate the contention that any human recipient of State benefit could ever receive State support when the conditions of doing so rendered them incapable of comprehending what it was that they were receiving. I wanted to propose that the unfortunate technologisation of democratic theory that would define the purpose of technology as primarily a delivery mechanism, was forcing its practitioners to 54 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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assume, first, an evolutionary rather than distributive model for connectivity, and second, to introduce a major bias for what we could see as the command model—preferring broadcast (or one-to-many) modes to many-to-many peer-to-peer formats. Conventionally, the last mile has been defined as the final leg of delivering connectivity from a communications provider to a beneficiary. Typically a function of cost, the last mile has been relentlessly presented as primarily, or even exclusively, a technological problem. Among the standard perceptions of the last mile ‘problem’, as the Wikipedia definition shows, is the process by which any communication system has to, at some point, ‘fan out’ its wires and cables. Usually, this is seen as the point when the operation becomes not only physically massive, involving digging trenches and laying overhead cables, but also expensive. Enormous communication initiatives since the days of telegraphy have sought to overcome this specific barrier of delivery, and have moved from wireless radio to various developments in fibre-optic, wireless, free-space optics, radio waves, one-way and multiple sender-user communications and, most recently direct-to-satellite.

Interview with economists C.P. Chandrasekhar and Jayati Ghosh.

What is the nature of the State to which such a communications model commits us? The classical definition of the ‘last mile’ defines the final stage of providing connectivity from a communications provider to its ultimate recipient, and the commonest users of the term in this connotation have been the telecommunications and cable television industries. However, as In the Wake of Aadhaar 55


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the State has virtually reinvented itself in the very recent past and before our very eyes, the term has also come to mean something very much more. In recent years, especially (though not uniquely) in India, it has been used to map technological access upon developmentalist-democratic priorities: combining the two into a devastating cocktail of technology, development, governance, and markets. From Electronic Voting Machines to web-based railway reservation facilities, from e-governance to e-commerce, the last mile has become the privileged mode of a techno-democracy, where connectivity has also been directly translated into democratic citizenship.

RETHINKING DEMOCRATIC SELF-INTEREST

The argument had therefore hoped to show that, within the

relentlessly technologised definition of the last mile, the communications barrier could well be most appropriately seen as also, and even perhaps primarily, a human resource issue. The technologisation of human resource was not only a misconstruction of what is technologically possible (or we may say with Tendulkar’s Pardhis, a correct construction of their use of the radio unsupported by the mechanisms of interpretation of data), but even more, a straitjacketing of the roles of citizenship, which may partially explain why Indian citizens may so resolutely have refused to receive State benefit under these circumstances. The endemic assumption of such a model has historically been, firstly, that it is the sender’s responsibility to bridge the divide, secondly that technology can aid him to do so on its own, but thirdly and most importantly, that such technology could negate the need to define connectivity as a multiple-way partnership as it reduced the recipient into no more than an unintelligent receiver of what is sent. This realisation is itself not new: while India’s social sciences have made several political arguments on how citizens have been able (or not) to act upon citizenship rights, or why citizen actions have taken the form of insurgencies and rebellions, I am curious to see if this kind if a new model of the citizen as both sender and receiver can at all fit into a new theory 56 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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of technology. Could the extraordinary resilience of a linear model of State development be coincident with India’s abiding commitment to the idea that the next available technology would allow us to ‘leapfrog’—not so much over time into a future era, but leapfrog over space—over the last mile barrier to finally access our resolutely elusive citizen?4 Why do aspiring citizens perfectly capable of availing of various kinds of State-support—from public distribution systems to pan cards, from voter IDs to employment guarantee schemes—apparently prefer to receive these from what the State would consider illegal means, like the notice offering pan cards within two weeks on the Jayanagar tree—rather than receive them from the State directly? The issue is not, I wanted to show, inefficient distribution alone: it is directly to do with self-interest. There is no evidence that the kind of market mechanisms that have illegally sprung up around State aid, offering to mediate the same aid for a fee—like the ubiquitous tout standing just outside the railway train booking counter or the Regional Transport Office— are necessarily more efficient than their legitimate counterparts sitting behind the counter. The issue is, I suspect, the somewhat more discomfiting and even destabilising conditions under which the State has historically constructed its citizen-subject: it is also the distinction for why, let us say, citizens would consider the NATGRID a violation of their privacy rights while happily surrendering such rights to Google or Facebook. While both terrestrial and satellite systems of communication require some level of peer-to-peer transmission systems to facilitate last-mile communications, it has been a common problem that unless either a clear focus exists on geographic areas or significant peer-to-peer participation exists, broadcast models inevitably find themselves delivering—in their terminology—large amounts of ‘noise’ without sufficient spectrum to support large information capacity. In any such situation, the standard State strategy, as it has moved from various kinds of terrestrial systems of dissemination to satellite forms, has been to ‘flood’ a region with its broadcasting message, with extremely high wastage since much of the radiated information literally never reaches any user at all. This has in turn led to the vicious cycle of In the Wake of Aadhaar 57


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ever-increasing need for ‘topping up’ the information resource, and to keep expanding broadcast locations with large amounts of excess capacity to make up for the wasted energy. On the other hand, this project had wanted to explore an alternative possibility: of seeing if successful experiments bridging the last mile have typically been ones where recipients have been successfully integrated into the communications model both as peers and, even more significantly, as originators as well as enhancers of data. This has happened even on resolutely one-way ‘broadcast’ modes such as film, television and radio. However, what we had wanted to show was that whenever this happened, as with Tendulkar’s Pardhis, it was inevitably perceived as a problem for democracy than a solution: it became a transgressive, against the grain, act, contrary to the authorised technology usage manual. This problem, I would have suggested, has sprung as much from a built-in ideological commitment to one-way broadcasting formats, as from technological limitations. Presented as such, the technology constituted something like a social incarnation of the problem with its bias towards peer-to-peer possibilities lying in perennial conflict with broadcastdependent models. Rather than attempting a one-size-fits-all for all models to follow, we would have suggested, what was perhaps needed was to work out different synergies between broadcast-dependent and peer-to-peerenabled platforms. What we had developed was something of a ‘leaking sieve’ model of the State. A particular kind of citizen action, an extra-legal means (or at least a means exploring the grey zone of illegality) are adopted by which the State may actually do to its work properly. This could also draw our attention to public impatience with the slowness of the State to react to the changing speed information flow. The problem by this point would no longer be political alone as it found itself properly mounted upon the information model itself, as Scott Lash suggests, stating that ‘technological time does not so much question progress: it is too fast for progress. Invention is so fast that we outpace the logic of cause-and-effect. . . Technological time outpaces the determinacy of causality: it leads to a radical indeterminacy, to radical 58 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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contingency; to a chronic insecurity’.5 Taking our Pardhi community again from the Tendulkar play, and put another way with an ever-so-slight shift of the kaleidoscope, we could see the last mile being bridged all the time. Clearly, someone else, somewhere else, impatient at the failures of development, was bringing whatever ‘can-do’ means available to do what the official percolation model of technological time either cannot do or is taking too long to do. Our historical evidence would include the spillovers of development, the audio-cassette revolution of the 1980s, community radio, cable television, video art, and the mobile phone revolution to explore this second aspect: the underside of development. It would also have included the way ‘use-manuals’, defining the way technologies are ‘meant’ to be employed, have also become the basis of social theory, as the violation of their prescribed means, whether illegitimately by hackers, or legitimately by can-do barefoot technologists, or proto-legitimately by leapfroggers (like the chicken-mesh antennae and WLL-M that we will be seeing later in this book), has opened out a larger problem around State gatekeeping that has historically committed us all to a linear definition of the last mile.

DECLOGGING THE CONDUIT

So what then changed? Clearly, at one level, governance. What we had over

the past year is the culmination of a set of movements that go back to the early 2000s. These include a new bouquet of Government initiatives targeting the poor and underprivileged of the country, a brand new set of legally defined social rights, crucially the rights to information, education and food, and a technology that will now mediate between such people’s rights and the state’s capacity to deliver. Is this now a radical break with the past, or is this once again a classic case of Indian techno-utopia: a further instance of the saying that the more things change, the more they remain the same? In a way the Aadhaar maintains its fidelity to India’s historic investment in technological utopia: to the belief that technology will continue to solve In the Wake of Aadhaar 59


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the problem, whatever that might be. Even the problem itself—corruption, siphoning off resources et al., or that, as Congress spokesperson Manish Tiwari proposed last night on TV in defending the direct cash payments plan, ‘the delivery system sucks’—is itself hardly new. On the other hand, however, there appears to be a different understanding of the impact technology can have on governance, and with it a somewhat unprecedented capacity to amend governance structures in a way that can suit technological intervention that may be quite new to modern India. New Government Schemes: From roughly the 1980s, but in a growing rush in the early 2000s, the Government of India has been working with a growing number of Centrally Sponsored Schemes primarily geared towards poverty eradication. Harsh Mander’s extremely useful history of anti-poverty programmes (APPs) places these programmes squarely in the backdrop of the radical agrarian struggles of the 1970s, and the Emergency.6 He points out that these programmes have historically split into two categories: one, self-employment programmes, and two, programmes of wage employment through rural public works (RPWPs). Mander has several issues with the former programme,7 and is more comfortable with the latter, but in the process also brings out the tension that the two sets of schemes have historically had with each other. Typically, the former, the self-employment effort, addresses the rural credit system, and seeks to make credit structures available to endbeneficiaries through a combination of subsidies and loans. This category of government scheme, whose best known version was started in 1980 as the Integrated Rural Development Programme (IRDP), and was then the ancestor to the Swarna Jayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana (SJSY), which innovated with a ‘cluster’ model of lending not to individuals but to groups in activity clusters, may well be seen as the point of origin of what has today come to be known as the massively growing ‘financial inclusion’ sector. The second, the wage employment mechanism, historically associated with the Jawahar Rozgar Yojana, has since 2005 crystallised with the well known National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS).



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As per the 11th Plan, the sum total of the Centrally Sponsored Schemes (CSS) extended by the Government of India to different States under the Article 282 of the Constitution, and backed by Central government grant money, to attain ‘national goals and objectives’—including access to clean drinking water and sanitation to every habitation, eradicating polio and tuberculosis, making primary education universal for every female and male child etc.—were around 99 schemes operated by 27 central ministries and departments with a total outlay of around ` 82,000 crore. New Social Rights: Walking alongside this slew of both self-employmentthrough-loans and wage employment programmes has been a new, also equally post-Emergency, phenomenon of a new set of social rights, exemplified by the Right to Information (which became an Act in 2005), the Right to Education (2009), and the forthcoming National Food Securities Act. It clearly appears that in all these initiatives, there has existed the anxiety of not repeating Emergencytype judicial activism in reading all socio-economic Rights as existing on the same plane as civil and political rights. This anxiety goes alongside a parallel anxiety around the conditions under which State benefits are made available to their beneficiaries: conditions where, as Amartya Sen puts it, ‘benefits meant exclusively for the poor often end up being poor benefits’. There is considerable theory on whether economic, social and cultural rights, many of which are non-justiciable, and some of which cannot even be directed to the State, can be treated on a par with Fundamental Rights. Some social rights concern direct benefits or services either provided directly by the state or by actors directly empowered by the state, while others are best considered the goals of social policy, to be delivered by independent agencies. Wiktor Osiatynski points out that: When we talk about the enforcement of human rights and when we claim them, we always need to think what kind of action we expect from the state. Is it regulation, protection, provision of services, or something else? For each of these roles different strategies are effective. Ever since their inception in the 19th century, social rights have been the subject of constant debate. In fact, there are two debates: (1) are In the Wake of Aadhaar 61


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social rights human rights: (2) if they are, how should they be protected and enforced? These two debates are, in fact, one and very same debate for we tend to narrow the scope of rights if we want to attach to all of them the same constitutional enforcement. If all human rights should have constitutional protection, then many social rights and benefits have to be excluded from the concept of human rights. Conversely, when we acknowledge that there may exist diversified enforcement mechanisms, we can define human rights much broadly. This is precisely what I suggest: while insisting that all human rights are indispensable for dignity of a person I do not think that all human rights should have identical enforcement. Some of them cannot be enforceable at all.8 For Osiatynski, social rights are indispensable for providing a sense of security, but they are not absolute. They depend on the situation of the claimant who needs to justify his or her claim by proving the lack of other means of subsistence and by a prior effort to take care of these needs before claiming rights. Importantly he notes: we do not ask people to provide such justification in relation to civil and political rights. Moreover, social rights are not unconditional; a claimant may be asked to make a contribution to community or larger society, whenever it is possible. Secondly, social rights can be granted within limits that should be defined by what is considered as basic needs in a given society at a given moment within available resources. It means that social rights can be adjusted to resources, to the changing character of needs, and to changes in the prevailing structures of economy or in the nature of employment. Such a debate has taken place in India most significantly perhaps in the Right to Food campaigns. In an important commentary on the Right to Food, Jean Dreze has argued that such a Right is not easily justiciable in the sense of being enforceable in a court of law.9 For example, if a girl is undernourished because of discrimination within the family, it would be hard to take her parents to court. To this pragmatic fact is of course the historic fact that in India, such rights form part of the Directive Principles of State Policy and are therefore more guidelines than really enforceable laws. 62 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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What this needs, says Dreze, is a means by which the Courts frame additional legislation through democratic processes, clarifying how the right to food is to be realised as an entitlement. Dreze rejects all three arguments that he notes are currently being proposed under social rights: (i) converting some Directive Principles into Fundamental Rights (as happened with the right to education); (ii) elastic interpretations of Fundamental Rights to encompass these Directive Principles (as with the argument that the right to food is implicit in the fundamental ‘right to life’); and (iii) a constitutional amendment making all Directive Principles justiciable. He instead argues for a new democratic approach to the Directive Principles, which the Constitution itself says are ‘fundamental to the governance of the country’. While the Constitution does show that these Principles ‘shall not be enforced by any court’, nevertheless it does affirm that ‘it shall be the duty of the state to apply these principles in making laws’. Dreze further quotes Ambedkar as saying, while defending the Directive Principles, that in a democracy, legal action is not the only means of holding the state accountable to its responsibilities. In cases where rights cannot be enforced through legal procedure, they can be asserted through other democratic means that Courts can also invoke, including parliamentary interventions, the electoral process, the media, international solidarity, street action, or even civil disobedience. For Dreze the big example is the landmark Food Security Case initiated by the People’s Union of Civil Liberties (PUCL) in 2001.10 Popularly known as the ‘hunger amidst plenty’ case, as India’s foodgrain stocks reached unprecedented levels even as hunger intensified in drought-affected areas and elsewhere, the PUCL (Rajasthan) brought a Right to Food case against the Government of India, the Food Corporation of India (FCI), and six state governments, alleging inadequate drought relief. The case later included all Indian states, and extended its brief to address the question of chronic hunger. The case was pivoted around Article 21 of the Constitution, which guarantees the ‘right to life’, Article 39 (a) which obliges the State to direct its policy towards ensuring that the citizens have the right to an adequate means of livelihood, and Article 47 which mandates that the state shall regard the raising of the level of nutrition and the standard of living of its people as In the Wake of Aadhaar 63


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among its primary duties. They argued that the central and state governments’ response to the drought situation constituted a clear violation of this right. Firstly, this was to do with the breakdown of the public distribution system (PDS). The PDS had, by then, started a system of ‘targeting’: restricting food to families living below the poverty line (BPL). The Supreme Court’s order was that governments ensure that ‘food is provided to the aged, infirm, disabled, destitute women, destitute men who are in danger of starvation, pregnant and lactating women and destitute children, especially in cases where they or members of their family do not have sufficient funds to provide food for them’. ‘Plenty of food is available, but distribution of the same amongst the very poor and the destitute is scarce and non-existent leading to mal-nourishment, starvation and other related problems’. The food order saw the Supreme Court direct the Central and State governments to smoothly implement a slew of major distribution programmes, including the Sampoorna Grameen Rozgar Yojana, the Mid-Day Meal Scheme, the National Social Assistance Programme which includes the National Old Age Pension Scheme, the National Maternity Benefit Scheme and the National Family Benefit Scheme, the Antyodaya Anna Yojana, the Integrated Child Development Scheme and the Annapurna scheme. With respect to the SGRY, the SC issued an order highlighting the fact that the State Governments and Union Territories should adhere to Scheme guidelines and ensure a complete ban on contractors and labour-displacing machines.

Interview with Sukhendu Debbarma of the History Department of the University of Tripura. He wants to know if the people who live in forests come first, or the laws evicting them.



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For my own argument, such a defence of social rights, and the complicated process by which social rights could be institutionalised, is crucial if we are to understand the manner in which the Indian State is presently bridging the last mile. To my argument, it is significant that one of the key figures anchoring this debate, Amartya Sen, too adopts the metaphor that Robin Jeffery has called ‘bullet theory’ of communication: ‘have a message, fire it, and expect the target to be hit’. Sen speaks of the Government of India’s policy of ‘targeting’ beneficiaries. ‘The use of the term “targeting” in eradicating poverty’, writes Sen, ‘is based on an analogy—a target is something fired at. The problem is not so much that the word “target” has combative association (but rather) the fact that the analogy of a target does not at all suggest that the recipient is an active person, functioning on her own, acting and doing things. The image is one of a passive receiver rather than of an active agent’.11

TECHNO-GOVERNANCE

For Sen, the entire matter came down to how the recipient of benefit

would be characterised. He wanted to take a ‘more activity-oriented view of human beings’ and see poverty as ‘the failure of basic capabilities to function—a person lacking the opportunity to achieve some minimally acceptable levels of these functionings’. This means that targeting a beneficiary has to take adequate note of the costs of targeting, including informational manipulation, incentive distortion, disutility and stigma, administrative and invasive losses, and problems of political sustainability. With this we move, from new generation social benefit schemes and new social rights, to the third of our triad: technology. It is not the first time that technology has been mobilised as the epitome of good governance and exemplary producer of a new enlightened public: as something precisely capable of overcoming information manipulation, stigma, administrative losses etc. India has had a long history of governmental techno-utopia— where technology has been presented as somehow clean, as everything that In the Wake of Aadhaar 65


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the State, in its messiness, is not—where, somehow, leaving it to technology instead of to mere human beings would make it faster, easier, more accessible, less corruptible. As Balaji Parthasarathy et al.’s landmark study (2005) on e-governance initiatives in the early 2000s shows, ‘the defining characteristic [of] the use of computers, and sometimes connectivity, to reorganise both the functioning of the government and service delivery to citizens’ is the presumption that ‘increases in transaction speeds [and] ease of data storage and retrieval’ automatically signals ‘transparency and accountability’.12 The report goes on to show how the cultural difficulty of translating such symbolic attributes into functioning systems crippled several major initiatives, precisely because of their absolute belief in the capacity to attribute abstract democratic values into the technology itself.13 Parthasarathy’s study contended that e-governance programmes would never work in India unless they found a theory for ‘localisation’: both of the specific programme being implemented as well as of the ideal itself. The report went on to say: Localising information provision has at least two components to it— localising content (linguistic and otherwise) and localising the means of transmitting information. Linguistic localisation is a beginning to localising content, as there is a need to develop applications in local languages even while ensuring that various applications can be seamlessly integrated so that they are interoperable. While linguistic localisation is essential, localisation to accommodate cultural, social, economic, political, historical and environmental diversity and heterogeneity is also critical. Parthasarathy’s work provokes us to consider up-front and without delay whether the last mile problem is at all a technological issue, or whether we might be better off framing it in social terms. Or should we not be seeing it as an either-or? Historians of modern science have looked at the role of the national impact of technology,14 have addressed its showpiece endeavour, its atomic programme,15etc. There has been little work, as far as I know, that has 66 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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extended an inquiry into the methods of deployment of, say, the telegraph, the radio, terrestrial or satellite television, or information technology, into a further inquiry into how its systems could have been a source for (or, we could say with Parthasarathy, a barrier to) a theory of governance. In one sense, I think, e-governance still retains some of the techno-utopia of the mid-2000s. However the institutions concerned have widened—the kind of public bodies that the RTI legtislation covers include not only State institutions as defined in Article 12 of the Constitution for the purposes of enforcing Fundamental Rights, but all undertakings and non-statutory authorities, and even a company, corporation, society, trust, firm, or a co-operative society, owned or controlled by private individuals and institutions whose activities affect the public interest. Through the late 2000s, a series of major government reports have emerged, primarily on financial inclusion, that open up the question of what techno-governance could now look like. We have later dealt at some length with the TAGUP (Technology Advisory Group on Unique Projects) Report, under the chairmanship of Nandan Nilekani. Intended to ‘find ways to rapidly roll out these complex systems, to achieve project objectives and sustain high levels of reliable performance’, with a focus on a Tax Information Network, a New Pension Scheme, a National Treasury Management Agency, an Expenditure Information Network and the Goods and Service Tax (GST), TAGUP proposes a major new solution pivoted on a National Information Utilities (NIU), a class of institutions that is meant to handle all aspects of IT for complex governmental projects. What distinguishes the NIU, as had already distinguished the Prasar Bharati Board in the 1990s, is the new role attributed to public self-interest, and to the possibility of there being a technological representation for that selfinterest. The system, it is claimed, would have a ‘self-cleaning’ mechanism that is directly linked to citizen self-interest: the system would be self-cleaning because it was in the resident’s interest to ensure that the system has correct data, in absence of which he cannot authenticate his own identity. Additional to selfcleansing are also several ‘self-corrective forces’ derived from society itself: a In the Wake of Aadhaar 67


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transparency portal that can work as a positive feedback loop. Such a portal would also generate analytics about the performance of the project. Arising from public participation in the self-correcting process, a remarkable new dependency exists on crowd-sourcing as a direct feature of e-democracy. On the one side, the NIU has the standard checklist of virtues, defined entirely through negation. So it will NOT be the former State; it will therefore not have the negatives associated with State sloth. The new form of benevolent governance will directly radiate from the technology itself. The NIU will no longer be riddled by an absence of leadership, outdated recruitment processes, or an inability to pay market salaries for specialised skills. It will no longer lack opportunities and variety in assignments, or avenues of continued enhancement of professional skills and career growth opportunities. It will no longer produce a non-conducive work environment, outdated performance evaluation systems preferring seniority over merit, or untimely transfers of officers posted to handle certain project functions. As I have suggested, in itself such techno-utopia is not new. What could be indeed new is the capacity of the concept to accommodate a democratic dimension of citizen self-interest, and, arising from that, to find a technological solution for the expression of that self-interest. Cloud Liberalism: A political economy perspective is necessary to understand the triumph of markets over governments: governments themselves called for such a victory, in a historic death-wish. They did so to preserve/ enhance the interests of their states, within the context of the emergence of a new economy, and in the new ideological environment that resulted from the collapse of statism, the crisis of welfarism and the contradictions of the developmental state—Manuel Castells (ibid, 1996, 147). A key point of change that will shadow this book is a particular, elusive change in the State that coincides with the onset of what has come to be called neoliberalism. Let us for the moment concede that what the Indian State is assembling are fairly classic neoliberal conditions: which we will see more of with the contiguity of the TAGUP report to a clutch of related documents put 68 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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out by the Finance Ministry, including on Market Infrastructure Institutions (MIIs),16 the IT Strategy for Goods and Services Tax (GST),17 and on how to make Mumbai into an international financial centre.18 It is important to note that such a State bears considerable resemblance to the earlier welfare State— or at least in most cases continues to swear by the same Constitution—so it is not that easy to mark, or to calibrate, the point of change I am trying to identify. One way to mark it is to differentiate the agendas of an older promarket right seeking to bring down the ‘license-raj’ and thus roll back the State from a newer social right that sees the State as integral to its functioning, even if not solely responsible for it. According to David Harvey (2005), the classic theory of neoliberalism proposes that the State does three things: (1) the State is redefined as accountable to the same forces of market rationality as any other social agency. At the same time; (2) Neoliberalism requires the State to develop an additional, strictly limited feature, namely as a facilitation agency of a certain kind: such facilitation has to be limited to guaranteeing the quality and integrity of money, secure the proper functioning of markets through military, defence, police, and legal structures and functions required to secure private property rights and to guarantee, by force if need be, and where markets do not exist (in areas such as land, water, education, health care, social security, or environmental pollution), to create them. And finally; (3) To develop out of the process of its own redefinition a new definition of the public good. Beyond these tasks, says Harvey, it is required that the State should not venture. State interventions in markets, once created, must be kept to a bare minimum because, according to the theory, the State cannot possibly possess enough information to second-guess market signals (prices) and because powerful interest groups will inevitably distort and bias State interventions (particularly in democracies) for their own benefit. My own point of difference with Harvey is that, although he adequately distinguishes the all-important neoliberal turn from the older pro-privatisation Right, several of his examples tend to blur that essential distinction. Harvey proposes that both the curtailment of the State’s powers and the need for its accountability to market forces originate with the phenomenon of State disinvestment, the classic example for which is for him In the Wake of Aadhaar 69


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in Thatcher’s England. Thatcher, says Harvey, had set out to privatise all those sectors of the economy that were in public ownership, expecting those sales to boost the public treasury and rid the government of burdensome future obligations towards losing enterprises. Such enterprises needed to pare down their debt and improve their efficiency and cost structures, typically through shedding labour. The aim of such disinvestment, says Harvey, was mainly to change the political culture by extending the field of personal and corporate responsibility and encouraging greater efficiency, individual/ corporate initiative, and innovation. British Aerospace, British Telecom, British Airways, steel, electricity and gas, oil, coal, water, bus services, railways, and a host of smaller state enterprises were sold off in a massive wave of privatisations. Britain pioneered the way in showing how to do this in a reasonably orderly and, for capital, profitable way. Thatcher was convinced that once these changes had been made they would become irreversible: hence the haste. To me all of these are more strictly neoconservative moves, calling for State rollback, and would perhaps be best evidenced in India by positions such as Mr. Ailawadi’s at the top of this Chapter asking that the State hive off its assets to the private sector—or Arun Shourie’s efforts, long after relinquishing his position as India’s Disinvestment Minister, to list BSNL shares and taking on BSNL unions—rather than the kind of moves being advocated by TAGUP. Which brings me to my second criterion for signaling the change in the character of the State: namely, the very different role that technology—more precisely informational technology—now plays within both the function of the State and the market. Unlike both Shourie and Ailawadi, no good neoliberal would today call for State rollback (it would be the ultimate hara-kiri to do so!), but would call rather for a radically different nature of State intervention. I suggest that one critical way this shift can be characterised is through shifting the very terms of political science, in their relationship to technology. Manuel Castells calibrates one aspect of the shift as a move from an industrial to an informational society. A hyperindustrial society is often unable 70 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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to make the shift, as the former USSR couldn’t, and can sink in the process. Castells says that while the informational economy is distinct from the industrial, it does not oppose its logic but rather subsumes that logic through technological deepening—which is why perhaps the subtle, if foundational, shifts in the character of the neoliberal State can sometimes be missed, by Harvey for example. This new technological process embodies knowledge and information in all processes of material production and distribution. The industrial economy has to become the informational economy or collapse, says Castells, as the former USSR did. The new informational economy requires ‘fundamental social, cultural and institutional transformations’, the core of which includes ‘financial markets, international trade, transnational production and, to some extent, science and technology, and specialty labour’.19 My question is why India did not sink. Was it simply because India was not a ‘hyperindustrialised’ society? More, why did India’s business classes, who have historically never supported India’s state development initiatives—and who, Vivek Chibber’s recent history of industrial capitalism says,20 virtually launched a ‘concerted offensive’ against the idea of disciplinary planning in the immediate years after Independence? Why, when they didn’t support the Indian state in the heyday of Indian nationalism, are they doing it now? For approximately two years now, Nishant Shah (at CIS) and I have worked on a series of research and implementation projects that would directly test the key hypotheses of this argument. Specifically, we have been interested in exploring the spaces of undergraduate education, peer-to-peer learning processes, the role of intermediate technologies, distributive mechanisms and the processes of redefining recipients of benefit into producers of knowledge. We have together explored key concepts in projects such as the Digital Classroom, the Networked Higher Education Initiative and have now completed, with other colleagues in CSCS and CIS, on this major new initiative exploring the properties of the Government of India’s Unique Identity Initiative (its Aadhaar programme).



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As these projects took shape, it became increasingly clear that the easy hypotheses with which I had originally mounted my argument needed to be revised. This was not some autobiographical course-correction: the objective situation had changed in India. Indeed, in ways that could not have been anticipated a scant decade ago, the Indian State appeared all set to precisely bridge the exact last mile through a clutch of governance and technology initiatives that I personally would have considered impossible just a few years ago. It is not, I now suspect, any more making the tired old attempt. The State seemed to have restructured itself in basic ways, so that this was no longer the old last mile. Or, more precisely, there came to be a redefinition of the last mile: and the new self-identity of a new State apparatus has been moulded primarily on its claim to bridge that divide. As always with such change, such a redefinition has allowed us to retrospectively rethink the roles both technology and State have played even before the change came about. The purpose of this project now has become an effort to try and track what I want to suggest was the pre-history of this change, although I am acutely aware that I am putting these ideas down at a time when the last word is still a long way away from being said. My major earlier preconditions have broken down, but it is yet too early to tell whether they have been replaced with anything significantly different. Is the hype surrounding what we might broadly call digital distribution systems based on anything substantial, or will this new moment too be consigned to the same fate as its major predecessors, such as the transistor-radio at the height of the welfare State, the early history of satellite communications immortalised in the Indian State’s SITE (Satellite Instructional Television Experiment) of the 1970s, or the televisual networking across the country of the 1980s that announced the first round of economic globalisation? In the rest of this compilation, we will propose that something is indeed new, that something new is in the definitional domain, and more importantly, that newness may well allow us a retrospective return to the key landmarks of technological change in communications in the past two decades. My newness proposition therefore is not premised upon a futuristic claim, but 72 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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rather at identifying a break, from where to re-view recent Indian history and perhaps understand better what may have happened, the better to also identify what may happen in the future.

REFERENCES Abraham, Itty, Making of the Indian Atomic Bomb: Science, Secrecy and the Postcolonial State, Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 1999. Ailawadi, V.S. , ‘The Last Mile Problem in Indian Telecom’, Business Standard, January 23, 2007). Bhalla, A.S., Can ‘High’ Technology Help Third World ‘Take-Off’? Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 22, No. 27 (Jul. 4, 1987). Castells, Manuel, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture: V 1 The Rise of the Network Society, Malden, MA: Bachwell Publishing, 1996. Chatterjee, R.K., Mass Communication (New Delhi: National Book Trust, 1973). Chibber, Vivek, Locked in Place: State-Building and Late Industrialisation in India, Delhi: Tulika Books, 2003. Dreze, Jean, ‘Democracy and Right to Food’, Economic & Political Weekly, v 39 n 17, April 24 - April 30, 2004. Gonsalves, Colin, P. Ramesh Kumar and Anup Kumar Srivastava ed. Right to Food, New Delhi: Human Law Rights Network, 2005. Mander, Harsh, ‘Unconscionable Deprivation and Faltering Interventions: Rural Poverty and the Role of the State’, in The Ripped Chest: Public Policy and the Poor in India, Bangalore: Books for Change, 2004. Osiatynski, Wiktor, ‘Introduction’, in Nsongurua Udombana and Violeta Beširevic ed. Rethinking Socio-Economic Rights in an Insecure World, Budapest: CEU Center for Human Rights, Central European University Press, 2006. Parthasarathy, Balaji et al (ed), ‘Information and Communications Technologies for Development: A Comparative Analysis of Impacts and Costs from India’, Bangalore: International Institute of Information Technology, 2005. Prakash, Gyan, Another Reason: Science and the Imagination of Modern India, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999. PUCL vs Union of India & others, Writ Petition (Civil) 196 of 2001. Rajadhyaksha, Ashish, ‘The Phalke Era: Contradictions of Traditional Form and Modern Technology’, Journal of Arts & Ideas, no. 14-15 (July-Dec 1987). http://dsal. uchicago.edu/books/artsandideas/pager.html?issue=14-15&objectid=HN681. S597_14-15_049.gif. Report of the Committee on ‘Review of Ownership and Governance of Market Infrastructure Institutions’, Bimal Jalan (Chairman), 2010 http://www.sebi.gov.in/commreport/ ownershipreport.pdf.



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Sanjay, B.P., The Role of Institutional Relationships in Communication Technology Transfer: A Case Study of the Indian National Satellite System (INSAT), Ph.D. Dissertation, Simon Fraser University, 1989. Sen, Amartya, ‘The Political Economy of Targeting’, http://adatbank.transindex.ro/html/ cim_pdf384.pdf.

NOTES 1

Sanjay, B.P., 1989, pp. 42.

2

Chatterjee, (1973), quoted in Sanjay, 1989, pp. 43.

3

Ailawadi, 2007.

4

A.S. Bhalla explains the concept of leapfrogging as follows: the advent of new frontier technologies enable developing countries (at least some of them like the NICs) to catch up with the north or leap-frog to narrow the ‘technology’, ‘communications’ and ‘economic’ gaps. ‘Three connotations can be given to the concept of technological leap-frogging and catching up. First, it implies narrowing of the gaps between countries at different stages of development. Secondly, it would involve the use of advanced technology in leap-frogging countries ahead of other more advanced countries. Thirdly, leap-frogging may mean that developing countries can jump some steps and avoid having to go through stages experienced by the present advanced countries. To take one example, it is feasible for many developing countries to move straight from manual operations to flexible manufacturing systems without having to experience fixed automation’. Bhalla, 1987.

5

(2001) Scott Lash.

6

Harsh Mander, 2004, pp. 141-182.

7

Although this programme has seen variable success, Mander points to some intrinsic problems to the very structure of extending rural credit, showing that such credit effectively works out to very high (40% and more) interest rates. Additionally, in villages flush with IRDP assistance, all other formal or informal sources of credit tend to dry up, he says, leading to distress sales and further pauperisation. This in many ways forms the backdrop of the financial inclusion system in which the UID initiative is so centrally involved.

8

Osiatynski, 2006.

9

Dreze, 2004.

10 PUCL vs Union of India & others, Writ Petition (Civil) 196 of 2001. See Colin Gonsalves, P. Ramesh Kumar and Anup Kumar Srivastava ed. Right to Food, New Delhi: Human Law Rights Network, 2005, for an exhaustive record of the entire legal process. 11 Amartya Sen, ‘The Political Economy of Targeting’, http://adatbank.transindex.ro/html/cim_pdf384.pdf. 12 Parthasarathy et al, 2005. 13 A century-old ancestor to this belief in the technology’s innate capacity for objectivity, fairness, accuracy and so forth could be in the late 19th Century career of still photography, which attributed similar objectivity that claimed to be immune to the limitations that ‘mere’ human beings could ever achieve. See Rajadhyaksha, 1987. http://dsal.uchicago.edu/books/artsandideas/pager. html?issue=14-15&objectid=HN681.S597_14-15_049.gif



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14 See Gyan Prakash, 1999. 15 Abraham, 1999. 16 Report of the Committee on ‘Review of Ownership and Governance of Market Infrastructure Institutions’, Bimal Jalan (Chairman), 2010 http://www.sebi.gov.in/commreport/ ownershipreport.pdf. 17 The IT Strategy for GST: Empowered Group on IT Infrastructure on GST headed by Shri Nandan Nilekani (2010) http://finmin.nic.in/GST/IT_Strategy_for_GST_ver0.85.pdf. 18 http://finmin.nic.in/the ministry/dept eco affairs/capital market div/mifc/fullreport/execsummary.pdf 19 Castells, 1996, pp. 99-100. 20 Chibber, 2003, pp. 3-29.



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CHAPTER 4

The Unique Identity project and the New ‘Bureaucratic Moment’ in India Swagato Sarkar Assistant Professor, Jindal School of Government and Public Policy, O.P. Jindal Global University and former Fellow, CSCS

At various points in its career through the 20th Century, the Indian state has deployed technologies to govern the country. In its latest move, this has extended to a number of large scale projects to install digital technology, the most controversial being the Unique Identity Project, an ongoing project which is registering biometric data, along with demographic information of residents. This essay attempts to understand what is at stake in technology-mediated governance. Do these interventions signal a shift in the thinking around institutional systems while negotiating the political in a particular way? Do they reconcile the participatory and procedural impulses of Indian democracy? How do they negotiate particular claims? Is this a change in the state-citizen relationship itself? The essay will propose that these interventions cannot be understood as an orthodox neoliberal policy initiative. Rather, they articulate a new desire to segregate and yet preserve the state, even as they free the executive from the encumbrance of populist democracy.

THE NATIONAL E-GOVERNANCE PLAN AND REGISTERING THE POPULATION

The Unique Identity Project has its origins in the National e-Governance

Plan (NeGP) adopted by the Government of India in May 2006. Under NeGP, 27 Mission Mode Projects (MMPs) are in the process of being rolling out. These MMPs are ‘high priority citizen services’ offered by various government departments (like 76 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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income-tax, company affairs, pension, passport, etc.), whose mode of delivery would change from manual to e-delivery (i.e. electronic delivery). The NeGP is purported to offer ‘a seamless view of Government’ and bring service delivery to the doorstep of the citizens. An official document on NeGP highlights two aspects of its approach: a centralised initiative and a decentralised implementation model, as it explains, E-Governance would be promoted through a Centralised initiative to the extent necessary to ensure citizen service orientation, to realise the objective of interoperability of various e-Governance applications and to ensure optimal utili(s)ation of ICT infrastructure/ resources while allowing for and adopting, as a policy, a Decentralised Implementation Model1 The new governance infrastructure would be deployed using a public-private partnership (PPP) model, which would ‘enlarge the resource pool without compromising on the security aspects (of the IT infrastructure and data)’.2 While most MMPs aim to offer an easy access to the chosen services and their speedy delivery, two of these, the National Resident/Citizen Database and the UID projects stand out, as they aim to create a database on the country’s (entire) population and provide the state (and other nonstate actors/ agencies) with an extremely powerful tool. Prior to the conceptualisation of these two MMPs, the Parliament of India had amended the Citizens’ Act 1955 in 2003 and introduced a new clause—14A, which stipulates that ‘[t]he Central Government may compulsorily register every citizen of India and issue [a] national identity card to him [sic]’ [emphasis added] and that ‘[t]he Central Government may maintain a National Register of Indian Citizens and for that purpose establish a National Registration Authority.’ This offered a new means for conceptualising an MMP that would register citizens ‘under the National Register of Indian Citizens (NRIC) and provide them National Identity Cards by the Registrar General, India (RGI), Ministry of Home Affairs, who has been designated as [the] Registrar General Citizen Registration (RGCR) by the statue’.3



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NATIONAL RESIDENT/CITIZEN DATABASE AND UID MMPS

The idea of a National Security System arose out of an obvious concern

for national security and ‘illegal’ immigration. It was proposed that all citizens should be provided with a Multi-purpose National Identity Card (MNIC), and that ‘this should be introduced initially in the border districts or may be in a 20 [Km] border belt and extended to the hinterland progressively’ (ibid p.70 and passim). A pilot project was launched on April 2003 in 20 districts of 12 States. The project helped to gather information on designing a system for population registration: ‘processes for collection and verification of individual data as well s the technology for production, personali(s)ation of identity cards using an inter-operable operating system’.4 After the completion of this pilot project on 31 March 2009, an MNIC Mission Mode Project was conceptualised to register citizens under the National Register of Indian Citizens (NRIC) for the purpose of issuing them with National Identity Cards.’ However, the experience gathered from the MNIC pilot project made it clear that the ‘determination of Citizenship was a complicated and involved issue’.5 Hence, it was decided that ‘all the usual residents in the country’ would be registered, rather than all citizens—and thereby create a National Population Register (NPR). The NPR would collect ‘information on specific characteristics of each individual along with their photographs, finger biometrics and Iris. The NPR shall thus result in creation of a biometrics based identity database in the country’. This database would ‘become a robust source of authentic real time data which would help in better targeting of the benefits and services under various Government schemes/ programmes, improve infrastructural planning, would provide a fillip to strengthen security of the country and prevent identity fraud’. On the other hand, ‘the Unique Identification Number (UID) project was conceptualised to create a verifiable and credible database of individuals’. This database was supposed to be based on ‘the voter list of the Election Commission of India (ECI), which is the most credible and validated data on residents [sic, citizens] available in the country and thereafter linkages were to be established with 78 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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major database holders such as MoRD [Ministry of Rural Development], PDS [Public Distribution System], ECI and RGI [Registrar General, India]’. But later it was decided to move away from the ECI database [i.e. electoral roll] and to opt for fresh registration of residents. As the NPR and UID would both create biometric database, so to avoid duplication of effort and database, an Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) was formed ‘to collate the two schemes. . . [It] recommended that the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) be notified as an executive authority and anchored in the Planning Commission to own, manage and operate the UID database’.6 Arguably, the reason for anchoring the UIDAI in the Planning Commission was that this database would become an important tool for planners as ‘the count of people residing in an area would be known at any point of time’.7 On the other hand, the Knowledge Commission of India felt that various modes of identification by the state, [i.e. the various cards issued by the state] need to be consolidated into one, which reinforced the idea of UID. The UIDAI was formally constituted and notified on 28 January, 2009.8 The NeGP document provides an outline of the current strategy to build and maintain the database: the data collected in the NPR will be subjected to de-duplication by the UIDAI. After de-duplication, the UIDAI will issue a Unique Identification Number (UID). This UID Number will be part of the NPR and the NPR Cards will bear this UID Number. The maintenance of the NPR database and updating subsequently will be done by the Office of Registrar General and Census Commissioner, India. The UID of each individual in the database will become the link number between sectoral databases, thus bringing about a host of conceivable benefits. The NPR database would be updated and maintained on a continuous basis by setting up of NPR centres at each of the Tehsils/Taluks/wards [units of administration].9 As it stands now, Aadhaar does not either substitute or replace existing cards or numbers, contrary to the proposal of the Knowledge Commission. Aadhaar is issued on the basis of extensive biometric information (facial photograph, two iris scans, and ten fingerprints) and a thin set of demographic information: the resident’s name, address, gender, age, name In the Wake of Aadhaar 79


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of parent/guardian if the resident is below 5 years of age. The UIDAI claims that Aadhaar would offer the following benefits: 1.

‘help in better targeting of beneficiary[-]oriented schemes. . . by uniquely identifying the residents/beneficiaries,

2.

significantly reduce identity frauds and thereby help in efficient utilisation of funds allocated to these schemes

3.

Over a period of time, this may help in reducing the total outlay under these schemes by preventing duplicates both under the same scheme and across various schemes’ (DoIT 2011, p. 78).

The benefit of Aadhaar for residents would be that they can furnish a single source for all identity verifications (proof of both identity and address) required for obtaining various services, without producing any additional document (an ideal situation, which may not be the actual case). The official documents claim that Aadhaar will ‘also facilitate entry for poor and underprivileged residents into the formal banking system, and the opportunity to avail services provided by the government and the private sector. The UID will also give [Indian] migrants mobility of identity’.10

THE WAY AADHAAR WORKS

The Aadhaar project has three parts: enrollment, de-duplication, and

verification. In various parts of the country the UIDAI has run enrollment, camps often by private agencies to capture biometric and demographic information. After enrollment, encrypted data is sent to the UIDAI headquarters in New Delhi in a secure manner, where the quality of the data is checked and a particular individual’s identity verified following a 1:n matching, i.e. one individual is checked against the available database of the (entire) population called the Central ID Data Repository (CIDR). This is the de-duplication process. If the information provided by/captured from the person does not match existing data, then the person is considered to be



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unique and an Aadhaar number is issued. The Aadhaar number is sent by post to the person. If an institution/agency requires the identity of a person to be established and authenticated and accepts Aadhaar, then the person in question can furnish his/her Aadhaar number. The institution can ask the person to furnish the demographic information as well and to take biometric tests— the information and the level of security required for verification will be solely determined by the institution’s policy, not UIDAI (and so, for a small transaction, a bank can just ask for thumb imprint verification, whereas for a very high transaction, it can verify the full set of biometric information). The captured information, along with the Aadhaar number, is sent to UIDAI. UIDAI will do a 1:1 check of the given information with the CIDR (which can be accessed through electronic networks) to authenticate the information in realtime. Analogically, it is like opening a drawer marked with a particular Aadhaar number to check the content: UIDAI would answer the query in the form of a ‘Yes’, or a ‘No’, i.e. yes, the UIDAI database matches with the information given by the institute and it is authenticated, or no, it does not match. UIDAI will not provide any other information to the institution seeking verification of an identity. The UIDAI will separate biometric information from demographic ones, encrypt both sets and distribute and store these on various servers so that even if one server is hacked, it cannot provide access to the entire information on a particular person. The sole owner of the database would be UIDAI and no other government department will have access to the data sets.

UID/AADHAAR AND THE GOVERNMENTAL RATIONALITY

How do we critically engage with this new governance structure with its

overt intention to register the residents? The critique and criticisms of the UID In the Wake of Aadhaar 81


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have so far been either on the ground of civil liberties, claiming that the biometric database could create a super-powerful surveillance state (Ramanathan 2010), or on technical grounds (Ramkumar 2009), asserting that the scale is too large and the failure will be correspondingly spectacular and significant in its consequences; that it is an experimental infrastructure which has no predecessor anywhere, and that the accuracy of biometric authentication of an individual within a massive pool of a billion plus people cannot be assured; that the technology is not adequate to match such a huge number of unique patterns instantly or in real-time (this is a wrong understanding of the way UID works). That the likelihood of error is high and that such errors will cause misery to, and harassment of, ordinary people. A third position sees the UID as an uninvited entity and an intruder in the daytoday functioning of social welfare programmes like the Public Distribution System and the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), which will complicate the existing system, instead of improving it (Khera, Dreze 2010). These are important and influential positions, but beyond these, politically, is there anything further at stake here? For that we need to look at the specificity of the UID. First, let us consider the focus on ‘population’. A decisive shift comes to be in the function of the state when the concept of population overrules that of sovereignty (Foucault 2007). The state undertakes projects to know, to map and to categorise both population and territory. The technologies for such a task have been mostly cartography (maps of territory and ‘resources’ like forests, rivers, etc.), ethnography (classifying people into ‘tribes’, ‘castes’ based on ‘cultural’ and social attributes) and demography (census, national sample survey, etc. recording names, physical attributes, territorial coordinates), i.e. an epistemological drive informed by the Cartesian positing/positioning of a subject. Parallel to this, there have been various attempts to record the physical (i.e. visible) characteristics of a person to uniquely identify him/her (like thumb imprint, size of the cranium, etc.)—these were the early practices of biometrics (and anthropometry), many of which were part of eugenics and racial profiling experiments mostly on the ‘people without history’.



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This history has taken a great leap forward with recent advancement in the computation of algorithms used in biometrics and digital communication systems, used to map, categorise and track people in a relentless search for new ways of knowing and governing the population. ‘Sovereignty is exercised within the borders of a territory’, writes Foucault, whereas ‘discipline is exercised on the bodies of individuals, and security is exercised over a whole population’. The deployment of (electronic) biometrics and digital networks bring about for the first time a convergence in all these three aspects of governance: sovereignty, discipline, and security. It is not a question of whether technological interventions like UID would be successful or would fail; rather we need to understand the political significance and consequences of this convergence, understand the logics and rationality of this new technology-mediated governance structure, and whether we can detect a shift in the organisation of the state and the state-citizen relationship. As already mentioned, the main (operational) purpose of Aadhaar is to verify an identity in real time, i.e. to instantly match a person with the data already available on the CIDR. The digital infrastructure that would allow the UIDAI to verify an identity in real-time operates on a combination of both the Logic of Network and the Logic of Biometrics. We need to see both in a little more detail. The Logic of the Network: A Network allows the accessing, collation, coordination and comparison of both inter/ and intra-sectoral databases. The possibility of authenticating and weeding out fake and duplicate identities, and the purported claim of identifying ‘benefit/identity-frauds’ depend crucially on this comparison. States such as Tamil Nadu and Chhattisgarh have already constructed a Management Information System (MIS) in their PDS which allows monitoring of their stock at various points within the supply chain, the quantities of provisions supplied to the fair-price shops, and the offtake of ration by beneficiaries. Such an MIS is an intra-sectoral database. Various government departments and institutions in India maintain databases on their population, but due to institutional jurisdiction and policy, or a due to lack of technology, these databases do not ‘talk’ to each In the Wake of Aadhaar 83


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other. Digital technology allows these databases to interact in various ways depending on the agreed norms and policy decisions. A network offers the technical possibility for the creation of a unitary system, which would enable communication between inter-sectoral databases. There is an attempt to create such networks, though it is not clear at this moment whether they will be interlinked to form a network of networks: UIDAI will regulate the Central ID Data Repository (CIDR), the Ministry of Home Affairs [the ministry for internal security] is setting up a National Intelligence Grid or NATGRID.11 NATGRID will have access to ‘21 categories of database like railway and air travel, income tax, bank account details, credit card transactions, visa and immigration records in the country’ (The Business Standard, 30 May 2011) which will purportedly allow it to combat terrorism. If this Network of Networks, along with Central ID database, comes fully into being, it could bring together agencies with three sets of concerns: security and intelligence, social protection (managing PDS and NREGA databases) and financial regulation and verification of customers (including by the private sector).12 The Logic of Biometrics: The utility of biometrics lies in the claim of recording and authenticating a unique and permanent (!) identity. This uniqueness is based on identifying certain features of the human body to be a stable parameter, which can be standardised into a metric or a quantity. This metric can be used to generate an access code that stands for who you are; something non-transferable, something singular, i.e. your body (Fuller, 2003). This access code can override or complement photo- or electronic- IDcards or passwords [in the industry parlance it is: ‘who you are (biometric), what you have (ID-card), and what you know (password)’].

THE RATIONALITY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY OF UID By enquiring about the rationality which governs this digital network, we can also find how and which economic interests are brought into this network’s fold. The Aadhaar network borrows the operational rationality of ‘Know-Your-Resident’ (KYR) and ‘Know-Your-Customer’ (KYC) from the commercial (public and private) 84 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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sector, both of which require (i) a proof of identity (PoI) and (ii) a proof of address (PoA). In the commercial sectors like bank, electricity, telephone, air travel, railways, etc., services are made available after furnishing PoI and PoA. KYR and KYC become important mostly within the service sector where the provider and the subscriber enter into a (long-term) relationship for servicing (e.g. electricity or telephone) and payment. Therefore it is important to have for a company to recover any outstanding amount, to install devices at the customer’s premise, or when the identity of a traveller with an electronically-issued ticket needs to be ascertained before boarding a train or an aeroplane. Most often the need for KYR arises because of the information asymmetry between a service provider and a service seeker, where it is assumed that the service provider would not know the customer personally. This calls for a reliable third party/authority who would verify KYR and KYC data. So far, government issued photo-ID cards such as a driving license, a voter ID card, etc. have been considered acceptable. However, the authenticity of these cards, even when they had holograms inscribed, could not always be ascertained. Aadhaar promises to overcome this problem and the UIDAI therefore emerges as that third party, the state agency, which authenticates and identifies a person. In turn, there is also a reverse move: in playing this role, and in receiving wide acceptance as the most authentic authenticator we have, so to say, the UIDAI positions itself as a potential player in a larger role in the commercial sector and even finding its own economic viability in such a role. The UIDAI sees Aadhaar as an ‘ecosystem’ comprising the government, people, vendors, developers, operators and applications (‘apps’). The UIDAI presumes that, in the near future, authentication and identification would become central to the economy, making the UID ecosystem into an attractive proposition for both developers and operators. Aadhaar would be the foundation for authentication and identification, and private operators can build applications as layers on it. This ecosystem mimics the mobile telephone platforms like iPhone and Android—the ‘app market’ model, where there are apps for almost every aspect of life. The entrepreneurial developers will see the opportunity and create innovative ‘apps’. In ways similar to how paper money got replaced by plastic money in transactions, the UID will solve the problem of authenticating and identifying a party. In the Wake of Aadhaar 85


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Two questions arise here: just when, and why, did ‘transactions’ become a problem? If the UID is a commercial infrastructure, then who stands to benefit most from the design of the system? Any market is about transactions or exchanges. In transactions, even before the legal/contractual obligations set in, there is a question of trust between people. If a transaction takes place face to face, then it may be assumed that there is no serious trust deficit or information asymmetry. But where transactions take place between unknown people or involve many people/multiple agents, then both trust deficit and information asymmetry become significant issues. The process of authentication of one or both parties and the verification of their rights and entitlements, helps in creating trust between two unknown individuals. In informal economies, transactions are generally of small amounts and usually take place either on a face-to-face basis or follow a social referral system, i.e. information is sought from within the social network in selecting a customer or a business partner. The transactions in the informal economy do not generally follow the principles of an open market; it is generally a closed network. It is clear that the need for a UID-like guarantor of identity is biased in the direction of large volumes of anonymous transactions. The problem presented in this strand of argument may therefore need to be slightly revised from how it is usually presented. The usual assumption is that there are leakages in the social welfare systems and a large number of benefit-frauds in public distribution system (PDS); there are leakages from the supply chain and diversion of ration to the open market, and fake/ghost and duplicates ration cards further amplify the leakages. These malpractices happen because government departments (e.g. Dept. of Civil Supplies) cannot ascertain who ‘took up’ the quota of supplies: is it the intended beneficiary or someone else? This understanding pivots around the ‘calculation of cost’ of loss in the system, and how best to manage the state subsidy, particularly when the annual budgetary outlays for social expenditure have been meagre. In this manner of presenting the problem, it is assumed that the relationship between the state and the citizen gets obfuscated by the 86 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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mediation of intermediary institutions: in the case of PDS, the supply chain from the Food Corporation of India’s warehouse to the fair-price shop. Since the relationship between the state and the citizen is fundamental, it follows that it has to be made transparent and the intermediaries made modifiable, transformable, or even removable. Such a description of the issue is not similar to the ‘Last Mile’ problem articulated in policy discourse. The Last Mile is a problem of reaching the ultimate beneficiary, whereas here the problem is not about failing to reach or cover the last beneficiary, but—as mentioned above—a problem of ascertaining whether the actual beneficiary has availed the benefit. From the point of institutional design, it is not an issue of reach/ coverage, but rather on the loss. It is more like a dark end of a tunnel: the state of affairs at the recipient’s end is unknown to the state and hence needs to be illuminated, rendered visible. However, there is a connection with the ‘Last Mile’ problem. The term ‘Last Mile’ problem has been borrowed from the telecommunications industry where the companies found it challenging to ‘fan out’ wires from the main cable to individual premises, particularly in the rural areas. The very fact that the telecommunication revolution in India has largely been able to solve this by adopting a hybrid technological solution means that this network can be harnessed and augmented for bridging the Last Mile problem even in public systems such as the PDS if the design and infrastructure of PDS can be overhauled.13 The UIDAI’s premise is to bring together the process of identifying the beneficiary with the parallel process of reaching that beneficiary. The former happens through Aadhaar, the latter through telecommunications networks (including end-level portable/handheld devices). The delivery system needs to be thought of in a bottom-up way, starting with the beneficiary. The authentication of a beneficiary is to be done at the fair price shop (FPS) when the person comes to draw her/his family’s ration. This would screen out the ration taken using fake and duplicate cards. This authenticated offtake by beneficiaries becomes the record on the basis of which the government allocates provisions to that particular fair-price shop. The allocation becomes variable, linked to authentication and the choice of FPS by the beneficiary. This authentication is then followed up through the supply chain and the In the Wake of Aadhaar 87


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allocated grain is tracked from the point of release to its arrival to the FPS over the MIS as the UIDAI document (2010, p. 5) explains: An Aadhaar-linked MIS would enable the PDS to address broader procurement, storage and monitoring challenges. Registration and procurement orders could be managed online, enabling decentralised, and more local procurement Inventory management could be streamlined and handled online in real-time. This would also enable the PDS to implement state wide information systems that link all ration shops in a state, and give beneficiaries more flexibility in how they collect their entitlements, and from which ration shop. Beneficiaries on the other hand can receive an SMS intimation of the amount of grain allocated to their FPS and when those should be available to them. Therefore, the system tries to bridge the information asymmetry between the FPS owner and the beneficiaries. The UIDAI (2010, pp. 7-8) claims that since Aadhaar verifies the identity of a person by providing the PoI and PoA, so it also becomes easier for that person to apply for a ration card online by simply furnishing her/his Aadhaar number: [G]overnments can implement a centralised, Aadhaar-enabled registration system for the whole state, where a poor person can log a request for a ration card through SMS. The request would be published on the system once the Aadhaar is verified. Governments could subsequently process the logged request, verify eligibility of the individual, etc. Governments would also be able to track delays in processing applications and identify bottlenecks in issuing ration cards. In addition, civil society groups could track the progress in processing the applications, and take up these applications on behalf of the individuals. An Aadhaar-based PDS can also allow the governments to supply provisions to ‘targeted’ individuals (e.g. nutritional supplements for pregnant women), instead the whole household. This rationalisation and management of social welfare systems by means of technology is located within the re-thinking of the role of a government. 88 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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The Blair-Clinton ‘Third Way’ had advocated welfare benefits like education, health, etc. should not be ‘produced’ by the government, but should rather be ‘procured’ from the market. To that we now have a further suggestion, that the government should not be involved in procuring directly; rather it should offer cash or coupons to the beneficiaries, who will go to the supplier of their choice, as a proper consumer does in a competitive market. The policy initiatives of the Government of India, like ‘financial inclusion’ and ‘cash transfer’, would inject financial resources in the (rural) economy. This would all of a sudden bring a large number of people to the financial market, either as recipients of cash from the government or as consumers of newer financial as well as material commodities. In this market, the financial companies and service providers will face a large number of unknown individuals and the conventional model of paper trail would increase the transaction cost. This is where UID becomes important: it establishes the identity of the person with whom a financial company would deal; a ‘business correspondent’ of the company who can use a handheld electronic device to complete the transaction and record the necessary information. Second, cash or coupons would be provided by the state to avail services like education and health, which were hitherto ‘supplied’ by the state, from the market. This market for education and health would require means to connect ‘beneficiaries’ with ‘service providers’ or ‘government-supported-entrepreneurs’, to identify beneficiaries and authenticate their entitlements. Again, the UID becomes crucial in bridging the gap.

THE NEW ONTOLOGY

The networks

thus established, together with biometrics, come jointly to define a different social and political ontology: they do away with subdivisions within the territory-population relationship, i.e. the domicile criterion. Here, ‘territory’ represents that supra-space which the international boundary of the Indian nation-state curves out, i.e. a space conceived as a container. The ‘population’ contained within this space does not require further fixation and can be In the Wake of Aadhaar 89


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mobile. The challenge is now to design an institutional structure which would allow the possibility of being mobile, i.e. a structure that can govern both the domiciled and the migrants. It is pertinent to note that the UIDAI document (2010, p. 4) emphasises the concept of ‘portability’: Aadhaar is a universal number, and agencies and services can contact the central Unique Identification database from anywhere in the country to confirm a beneficiary’s identity. The number thus gives individuals a universal, portable form of identification.

Interview with Sanju Sharma in Mandi, Himachal Pradesh. He is a migrant from Bihar, has been living in Mandi for the past 11 years, but is unable to complete his Aadhaar enrollments since he does not have a ‘valid’ introduction letter from his village mukhiya in Bihar. He now needs an introduction from the District Collector of Mandi to get enrolled.

Mobility in a mapped out space is not a problem for the administration as long as one can be matched with a profile on the CIDR. As a consequence, for example, the public distribution system should no longer operate on a model of territorial confinement, i.e. one need not be tied to one PDS/fairprice shop. The beneficiaries should be able to take up ration from an FPS of their choice. While it might be possible to address mobility within the governance structure, new technology-mediated governance structures struggle to reconstitute the basis of state recognition. The new structure claims to want to circumvent the normative and legal contentions that a politicised 90 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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category like ‘citizenship’ entails, and it has therefore adopted ‘resident’ as a category to register people in both the NPR and UID. Specifically, it wants to accept the empirical body of a resident as a category. This move has an important political implication: it can potentially also shed away the necessary condition of being propertied to be recognised by the state (and market) that the concept of citizenship demands. This potential is an articulation of a different form of freedom. The workers only have their bodily capacity (both physical and intellectual/mental) to labour which they can sell as commodity in the market. Thus, the bodily capacity to labour is the only attribute of human beings that is recognised by capitalism.14 In that sense, this turn away from citizenship indicates a convergence of the attributes/ categories which are recognised by capitalism and the new bureaucratic rationality: the unencumbered body becomes the sole property (as a legal category and as an attribute) that is recognised within the formal set up of the state and market.

Mekala Kundalala, a labourer Allur village, Koilakuntla mandal, Kurnool, Andhra Pradesh, elaborates a labour market in which he borrows money in advance from a landlord in exchange for his labour for a certain period of time. These borrowings are linked mostly to consumption needs. His annual salary is ` 34,000, which he has taken in advance, and some sustenance supoprt. If he needs more money, he borrows it from the person for whom he is working. This is often referred to as bonded labour in the region, though it differs from the traditional concept of bonded labour.

Yet, this desire to recognise the bare body of the resident/labourer remains unfulfilled as the requirement for furnishing demographic information, proof of address, etc. while dealing with the government and private agencies In the Wake of Aadhaar 91


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remains in place. In other words, the bare body soon gets reterritorialised. This can be seen as the tension (and a contradiction) between recognising a person as a seller of labour-power and the buyer of certain commodities and services and a debtor. Biometrics and political logics The logic of biometrics cannot be solely seen through the lens of technology, I propose. I would further claim that the deployment of/dependence on biometrics is linked to the desire for a pure bureaucratic rationality, which informs the new institutional design. Biometrics has been for some time now a key part of security discourse, and has its origin in eugenic practices (Maguire 2009). It was developed to identify, record and control the non-Europeans in colonised countries, specifically the dangerous margins [e.g. criminals] and delinquents (see Sengupta 2003 and Caplan 2001 for further discussion on this topic). It is governed by a principle of suspicion and combines the technologies of discipline (setting up norms of formal relationships) and the technologies of regulation and control (of flow and access). This biometric technology has moved out of this particular sector to become universal, covering all residents of a country and being deployed in managing welfare programmes among other fields. We need to unravel the logics of biometrics to understand the changes that it desires to bring. If conventional politics emerged in the backdrop of cartographic, ethnographic and demographic surveys of the state, and the identities created in such practices were later politicised (the premise of Partha Chatterjee’s political society),15 then the logic of biometrics stands apart from that populist political logic. This conventional politics is about reconfiguring the ethics of recognition and redistribution. The representational order depends on contesting and negotiating an identity, which develops a (relativist) play of difference and requires the construction of (meta)-narrative(s). The logic of biometrics signals a shift/rupture in that logic. Here, the difference is absolute and the entire exercise is geared towards overcoming contingency, contestation, and negotiation—an attempt to go beyond, and shield the institutions from, the messy body politics of democracy. 92 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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The epistemic objective of the biometric dispositif is to know and count the population over a territory (along with resources) to make the application of power effective and the apparatus scalable and interoperable. Biometrics establishes a difference, i.e. uniqueness, by using algorithmic techniques of pattern matching. It attempts to completely map out the population of a given territory (hence, mapping residents, not citizens) and render it as a rational (no fakes and duplicates) and transparent space. It can further accommodate various axes/vectors—cartographic, ethnographic, demographic, etc.—each of which can cross through the unique body, and can thereby together locate a particular body in a given space. It becomes like a crosshair:16 you become a target. Thereafter, whether you become a target of a bullet,17 or of PDS rice, or some cash, does not matter for the biometric system. The ethical foundation of recognition is reduced to moral certainty, and gives away to a static rule governed system: a regime of standards and protocols. The syntax and objective of identification depends on the intention of the programmer (e.g. the state agencies) and how it is triangulated with other categories.18 The imperative is to verify the bearer of entitlement/right and deny access to those who do not match. It requires no participation from subjects—either you are entitled or you are not, i.e. you are disciplined by the rule. Therefore, on the face of it, a biometric system appears to be ideologyneutral (i.e. a rule governed system, which simply authenticates a person), yet it is very much ideology-driven (i.e. it is part of making a selected population discernible and targets for policy objectives—what Samuel Weber (2005) calls ‘the Militarisation of Thinking’). This ‘will to power’ articulates a desire for an absolute bureaucratic, procedural system and establish a new ‘normal’ relationship between ‘citizens’ and the state. I have mentioned earlier that the objective/desire of this absolute bureaucratic, procedural system is to shield and free public institutions from the messy body-politics of democracy (at least the messiness of Indian populist politics). But what kind of relationship does it form with a messy populism, with various new demands for ‘rights’ and ‘inclusion’?



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The UIDAI document on PDS agrees that ‘implementing the “Right to Food” is a priority for the Indian government’.19 It does not dispute this late ‘rights-based approach to development’; rather it concurs with it and argues that Aadhaar is well suited—in fact foundational—in realising the objectives of the ‘Right to Food’: The functioning of the PDS—the mainstay of India’s food programme(s)— is critical to the implementation of Right to Food in India. . . Aadhaar is best translated to mean a ‘foundation’, and the number would play precisely this role in the PDS. The number would be a foundation, over which the government can build more effective PDS processes, and ensure that the program helps [fulfil] the broad and admirable vision of India’s proposed national food security act. [emphasis added] In the above quoted text, Aadhaar envisages its role in helping to build an ‘effective PDS’. Following a critique of ideology approach, one can obviously argue that this is an attempt by the UIDAI to insert itself into the PDS and thereby become relevant and ubiquitous, and expand its ‘usefulness’.20 The point which needs to be foregrounded is that UIDAI (often seen as a neoliberal institution) sees no conflict with the objectives of the ‘Right to Food’ (a progressive social democratic/left-liberal demand for economic and social—the so-called 3rd generation rights). This is not merely a compromised position of UIDAI: in fact, a rights-based approach coming together with a norm of entitlement presents a formalised subject of entitlement, and in turn generates protocols of presenting and verifying the subject on behalf of whom the state has assumed certain responsibilities. Thus, bureaucratic rationality encroaches upon political reason by creating a demand for a singular, closed (no play of difference) and final subject from political mediation. Bureaucratic rationality also converges with rights-based approaches to development on the issue of realisation of rights and delivery of benefit-goods, which both parties see as a problem of institutional design. The very emphasis on the performance of institutions and the creation of effective delivery system has already drawn political attention to organisational structures and powerrelationships, i.e. to institutions encroached upon by vested interests. 94 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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The rights-based approach itself signals a shift in the political imagination and struggle—one that moves away from the struggle around productionrelations and into issues of social reproduction which the state now has to guarantee, thereby making the state a powerful (central) entity in the process. I argue that the politics of rights in this instance is a reduction of politics into ‘politics of supplementation’—supplementation of the reproductive needs of the people. Therefore, ‘politics’ has to be primarily around managing and supervising the operation of a supply chain. We can see that bureaucratic rationality in this move does not see itself in opposition to either the state or to politics; rather, it preserves a very definite role for the state and politics, understood as the process of mediating contentions, building consensus, defining and guaranteeing rights, generating norms for entitlements and presenting a subject before the executive. This is not neoliberalism that wants ‘the retreat-of-the-state’,21 but one that wants to segregate the legislation from the executive, and make the executive free from the everyday wrangling of the conventional state. On the other hand, it does not challenge the sovereignty of the state, but leaves certain issues as the state’s absolute privy, and once the norms are agreed upon, it opens up the actual operation of a public system to a hybrid institutional order. To explore this, we need to look at the recommendations for redesigning the state apparatus in the recent documents produced by expert groups set up by various government departments. Bureaucratic rationality beyond the state: It is important to note that the literature on Networks pits the Network against sovereignty, and thereby sees an emancipator possibility in the Network. IT-enabled network structures have contradictory tendencies: on the one hand, because of the ease of centralisation and monitoring, they can perfectly superimpose themselves upon existing structures of authority. On the other hand, this system now raises the possibility of a serious decentralisation, and is as a result often considered (by Centralists of all hues) as vulnerable to anarchic ‘attacks’ and disruptions. Here we have a strange contradiction: a situation where the state (the sovereign power) itself constructs and controls the network, but at the In the Wake of Aadhaar 95


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same time opens up the infrastructure to private, often very local, commercial interests. One can detect that a convergence, or at least, a certain degree of overlap, between the state and the commercial sector is taking place, one that needs in the coming years to be observed in terms of how the state opens up to private corporate interests, how the state and private sector not just share the logics and rationality, but the actual infrastructure. The National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) articulates a rethinking on the organisational design of the government (i.e. ‘Mission Mode’). It emphasises ‘political ownership at the highest level’—which perhaps is an alternative term for ‘political will’ and ‘command chain’ such that a plan gets executed once it has been planned and agreed upon. It also advocates adopting publicprivate partnership models in implementing e-governance projects, though it acknowledges that the authority should remain with the government and the concerns of security and privacy needs to be addressed adequately. It borrows concepts like ‘business process re-engineering’ and ‘management of change’ from management discourse. The Report of the Technology Advisory Group for Unique Projects22 recommends that the government should move away from in-house management of smaller projects and outsourcing to Managed Service Providers (MSP) or vendors for larger projects to a National Information Utility (NIU) framework. The government would formulate the policy and enforce it, while the NIU would implement the IT systems. It recommends that every Mission Team should be able to hire people from outside the government on contractual basis. The relationship between the government and NIU would be contractual and that of a partnership. The NIU would be autonomous, profit making institutions, but not necessarily profit maximising.



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CONCLUSION

I have argued in this paper that the Aadhaar project signals a new turn

in the thinking on the institutional design, by importing ideas of networked governance and biometric mapping of the population. It does not articulate an orthodox neoliberal position. It segregates the state’s legislative power and the executive wing, and thereby tries to make the executive free, and shield it, from the compulsions and negotiations of populist democracy. Without challenging the sovereignty of the state, it opens up the executive to the non-state actors. It posits a different ontology wherein the individual’s bodily presence becomes the attribute for recognition by the state and market, and thereby enunciates a different form of freedom. But, at the same time, it re-territorialises the body and demands demographic information and a proof of residence. Through these moves, governmentality has for the first time in India started to move beyond the institutional domain of the state. I suggest that this can be seen as the coming of a new ‘bureaucratic moment.’ (An earlier version of this essay was published as The Unique Id (UID) Project and the New ‘Bureaucratic Moment’ in India, Working Paper Number 194, QEH Working Paper Series, Oxford Department of International Development, Oct 2011).

REFERENCES Ahluwalia, Montek Singh (2011) ‘Prospects and Policy Challenges in the Twelfth Plan’, Economic and Political Weekly, 21 May. Black, Edwin (2002) IBM and the Holocaust, Time Warner Paperbacks. Caplan, Jane and John Torpey, (eds) (2001), Documenting Individual Identity. The Development of State Practices in the Modern World (Princeton University Press). Castells, Manuel (1999) Information Technology, Globalisation and Social Development. UNRISD Discussion Paper No. 114. Chatterjee, Partha (2004) Politics of the Governed, Columbia University Press. Foucault, Michel (2007) Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the College de France 1977-1978, McMillan Palgrave.



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Fuller, Gillian (2003), ‘Perfect Match: Biometrics and Body Patterning in a Networked World’, The FibreCulture Journal, http://one.fibreculturejournal.org/fcj002, viewed on 3 April 2011. Department of Information Technology (2011) Saaransh: A Compendium of Mission Mode. Projects under NeGP. Govt. of India, downloaded on 10 April 2011, from http://www.mit. gov.in/sites/upload_files/dit/files/Compendium_FINAL_Version_220211.pdf. Drèze, Jean (2010) ‘Unique facility, or recipe for trouble?’ The Hindu, 25 November, 2010, http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-opinion/article911931.ece Khera, Reetika (forthcoming). ‘India’s Public Distribution System: Utilisation and Impact.’ Journal of Development Studies. Khera, Reetika (2010) ‘Not all that Unique’ The Hindustan Times, 30 August, 2010, http://www.hindustantimes.com/Not-all-that-unique/H1-Article1-593541.aspx Maguire, Mark (2009). ‘The Birth of Biometric Security’ Anthropology Today 25(2): 9-14. Marx, Karl (1990) Capital Vol. 1, Penguin, London. Medianama (2009) ‘India’s Unique ID Project Will Open Its API, Needs Connectivity— Nandan Nilekani’http://www.medianama.com/2009/12/223-indias-unique-idproject-willopen-its-api-needs-connectivity-nandan-nilekani. Sengoopta, C. (2003). Imprint of the Raj: How fingerprinting was born in colonial India. London: Macmillan. Ministry of Finance (2011) Report of the Technology Advisory Group for Unique Projects, New Delhi. Ramakumar R (2009) ‘High-cost, high-risk’ by R, Frontline, Volume 26, Issue 16, 1-14 August, 2009, http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl2616/stories/ 20090814261604900.htm Ramanathan, Usha (2010). ‘A Unique Identity Bill.’ Economic and Political Weekly XLV (30): 10-14. The Business Standard (November 17, 2008) ‘Nilekani’s ideas for the future’ http:// www.business-standard.com/india/news/nilekani\s-ideas-forfuture/340440/ Unique Identification Authority of India (2010a) Envisioning a role for Aadhaar in the Public Distribution System. Working Paper, 6/24/2010. Unique Identification Authority of India (2009). UID and PDS System. http://eprints. cscsarchive.org/377/1/uid_and_pds.pdf. Weber, Samuel (2005) Targets of Opportunity: On the Militarisation of Thinking, Fordham University Press.



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NOTES 1

Department of Information Technology 2011, p. 11.

2


3


4

Wikipedia defines interoperability as, ‘the ability of diverse systems and organi(s)ations to work together (inter-operate).’

5

Department of Information Technology 2011, p. 71 and passim, emphasis added; note: the MMP is entitled as ‘resident/citizen’.

6


7


8


9

Department of Information Technology 2011, p. 72, emphasis added.

10 Department of Information Technology 2011, p. 79, emphasis added. 11 We are not interested to understand the politics within the institution, in this case the inter-ministerial tension over NATGRID and the debate over the budgetary allocation for the UID project. It has been widely reported that the Ministry of Defence and Ministry of Finance ‘apparently think that if the [NATGRID] project comes into operation, the MHA [Ministry of Home Affairs] would have uninterrupted access to all information under their jurisdiction’ (The Business Standard, 30 May 2011) and thereby become more powerful than the other ministries. 12 This convergence of various concerns needs to be examined to understand the development and sharing of common logics, which could possibly extend governmentality beyond the state. 13 This point was put forward by Ashish Rajadhakshya. Nandan Nilekani, the chairperson of UIDAI, emphasised the role of telecommunications and ‘UID data will be accessible to authenticating applications through telecom networks.’ He told the delegates of a conference, ‘We are going to create apps which will need connectivity: Our whole assumption is that these are online systems, mobile based—it assumes ubiquitous connectivity throughout the country. We are banking on the Telecom Industry to deliver on the promise of connectivity’ (Medianama, 2009). 14 The free workers are therefore free from, unencumbered by, any means of production of their own. [Marx, Capital Vol. 1, p 874, emphasis added]. One can see that the institutional requirement of politics of supplementation also creates the conditions for the development or thriving of a cadre-based political party or community-based organisations (CBOs), which can ‘supervise’ the implementation of the programmes. The reproduction of grassroots level political institutions depends on being part of the developmental dispositif. 15 See Chatterjee 2004. 16 Gillian Fuller provides an interesting insight, ‘In a world of multidimensional movement, biometrics is becoming the means by which the singularity of our bodies connect[s] quite literally into the networks where our multiple selves reside. The individual bodily connects to her divided self through regulated networks of power rather than as an individual ‘seeing herself’ through representational metanarratives. What is important for identity now is how the points come together in a scan. For instance, do ten points correctly correlate in an iris scan? The individual in a biometric world is not ‘seen’ as a whole body. The individual has no discernible outline, it is seen in fragments—a pattern match of the eye. Thus the algorithmic logic of the database replaces the linear logic of narrative and character development in the structural formation of the individual. In this sense then the individual is a networked becoming rather than a Cartesian positioning.’ (Fuller 2003, n.p, emphasis added).



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17 Hence, the reference to IBM’s involved with the Nazis in the Holocaust is made in connection with this calculative logic (refer to Black, 2002). 18 But at the same, the very fact that a particular category can be triangulated with spatial and temporal coordinates, means that a population can be identified for displacement or, deportation and help in the reorganisation of a given territory. 19 UIDAI 2010, p. 1 and passim. 20 Khera 2010, Dreze 2010. 21 In fact the contemporary Indian discussion papers (e.g. Ahluwalia 2011) and policy documents make a departure from orthodox neoliberalism. These are marked by the tension between ‘economic growth’ (without which capitalism is meaningless) and ‘inclusiveness’, the latter stands for the problem of addressing the growing inequality in the society. Indian ‘neoliberalism’ is increasingly open to negotiate and accommodate the pressures of the political processes, and accepts that ‘particular groups’ ‘have not gained the benefits’ of the economic growth (which is a tacit way of acknowledging that ‘particular groups’ like Dalits, Muslims, have been affected by the process of economic growth) and that certain ‘rights’ of the people need to be formalised. Therefore, while ways of achieving a desirable (high) growth need to be found and ascertained, it is also imperative to restructure the social protection programmes, i.e. subsidises need to be rationed and managed. Parallel, to this one can observe a renewed attempt to redesign the institutional structure, particularly in deploying various technological tools to solve both the ‘business process’ and tackle the ‘Last Mile’/coverage problem wherever it exists. 22 Ministry of Finance, 2011.



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The Unique Identification Number and the National Population Register Sudhir Krishnaswamy Professor, Azim Premji University, Bangalore

The essay investigates the present legal status of both the UIDAI and the National Population Register in terms of their constitutional status. Often presented in opposition to each other, the author argues that, constitutionally speaking, they have to be viewed together, not only because of the similarities that the two possess despite their alleged political differences, but because both—along with other initiatives—pose significant challenges to concerns about citizen privacy and the special conditions under which States can waive privacy concerns in the national interest. India currently faces a growing concern on the proliferation of national identification initiatives. While the Unique Identification Project (UID) has received some attention in the past couple of years on account of allegations about its weak data and privacy protection, little scholarly attention has been paid to the ID system based on the National Population Register (NPR), which revels similar constitutional and legal standards issues. While the two systems operate separately, so far as the collection of demographic information is concerned, there is some similarity in both their methods of collection and their access to biometric information. While these two identity projects lie at the core of the transformation of the relationship between the State and its residents and citizens, the full account of the legal regulation of the identity schemes is possible only if we consider their various areas of application. For example, to understand the legal regulation of identity in the Public Distribution System, one needs to analyse the interaction between the legal regimes for Food and Civil Supplies along with the UID. In this way, both the UID and the NPR regimes In the Wake of Aadhaar 101


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interact with each other and with several other forms of legal regulation to create a complex mosaic of legality. In this paper we confine our analysis to the core legal structure of the identity projects, i.e. the UID and the NPR. There have been several critical reviews of the UID project. Some authors argue that the UID cannot deliver on the improvements in welfare delivery that it promises; others that a project of this magnitude is not financially viable in a country like India. Most of these criticisms rest on instrumental policy considerations to any national ID programme or some specific features of the UID proposal in India. Arguments about whether a national ID is essential or optimal are centred around delivering a public good. Irrespective of the conclusions on these grounds, there are constitutional and legal principles that work both as ‘trumps’ and limits to any such programme. Despite their viability, necessity or ability to deliver of any such state programme, the moment it fails the constitutional mandates, it has to be struck down as unconstitutional. The Parliamentary Standing Committee noted that the NIA Bill poses serious concerns with regards to its clarity on the targeted population, a lack of co-ordination between various authorities, and the possibility of impersonation of individuals at the time of enrolling for the UID.1 The Committee addresses three additional issues that require detailed critical analysis, which form the basic issues in this paper: first, the validity of UID absent any legislation. The Committee unequivocally stated that the UID lacked legal authority, and the issue of numbers and cards without any legislative basis was ‘violative of Parliament’s prerogatives’.2 Secondly, the Committee expressed reported doubts on the extent of voluntariness, and noted the need to finalise whether the UID should be made mandatory. Third, the Committee noted several concerns on the use of the information collected. These concerns included the threat posed by the potential role of private parties in the working of UID and the possible misuse of information. The Committee also highlighted the lack of clarity on UID’s relationship with the NPR.



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This paper will address all the three concerns that the Parliamentary Standing Committee raises. However, while doing so, the paper will simultaneously analyse the so-far neglected NPR and its functioning. It is critical that any analysis of UID must be linked to an analysis of the NPR, given that the two ID systems pose in many ways similar constitutional concerns of privacy and the extent of permissible executive action without legislation. In order to understand the legality of the UID and the NPR, a general understanding of the law of privacy is essential. The right to privacy is not an express fundamental constitutional right in the Constitution of India, 1950. However, the Indian Supreme Court has, on several occasions, interpreted two Constitutional Rights, the right to freedom of speech and expression under Article 19(1)(a) and the right to life under Article 21, to yield the right to privacy. The interpretation of the right to privacy by the Supreme Court of India can be organised in several ways. This Court has interpreted the right to privacy to entail ‘right to be let alone’ right to safeguard the privacy of his own, his family, marriage, procreation’. . . and facilitate the protection of one’s reputation, liberty, status, and wellbeing. Hence, the Court has recognised a liberty interest, dignitarian interest and commercial interests to ground the privacy right. We have no overarching statute that protects privacy of individuals. However, recently, there have been proposals to provide a legislative framework for the right to privacy. An Approach Paper for a Legislation on Privacy was released on 13th October, 2010 by the Ministry of Personnel Training,3 followed by The Privacy Bill, 2011 (Privacy Bill) which aims to provide the Right to Privacy to the citizens of India and regulate the handling of their personal information.4 A draft version of Privacy Bill has become available, though not officially released by the Ministry. The present status of the draft Bill has not been disclosed.5 The Privacy Bill’s main concerns seem to be classifiable by the manner in which its chapters have been titled: (i) Privacy of Communication and Prohibition from its Interception; (ii) Use of Photographs, Fingerprints, Body samples of persons, DNA samples; and other samples taken at Police Station; (iii) Health Information Privacy; In the Wake of Aadhaar 103


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(iv) Privacy relating to Data and finally; (v) a Residuary compartment for clauses that don’t fall under the above classifications. None of these chapters address the issue of control over one’s own personal information or establish any system by which a person can regulate the manner in which their information is being utilised. Therefore, the Privacy Bill does not counter the invasive data requirements of the UID system. Various legislations protect privacy of individuals within the limited contexts in which they operate. For example, the Public Financial Institutions Act of 1993 codifies the rules of maintaining confidentiality in bank transactions; the Indian Telegraph Act of 1885 regulates wire tapping; the Information Technology (Amendment) Act of 2008 regulates the liability of Internet Service Providers and Network Service Providers while processing communication through their networks. Therefore in this paper, I propose to examine whether these ID systems are in compliance with the emerging statutory law of privacy. Furthermore, I test this information against constitutional and legal standards of privacy in two ways: firstly, I examine whether the information is obtained from the citizens voluntarily, or are the citizens required to furnish the information mandatorily. Second, I review the content of the information obtained to see whether they pass the test set by Constitutional and legal standards of privacy. In the sections below, I identify the legal and constitutional standards that these ID systems must satisfy and critically assess whether they succeed in doing so. The first argument I turn to is one that relates to their present legal status.

LEGAL AUTHORITY

The UID scheme presently functions as a project under the Planning

Commission of India, an executive body, and aims to provide unique ID numbers (known as an ‘Aadhaar number’) to every resident of India. A draft bill was prepared in the form of the National Identification Authority of India, Bill, 20106 (NIA Bill) which is yet to receive legislative approval. 104 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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Both the UID and the NPR lack adequate legal authority to collect and use information in the manner they do. While the UID is operating wholly as an executive action without any legislative basis, the NPR, although based on the Citizenship Act and Rules, does not trace all its information collection power to either. These executive actions transgress constitutional limitations as they interfere with the rights to privacy and autonomy of citizens in a manner that completely ignores the constitutional and democratic demand to trace such interference with rights to some legislative authority. A. UID and the UIDAI On 28th January 2009, the Planning Commission, which is an executive body without any statutory basis itself, notified the establishment of the establishment of the UIDIA via a notification.7 The UIDAI then put out three documents which deserve careful scrutiny: first, a Strategy Overview by the Ministry of Planning in April 2010, a Draft Bill inviting public comments published on 29th June 2010 inviting comments within 15 days and the final draft of the Bill to be introduced in the Rajya Sabha. The NIA Bill was introduced in the Rajya Sabha on December 3rd, 2010 by the Ministry of Planning. The final Bill introduced in the Rajya Sabha was substantially the same as the draft Bill which suggests that the Authority found no reason to either respond to, or incorporate, any of the criticisms of the Bill. The Parliamentary Standing Committee while rejecting the NIA Bill on several grounds, noted that the issue of Aadhaar numbers or any executive action, pending the NIA Bill, was ‘unethical and violative of Parliament’s prerogatives as promulgation of an ordinance while one of the Houses of Parliament being in session’.8 Hence, the present legal status of the UIDAI is that of an executive body set up by another executive body, both of which are without statutory basis. B. NPR The NPR is the first step towards the preparation of the National Register of Indian Citizens. The Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2003 introduced the National Population Register under the Citizenship Act 1955.9 The need for a citizen register started as a post-Kargil war initiative to identify citizens In the Wake of Aadhaar 105


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by issuing them separate identity cards.10 Later, the then Home Minister Chidambaram sought to justify it as a measure against illegal migration from neighbouring countries. Therefore the Act and the Rules are mainly concerned with demarcating citizens of the country using the National Population Register. Interestingly, NPR is not even mentioned in the Citizenship Act. It is only the Rules that create this register. Rule 2(l) defines the Population Register as: ‘Population Register’ means the register containing details of persons usually residing in a village or rural area or town or ward or demarcated area (demarcated by the Registrar General of Citizen Registration) within a ward in a town or urban area.11 The Central Government is empowered to notify the date by which the Population Register may be prepared.12 The Local register of Indian citizens is prepared based on the Population Register.13 While the Rules prescribe the contents of the Register of Indian Citizens, there is no specific provision for the information to be collected for the preparation of NPR. The Rules provide the details as regards demographic data collection (for the citizen’s register). However, they do not even mention the collection of biometric information. It follows that neither the Citizenship Act nor Rules authorise the collection of any biometric information. Without any statutory or regulatory basis, the Government has proceeded with the collection of biometric information as a phase of the NPR preparation. NPR’s main authorities are also linked to other statutes and therefore have multiple obligations under these laws. The Director of Citizen Registration under the Citizenship Rules is also the Director of Census under the Census Act. During the First Phase of Census 2011, enumerators also collected information for NPR.14 However, it is the Registrar under the Registration of Births and Deaths Act, 1969 who is in charge of preparation under the Citizenship Rules.15 Both the Census Act and Births and Deaths Act authorise these authorities to collect information for the purpose of registers under their respective statutes. It is unclear as to how the overlap of obligations under these different statutes are resolved. What is clear is that none of 106 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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these statutes offer any support to collection of biometric information for preparing NPR. C. Constitutional Requirements It follows then that neither the UID or NPR trace their power of collecting information to any statute. The Constitution confers a diminished status on executive bodies with respect to their ability to claim the exceptions and limitations to citizen’s fundamental rights. In Ram Jawaya Kapur,16 although the Supreme Court held that Government Orders on the business of printing and publishing textbooks does not always need legislative sanction, it drew certain boundaries to the extent of permissible executive action under the Constitution. The Court clearly obligated the Government to obtain Parliamentary authorisation ‘either directly or under the provisions of a statute’ if the governmental action involves expenditure of funds.17 Further, it held that specific legislation is necessary if the Government requires certain power ‘in addition to what they possess under ordinary law’ including where such actions ‘encroach on private rights’.18 In Kharak Singh,19 the Supreme Court held that certain Police Regulations were executive instructions since they did not trace their power to a Statute. Such instructions did not have the force of a law as could be classified under one of the clauses under Article 19(2),(6) to curtail the fundamental right.20 Nor could the regulations be classified as ‘procedure established by law’under Article 21. The Court held that any action under these instructions infringing any freedom under the Constitution would entitle a citizen to a remedy of mandamus, ‘restraining the State from taking action under the regulations’.21 In Thakur Bharat Singh22 the Court held that ‘All executive action which operates to the prejudice of any person must have the authority of law to support it’.23 Further, the Court refused to read Articles 73 and 162 as providing validity to executive acts, instead interpreting them as provisions primarily concerned with distribution of powers between the Union and States.24 In Bishamber Dayal,25 the Court emphasised that the ‘State or its In the Wake of Aadhaar 107


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executive officers cannot interfere with the rights of others unless they point to some specific rule of law which authorises their acts’.26 In the same vein, in Bennett Coleman and Co. v. Union of India,27 the Supreme Court held that executive action executive action that is to the detriment of to the fundamental rights guaranteed under the constitution, in this case Article 19, cannot be authorised even during a period of emergency. The Supreme Court has reminded the Executive of its diminished power of rule-making in cases such as D.C. Wadhwa28 where the Governor of Bihar repromulgated ordinances even when the Parliament was in session. The Court affirmed that ‘law-making function is entrusted by the Constitution to the Legislature consisting of the representatives of the people’ and denounced the re-promulgation of ordinances as ‘nothing short of usurpation by the Executive of the law-making function of the Legislature’.29 It held that such an exercise of executive power subverts the democratic process ‘for then the people would be governed not the laws made by the Legislature as provided in the Constitution but by laws made by the Executive’. The court has reiterated the distinction between non statutory executive authorities and statutory executive authorities with respect to fundamental rights. This is a distinction based on the democratic pedigree of an institution and the need to protect the rights of citizens. Where the executive action is without legislative authority, it cannot claim the benefit of limitations and exceptions to fundamental rights provided under the Constitution. No doubt, Articles 73 and 162 of the Constitution of India declare that the power of the executive is co-extensive with the power of the legislature. However, this does not mean that both the executive and the legislature have the power to perform the same action. Executive power independent of legislation, normally called administrative instructions, are primarily made for general administration of a policy, and do not concern any rights of private citizens. It follows that the executive cannot, as a part of the ‘co-extensive’ power, pass a notification which in effect legislates or makes a law interfering with the rights of the citizens. The Courts are clear that the moment they interfere with the rights of citizens, they must be backed by legislative sanction. 108 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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Legislation, which is essentially characterised by generality, prospectivity, public interest and flow of rights and obligations,30 is a primary function of the legislature which it can delegate in part, subject to limits established under Constitutional and Administrative law. Unless such a power is delegated, the executive does not derive any rule-making power. The law is clear that essential legislative functions of ‘determination of legislative policy and its formulation as a binding rule of conduct’ cannot be delegated.31 Therefore, as is the case with the UID, the executive cannot take unto itself the formulation of policy of issuing nation-wide identification tokens that have wide implications on the operation of welfare schemes, data protection policy and privacy policy in the country. A similar view on permissible executive action is prevalent in the UK as well, wherein UK law recognises executive decision making without statutory basis as one of the three sources of executive action.32 However, courts have been hesitant to accept what Harris calls ‘Government third source action’ and have imposed strict contingencies for its validity.33 The basis for the third source power is the recognition that the Crown has the same competence in law as any other person and therefore can validly do what is not prohibited by law.34 In Shrewsbury, although the Court of Appeals did not interfere with governmental action in preparation to proposed legislation, Lord Carnwath specifically made such governmental action subject to ‘public benefit’ and ‘identifiable government purposes within limits set by law’.35 A significant change in the review of executive action in light of positive rights, followed the enactment of the Human Rights Act, 1998.36 According to ECHR decisions, ‘prescribed by law’ must meet the following three requirements: (i) the interference in question must have some basis in domestic law; (ii) the law must be adequately accessible; and (iii) the law must be formulated so that it is sufficiently foreseeable. Thus, the law on permissible executive action without statutory basis is very restricted, especially when the action interferes with rights of citizens. It is clear that both the UID and the NPR fail all three counts of the ECHR, along with the Constitutional standards in India. Both the ID systems In the Wake of Aadhaar 109


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severely interfere with the right to privacy of an individual. The UID has collected information from 20 crore people37 and has issued 18,56,65,24238 cards which will be used by several agencies without any requirement for obtaining consent of the individual. This is done without any basis in domestic law. Further, the UID and the NPR collect biometric information of every person—this includes taking fingerprints of all fingers and scanning irises of every person. While the UID claims to obtain all its information voluntarily (although the true extent of this voluntariness is suspect), the NPR provides no such guarantee. The result of these initiatives is that the population may be required to either mandatorily or de facto forego its right to privacy of biometric information to systems that have no basis in law to collect such information.39

ACCESS TO INFORMATION

Both the UID and NPR projects involve the collection of deeply personal

information. Two aspects of this process are significant from a rights perspective: first, the manner in which the information is accessed and second, the nature and extent of information accessed. 1) Extent of Voluntariness While analysing the issues relating to the access of information, we must begin with whether the information is being provided by the people voluntarily, or whether there is a mandatory extraction of such information. On the UID, the NIA Bill does not clearly state whether this will be mandatory for residents. It guarantees that ‘every resident shall be entitled to obtain an Aadhaar number on providing his demographic information and biometric information’.40 At the same time, the NIA Bill does not prohibit other institutions such as insurance agencies and banks from mandating the Aadhaar number as a system of identification. In that sense, the UID system is not voluntary at all.41 Also, since the proposal stages of the UID system, 110 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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the UIDAI has insisted that one of the main aims of implementing the UID system is to make welfare schemes easily accessible to the Indian masses.42 To avail these welfare schemes, it will become mandatory for the people to enroll in this system.43 The masked mandatory nature of the system is rather obvious and any arguments to the contrary is countered by the fact that from the very scheme of the NIA Bill and statements made by Nandan Nilekani,44 it is clear that they seek to enroll the entire nation.45 The Parliamentary Committee notes that UID, by its links to various welfare schemes, has caused an apprehension of being mandatory. It further states that ‘it is not clear as to whether the possession of Aadhaar number should be made mandatory in the future for the availing of benefits and services’.46 What is clear though, is that the argument—that enrolling for a UID is voluntary, and hence cannot infringe privacy rights as people willingly give this information—is feeble. On NPR, the Government does not even claim it is voluntary—instead, it maintains, ‘it is compulsory for all usual residents to register under the NPR’.47 Although registration under the NPR and the NRIC is mandatory, the extent of this mandatory requirement is unclear, especially as regards biometric information. Under the Citizenship Act, 1955 ‘the Central Government may compulsorily register every citizen of India and issue national identity card to him’. Section 14A(5) states that ‘The procedure to be followed in compulsory registration of citizens shall be as prescribed’. The Government claims that by virtue of Section 14A, the NPR has become mandatory to every citizen. Rule 3(3) contains the particulars to be included in the NRIC. This does not include biometric information. Rule 7(2) makes the head of the family responsible to provide ‘correct details of name and number of members and other particulars, as specified in sub-rule (3) of rule 3, of the family of which he is the head’. Failure to provide such information is punishable with fine up to thousand rupees.48 While the Rules make it mandatory to give demographic details under Rule 3(3), they do not do so with regard to any other information since neither the Act nor the Rules mandate the collection of any biometric information. In the Wake of Aadhaar 111


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However, despite all these uncertainties, NPR is perceived, and justifiably so, as a compulsory requirement. The Census Act demands every informant to mandatorily answer all questions that the Census Officer is authorised to ask.49 It considers every person to be ‘legally bound’ to answer.50 However, it provides two exceptions: (a) no person is bound to state the name of any female member of the household; and (b) no woman shall be bound to name her husband if she is forbidden by custom to name him.51 Further, if the informant refuses or intentionally fails to disclose correct information, the Act also prescribes a penalty of one thousand rupees.52 Therefore, there is no element of voluntariness in giving out information for the census. As regards disclosure, the Census Act contains a strong bar against disclosure of information collected for the census to any person or even in court proceedings.53 However, it empowers the Census Commissioner or Director of Census to supply any statistical information abstracts to any person. This non-disclosure gives some degree of protection to any personal data collected during the census. However, this is not the case with UID and NPR which are non-voluntary and easily accessible. Such mandatory requirement of furnishing private information runs against constitutional protection to individual privacy. In Selvi and Ors. v. State of Karnataka,54 the Supreme Court stressed the importance of giving up information voluntarily. It held that making a person give up information involuntarily (by way of administering the truth serum) was a violation of their right to life and liberty guaranteed under the Constitution. On the need to evolve a broader perspective of privacy, the Court observed: So far, the judicial understanding of privacy in our country has mostly stressed on the protection of the body and physical spaces from intrusive actions by the State. While the scheme of criminal procedure as well as evidence law mandates interference with physical privacy through statutory provisions that enable arrest, detention, search and seizure among others, the same cannot be the basis for compelling a person ‘to impart personal knowledge about a relevant fact’. . . We must recognise the importance of personal autonomy in aspects 112 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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such as the choice between remaining silent and speaking. An individual’s decision to make a statement is the product of a private choice and there should be no scope for any other individual to interfere with such autonomy. . . The relevant distinction in Selvi is between the two stages through which information is accessed: first, whether the person being interrogated had a choice about whether he should be administered truth serum and secondly, the information volunteered under the influence of truth serum. The relevant enquiry from the perspective of the constitutional right to privacy is not at the second stage where information is provided voluntarily, but rather at the first stage before truth serum is administered. Where the person has no real choice about being administered truth serum—either by physical force or by an evidential legal inference against him—then this is a violation of the privacy right and is constitutionally prohibited. This case has great relevance to the access to deeply personal information under UID and NPR—if a petitioner can show that she is bound to forego a welfare benefit or is otherwise subjected to detriment due to her failure to procure a UID number, then the nominal voluntary character of the UID is no longer sufficient to protect it from a constitutional challenge. As for NPR, it is a wonder why it has not been challenged so far in any court of law as a blatant infringement of privacy rights of citizens due to its non-voluntary nature. The Privacy Bill, 2011 makes collection of personal data (unless authorised by the Privacy Act) an infringement of privacy.55 However, although the Privacy Bill, 2011 provides that the Privacy Act shall override all other inconsistent laws, it specifically waives consent as a prerequisite where personal data collection is ‘necessary for the compliance by the data controller of any law, decree or ordinance’ or where ‘such collection is mandatory under the provisions of any law’.56 The Privacy Bill therefore makes it simple for NPR to remain outside the purview of privacy protection. However, as for the UID, since the Privacy Bill does not define ‘law’ it is unclear whether the notifications and governmental instructions that drive the UID would escape the Privacy Bill protection. In any case, constitutional



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law privacy protection does not allow such private information of individuals to be collected without their consent. 2) Extent of Information The second facet of the access issue is the depth of the information collected. In order to be issued the Aadhaar number, one would have to give demographic and biometric information that is deeply personal.57 Section 9 of the NIA Bill attempts to establish some kind of filter as to the type of information that is collected by excluding any information relating to race, religion, caste, tribe, ethnicity, language, income or health. However, this exclusion does not alter the deeply personal nature of the information collected, nor does it prevent the information holder from easily deriving details of race, religion, caste of an individual from the information available under Aadhaar. Chapter 6 of the Privacy Bill refers to the use of photographs, fingerprints, body samples of persons, DNA samples, and other samples which does classify as deeply personal information and protects it from being revealed in public, but such use is limited to data taken at taken at police stations. With one stroke, any and all information collected by the UIDAI is clearly ousted from the ambit of the protections available under the Bill. The Privacy Bill highlights the differential status of deeply personal information and the restricted range of uses to which this information can be put. Its emphasis on the police station suggests that such data cannot be collected routinely by other government or private agencies. With reference to the NPR, the current practice shows similar to the UID, the NPR, seeks the following three types of information: 1.

Demographic Data

2.

Biometric Data

3.

Aadhaar Number

The Citizenship Act and Rules do not prescribe any standards for NPR content. As such, NPR content remains unregulated and presently, personal 114 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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data including biometric information are collected. The NPR data is collected along with the Census in a house-by-house basis. However, the Census Schedule is separate from the NPR. This is a welcome move as the information is recorded in separate entries. All the three ID systems collect personal information that forms part of ‘personal data’ under the Privacy Bill. So the level of information gathered has direct relevance to the privacy analysis as even the court grants deeply personal information a higher standard of protection. The following table58 compares the information collected under Aadhaar, the NPR and the Census: Category of Information

Similar Additional information Information obtained from sought by Aadhaar the Aadhaar, NPR and the Census

Additional Information sought by NPR

Personal

Name, Parent Occupation/ Relationship to or guardian Activity the head of the details, contact family, Name information, of spouse, photograph Occupation/ Activity, Educational qualification, date of registration of citizen, serial number of registration, National identity number

Additional Information sought by Census

Religion, Status of attendance in educational institution, Highest educational level attained, Employment, migration



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Category of Information

Similar Additional information Information obtained from sought by Aadhaar the Aadhaar, NPR and the Census

Additional Information sought by NPR

Demographic Gender and Sex, Age

Nationality

Biometric

Visible identification mark

Ten fingerprints, Iris prints

Additional Information sought by Census

Member of tribe and caste, Marital status, Age of marriage, Disability, mother tongue, languages, literacy status, no. of children

The content of information sought speaks to the boundaries drawn around an individual’s right to privacy. A look at the Table shows that the three ID systems seek personal data, with the Census being the most invasive. In order to assess whether the content interferes with the right to privacy, it is necessary to trace the perception of privacy and the extent to which it is judged based on the content. In Neera Mathur59 the Court commented on the extent of private information that LIC sought as regards health status of the applicants. LIC sought personal details on the woman’s conception, abortion, menstrual cycles etc., for providing maternity benefits. The Court held, The particulars to be furnished. . . in the declaration are indeed embarrassing if not humiliating. The modesty and self-respect may perhaps preclude the disclosure of such personal, problems like whether her menstrual period is regular or painless, the number of conceptions 116 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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taken place; how many have gone full term etc. The Corporation would do well to delete such columns in the declaration.60 The Court later on stated that the Corporation could subject the woman to medical and pregnancy tests. Although the Court did not expressly state that the disclosure of personal facts is an affront to privacy rights, it effectively read some degree of protection to personal facts on the basis of dignity and it did so with reference to the content of information sought. In Rajagopal61 the issue was if the publication of an ‘autobiography’ of Auto Shankar without his consent infringed his privacy rights. On privacy, the Court held: A citizen has a right to safeguard the privacy of his own, his family, marriage, procreation, motherhood, child bearing and education among other matters. None can publish anything concerning the above matters without his consent—whether truthful or otherwise and whether laudatory or critical. If he does so, he would be violating the right to privacy of the person concerned and would be liable in an action for damages Position may, however be different, if a person voluntarily thrusts himself into controversy or voluntarily invites or raises a controversy.62 Following this, the Court recognised two exceptions to this rule: the first, being information in public records, and second, to acts by public officials in their official capacity. Finally it allowed publication of the autobiography only ‘so far as it appears from the public records, even without his consent’.63 Therefore, even in this case, the Court has decided on the right to privacy depending on the source and content of information. The court has expressed suspicion regarding the depth of information as is evident from Naz Foundation.64 The Court adopts a zonal view of privacy, stating that the maintenance of privacy in particular deeply private zones, such as sexual relations, is a matter of dignity and hence falls under the right to life and liberty under Article 21.



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USE OF INFORMATION 1) Function Creep According to the celebrated German Constitutional Case65—the right to privacy includes the right to know and to control the purposes for which the information is used. The Privacy Bill reflects this constitutional principle in Section 44 which reads ‘Personal information shall be obtained only for specified and lawful purposes, and shall not be excessive in relation to the purpose or purposes for which they are processed and be not further processed in any matter incompatible with that purpose or those purposes’.66 This helps control indiscriminate use of information obtained, establishes a purpose-specific regime and prevents the collection of excessive data collection. While on its own, this rule can be appreciated, it loses its relevance when applied to the UID system. This is because there is no specific purpose specified for collecting data and issuing an Aadhaar number. It is an identifier but does not mandate the elementary element of requiring a specific, precise purpose for the collection of personal information.67 Therefore, it becomes, in effect, an accumulation of personal data consolidated and usable for any purpose that the State may deem fit when the occasion arises. This effectively transforms the UID into a Government surveillance system—a concept not unknown to the Government of India as is evident from Graham Greenleaf’s work in his paper on the UID system in India, which speaks of the various surveillance systems that exist and have been proposed by the Government, at various times.68 On its side, the NPR is supposed to be a by-product of, but separate from, the Census data collection. The NPR is eventually intended to lead to the issue of national identity cards based on citizenship (not just residence) and a National Register of Citizens. This can be inferred from the Citizenship (Registration of Citizens and Issue of National Identity Cards) Rules, 2003 via Notification (Ministry of Home Affairs) dated 10th December 2003. A National Population Register is a ‘data system providing for a continuous recording of selected information pertaining to each member of the resident 118 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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population of the country’.69 The purpose of a population register may be purely administrative, it may also be used to measure the ‘size, characteristics and location of the country’s population’.70 The use of a population register is not new. Several countries, especially in Europe, have been using population registers that are used to derive national migration statistics.71 In the United Kingdom, there was a National Identity Register, enacted under the Identity Cards Act of 2006 which makes provisions for the maintenance of a secure and reliable record of ‘registrable facts’ about individuals in the United Kingdom. Fingerprints and other biometric information are recorded for the purposes of this Act and the individual’s photographs are also taken. The National Identity Register was under fire for being an assault of the individuals residing in the United Kingdom and has since been destroyed. In a news report on the same, published on February 10, 2011, it was reported that, . . . Britain’s National Identity Register (NIR), built to hold the fingerprints and personal details of millions of ID card holders and considered direct assault on liberty of the people, was publicly destroyed on Thursday. . . The ID cards scheme was a direct assault on our liberty, something too precious to be tossed aside, and something which this government is determined to restore. The government is committed to rolling back as much state interference as humanly possible, and the destruction of the register is only the beginning.72 The E-ID scheme of Belgium, BELPIC (Belgium Personal Identity Card) seems to strike a balance as it does not collect any biometric information.73 But all Belgians aged 15 and above are required to always carry it with them, unless they are 200 meters away from home. 2) Storage and Access According to the Manual of Instructions for filling up the NPR Household Schedule, it has been stated that the NPR, when created, would be a comprehensive identity database in the country. This would not only strengthen security of the country but also help in better targeting of the In the Wake of Aadhaar 119


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benefits and services under the Government schemes/programmes and improve planning.74 The information collected for the purposes of the UID shall be stored in the Central Identity Data Repository. This shall be used to provide authentication services. The National Identification Authority of India has the power to develop the policy, procedure and systems for issuing Aadhaar numbers to residents and perform authentication. The powers and functions of the Authority extend to specifying the usage and applicability of the Aadhaar number for delivery of various benefits and services as may be provided by regulation.75 According to one document, Aadhaar is a universal number, and agencies and services can contact the central Unique Identification database from anywhere in the country to confirm a beneficiary’s identity. The number thus gives individuals a universal, portable form of identification.76 The demographic information collected for the NPR, via the Census, is not confidential, and is published for public access. But one of the most important provisions of census law is the guarantee it provides for the maintenance of secrecy of the information collected at the census of each individual. The Act requires strict secrecy to be maintained about the individual’s record. It cannot be used for any purpose against the individual except for an offence in connection with the census itself. The census records are not open to inspection and are also not admissible in evidence. The answers ascertained at the census can be used only for statistical purposes in which the individual data get submerged.77 Thus, it is not clear whether this confidentiality clause must extend to the National Population Register as well as the information collected is primarily for the Census, but is being used by the NPR under the Citizenship Act. 3) The Failure to Implement Restrictions on Data Aggregation The mechanism stipulated by the NIA Bill with respect to the data collected is one of authentication. In order to verify information, a person’s biometric or demographic information, the query needs to be submitted 120 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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to the Authority along with a fee, in response to which the Authority will answer in either the positive or negative.78 Due to this, anyone can verify and confirm a person’s full identity through the Authority. There are no restrictions imposed on the purpose of such verification and therefore, from a reading of the NIA Bill, it seems as though anyone can verify any of the Aadhaar number-related information of any person. Under Section 32, the Authority is mandated to maintain the details of every request for data authentication and provide the same to the Aadhaar number holder in any manner specified. While this is a nod in the right direction with respect to providing Aadhaar-holders a form of nominal control or at least knowledge about the use of their information, it is only after the event of the authentication that this option is available to them. There is no form of authorisation on their part before the information is actually verified by the Authority. The importance of authorisation before the disclosure of private information to a third party was stressed upon in R. Rajagopal v. State of Tamil Nadu,79 where the court ruled that a book on an individual can be published without his consent as only if it relates to information obtained from the public records. Any publication which involved information that was otherwise received, requires authorisation. Further, the court held that the Right to Life and Liberty is comprehensive enough to include the Right to Privacy and includes the right to regulate one’s own personal information as long as it is not found in public records, in which case the right to privacy will cease to subsist. It is important to note here that when it comes to personal information, an individual must authorise the use of such data before it is disseminated. In Govind v. State of Madhya Pradesh80 where the Supreme Court drew a line limiting the extent of the right to privacy, this line was clearly labelled ‘public interest’. While the judgment cited Kharak Singh heavily, it deviated from the same by stating that surveillance by domiciliary visits would not always be invasive, especially in cases where the person being observed is a habitual offender, as it was in public interest. The Court was seeking to create a niche for the right to privacy, making sure it wasn’t interpreted so widely so as to interfere with State action in public interest or so narrowly that it In the Wake of Aadhaar 121


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blatantly intruded upon a person’s personal life and information. But at the same time it stated that the only justification acceptable for an infringement to a person’s right to privacy is if it is done in public interest. The purpose of the UID system, despite the constant reiteration of the major role it is predicted to assume with respect to administering welfare schemes, is not even now entirely clear or ascertainable. Section 46(2) reads: ‘Personal information obtained processed for any purpose or purposes shall not be kept for longer than is necessary for that purpose or those purposes’.81 This principle is purpose-related and seeks to ensure that unnecessary information is not stored which can be used/misused at a later date for other purposes. Even though this is a good principle, it falls prey to the lack of a streamlined purpose in the NIA Bill, making the information collected in order to issue the Aadhaar number available in perpetuity. Another weakening aspect of the Privacy Bill is that at its very outset, it subjects itself to ‘any law for the time being in force’,82 which will seemingly result in the provisions of the NIA Bill overriding those of the Privacy Bill. There has been an attempt to establish international standards with respect to control over personal information in the form of the Fair Information Principles (FIPs), which are a set of universally recognised principles (adopted by the OECD) which form guidelines for collection and use of personal information. The principles list out what must be followed: (i) openness with respect to practices and policies; (ii) fair and lawful means for information collection; (iii) specification of the purpose for collecting the information; (iv) limitation of the use of the information for the purpose specified; (v) ensured accuracy, completeness and relevance of the data; (vi) individuals’ participation in inspecting and correcting their information; (vii) strict security safeguards around the data and finally; (viii) accountability of an organisation to ensure compliance with privacy policy and means for redressal. 4) Private Use The Aaadhaar ecosystem, as stipulated by both the NIA Bill and by Nilekani, clearly anticipates private use of the information consolidated.83 We 122 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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have already seen that the UID system works primarily on a process of authentication. On the payment of a specified fee and requesting for an authentication of a person’s data to the Authority, any entity can get data verified.84 This way, private players will pay in order to get data authenticated, marking the beginning of the integration of a person’s private and public data. This data aggregation links various kinds of data, and hence makes a vast amount of information available about one person regarding several aspects of their life and, in effect, such aggregated information starts producing more information. An argument can be made to the contrary that aggregation of data promotes efficiency by making necessary data readily available to carry out any necessary transactions, be it in the banking sector or administering welfare schemes. But making such information available to whoever requests for it after paying the fee also gives rise, of course, to deep concerns of bias, and many factors that could come into play in what should be objective decision making. The Approach Paper does warn of the dangers of aggregating data by explaining the concept of data being stored in isolated silos and the Aadhaar number, as an identifier, weaving a connection between these otherwise isolated information silos. The aggregation of data in this manner can lead to pinpoint precision with respect to a person, as is the case in Singapore where almost every kind of citizen-state interaction is integrated into the National Registration Identity Card which makes it possible to ascertain several details of the citizen’s life.85 For example, if your driver’s license, car registration and mobile phone are all synced into one database, it gives you a fairly clear view of a citizen’s whereabouts. 5) Unauthorised Use A large potential problem when incredible amounts of information are consolidated into one database is clearly that of unauthorised use. Earlier this October, the UIDAI, in response to a Right To Information request, disclosed that it had received a complaint responding to the misuse of address proof during its enrollment process. The UIDAI, in a routine bureaucratic response, clarified that its Contact Centre would handle all grievances and complaints of stakeholders. This complaint and the predictable response is only a minor In the Wake of Aadhaar 123


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event in what is likely to become one of the more controversial law and public policy arenas in the second decade of the 21st century. In the last year, the Supreme Court has been called on to elaborate and specify the scope and extent of privacy in different contexts: the Amar Singh and Niira Radia tapes; the administration of truth serum in criminal investigation; and the corruption investigations into black money. None of these cases deal with invasions of privacy that could be on the scale and extent that might become legally and technologically possible with the implementation of the UIDAI scheme and NIA Bill. Under S. 30 of the NIA Bill, the Authority is to ensure the security and confidentiality of the identity information of individuals. This security doesn’t extend to secondary databases which may germinate around the Central Data Repository via the easily available authentication mechanism envisaged. Offences and penalties are prescribed for unauthorised access to the Aadhaar information under Section 38 and 39 of the NIA Bill regarding intentional misuse of the information by those authorised by the Authority and extracting or modifying information by any unauthorised person respectively.86 Despite the existence of this sanction, the issue I seek to address here is that of the development of a parallel identification or card ecosystem and the fact that an adequate security regime for the same has not been envisaged. Large consolidated databases are susceptible to security threats, such as hacking. Privacy intrusions and risks of such magnitude must only be carried out within a proper legal framework containing elements of authorisation, limits to data aggregation and data security. A study conducted on 46 databases in the UK showed that only six have a proper legal basis for any intrusion of privacy and are proportionate and necessary, nearly twice as many are illegal under human rights or data protection law and should be either done away with or changed substantially, while the remaining 29 databases have significant problems and should be subject to an independent review. One can only imagine what the state of Indian databases will be



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especially considering that data collection has already begun without any form of legislation in place. In Mr. X v. Hospital Z,87 the appellant was diagnosed HIV-positive after a blood test and the hospital disclosed this information to his fiancée without his consent. The appellant claimed that he had the right to privacy over this deeply personal information. The Court opined that the appellant’s right to privacy in this case clashed with his fiancée’s right to lead a full and healthy life and therefore, the disclosure by the hospital was not in contravention of the appellant’s right to privacy. But had the fiancée’s right not been in conflict, the appellant would have retained the right to divulge such deeply personal information himself. In Amar Singh v. Union of India88 it was held that telephone tapping violated the fundamental right to privacy. The Court stated that while it was the duty of the service provider to act in public interest according to Governmental requests, it was also their duty to be vigilant about fake requests: a duty in which they failed. The interception of telephone communication must only be done in cases of public interest, and sufficient measures must be taken to ensure that the request by the Government was legitimate. Since such measures were not taken, the service provider was in breach of the appellant’s right to privacy. The Supreme Court has also, very recently, held that with respect to the details of the bank accounts of individuals, prima facie grounds to accuse a person for wrong doing must be established before the revelation of such details, otherwise there would be a blatant violation of the right to privacy.89 Therefore, there must exist a certain amount of evidence to prove wrongdoing by a person before the details of his bank account can be asked for by the Government. So it becomes quite clear that without such grounds proving wrongdoing, personal information such as bank account details must remain personal. A secondary database using the UID as an identifier, integrating bank details along with other information, is on the face of it a blatant violation of the right to privacy.



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Both these cases reiterate the privacy of information and the importance of authorisation, be it by the person himself with respect to disclosing his personal information or by the Government when it comes to actions taken in public interest. Also, breaches in the name of public interest must be done with utmost care and only when absolutely necessary. The Privacy Bill, under S. 70, prescribes a heavy fine for anyone who obtains data from any person of officer of the Government or any agency under false pretences.90 This section attempts, again, to ensure that data is stored and obtained only for specific purposes and cannot be obtained under ‘false pretences’. While applying this to the UID system, the section again fails in being effective as there is no concept of ‘false pretences’ that can arise when there is no specific purpose for the data collected in the first place. In other words, the data is collected and stored for anyone to verify and the Authority will authenticate it on request. Therefore, this data is available for anyone to verify for any purpose. There are some checks and balances that the Privacy Bill seems to impose which are definitely positive steps. Section 73 heavily penalises any officer or employee of a service provider or the Government who has access to personal data by virtue of his employment, and willfully discloses such information which is not to be disclosed.91 This way, people with access to Aadhaar number information can only disclose the same under procedure and will be penalised if they disclose classified information. Section 81(1) fixes liability on the Heads of Departments of the Government when offences are committed under this future Act, unless they can prove that they had taken the necessary measures to prevent the offence. These two sections are a step in the right direction with respect to severely penalising the breach of privacy or the sanctity of personal information. Section 38 lays down rules on data retention. It mandates that information is to be collected and retained for a particular purpose and the said information is to be destroyed once the purpose is fulfilled, though a few reasonable exceptions are given with respect to prolonging data retention. Section 36(1) reads: ‘Every person required to collect or process 126 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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or disclose or use sensitive personal data of any individual shall do so after obtaining a written consent from such individual. . . This again stresses the authorisation aspect of data collection and use, and maintains personal control over disclosed data’. These checks on data retention and the authorisation of use or disclosure of personal data may be sufficient to tackle the private players who may gain access to personal information. Even if the NIA Bill may have an advantage over the Privacy Bill due to the fact that currently the Privacy Bill seemingly subjects itself to all other legislations, its measures extend only to the Authority and data repository created by it. On the other hand, private entities and secondary databases will fall under the purview of the Privacy Bill, and hence would have to adhere to the standards of data purpose, retention and authorisation set forth by it and also liable to pay heavy penalties for any breach in data privacy.

NOTES 1

The 42nd Report of the Standing Committee on Finance on the National Identification Authority of India, Bill, 2010 available at http://164.100.47.134/lsscommittee/Finance/42%20Report.pdf.

2

Page 28 of the 42nd Report of the Standing Committee on Finance. ibid.

3

Approach Paper for a Legislation on Privacy (Draft for Discussion), Department of Personnel Training, 13 October, 2010, available at , last visited 7 November, 2011.

4

The Privacy Bill, 2011, Preamble, (unofficial leaked version available at ).

5

This is ascertainable from the fact that apart from the Approach Paper, no official information on the Privacy Bill has officially been made available.

6

The National Identification Authority of India, Bill, 2010, available at http://164.100.24.219/ BillsTexts/RSBillTexts/asintroduced/national%20ident.pdf.

7

See Planning Commission, Government of India, Notification No-A-43011/02/2009-Admn.I. available at http://164.100.47.132/LssNew/psearch/QResult15.aspx?qref=80135.

8

Standing Committee Report, ibid., page 28.

9

Section 14A Citizenship Act, 1955.

10 Avinash Celestine, ‘Nandan Nilekani’s UID ‘bad’, but what about home ministry’s NPR?’ The Economic Times 16 December 2011. The idea was first initiated in the Subramaniam Committee Report on Kargil.



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11 See Rule 2 (l) of the Citizenship (Registration of Citizens and Issue of National Identity Cards) Rules, 2003. 12 Central Government has issued a notification to this effect on 15-03-2010. See FAQ, Department of Information Technology, available at http://www.ditnpr.in/FAQ’s.aspx. 13 Rule 3(5), Citizenship (Registration of Citizens and Issue of National Identity Cards) Rules, 2003. 14 See Ministry of Home Affairs, ‘FAQ for NPR’ available at http://www.censusindia.gov.in/2011Common/FAQs.html#D. 15 See Rule 4, Citizenship Rules 2003. 16 Rai Sahib Ram Jawaya Kapur and Ors. v. State of Punjab AIR 1955 SC 549. 17 See Ibid. at Para 15. 18 See Ibid. at Para 17. 19 Kharak Singh v. State of U.P., AIR 1963 SC 1295. 20 See Ibid. at Para 5. 21 Ibid. The Court finally held that certain parts of the Police regulations were invalid by reason of infringing on Article 19(1)(d) and 21 of the Constitution. 22 State of M. P. v. Thakur Bharat Singh, AIR 1967 SC 1170; See also Satwant Singh v. Ramanathan, AIR 1967 SC 1836. 23 Ibid. at Para 5. 24 See Ibid. at Para 6. 25 Bishamber Dayal Chandra Mohan v. State of U. P., AIR 1982 SC 33. 26 See Ibid. at Para 27. 27 Bennett Coleman & Co vs. Union of India (1972) 2 SCC 788. 28 Dr. D.C. Wadhwa v. State of Bihar, AIR 1987 SC 579. 29 Ibid. at Para 7. 30 See Union of India v. Cynamide India Ltd., (1987) 2 SCC 720. 31 See M.P. High Court Bar Association v. Union of India, AIR 2005 SC 4114; See also Indira Gandhi v. Raj Narain, AIR 1975 SC 2299. 32 The other two being Statutory law and Crown Prerogative. 33 Harris, Bruce, ‘Government “Third Source” Action and Common Law Constitutionalism’ (2010) 126 Law Quarterly Review 373. 34 See Richard Clayton, ‘The Executive and the Courts’ Richard Clayton ‘The Executive and the Courts’ (2010) 28(3) Penn State International Law Review 513 at. 35 See Ibid. at Para 48. 36 Clayton observes that this Act has caused a “sea change in English law; where a public authority interferes with qualified rights like the right of respect for private life or freedom of expression, the public body must justify that interference by showing that the interference is “prescribed by law” and “proportionate.”; R. (on the Application of Shrewsbury & Atcham BC and another) v. Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government [2008] E.W.C.A. Civ. 148. 37 http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2012-03-03/news/31119559_1_aadhaarnumbers-uidai-enrollment. 38 See https://portal.uidai.gov.in/uidwebportal/enrollmentStatusShow.do?_HDIV_ STATE_=JTdFJUFEJTNDYiVGMyUxRSVBMiUxOCVBNCU4OVdwWlAlQzUlOUQlM0MlRT YlRkUlMDEyJUQ5JTE4JTJDUyUyRlAlRkQlODIlMTZkJUE1JUZDJTNDJTg4WiVCMiVCRiUxNyVDNCVGMy VDRSVGRSVBMDMwJTk5aSVCNSUzRCU5QyVFNiVBMiU.



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39 The Constitutional and Administrative law of this country and elsewhere do not support the existence and continued functioning of such non-statutory actions. 40 Section 3, NIA Bill. 41 Usha Ramanathan, 'A Unique Identity Bill', Economic & Political Weekly, Vol. XLV No. 30, Jul. 24, 2010. 42 See UIDAI Working Papers available at ; The Government has announced the linkage of Aadhaar and payment for programmes such as Indira Gandhi National Old Age Pension Scheme, Indira Gandhi National Widow Pension Scheme, Indira Gandhi National Disability Pension and National Family Benefit Scheme. See ‘Welfare Plans tied to Aadhaar Schemes’ http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/welfare-plans-tied-to-Aadhaar-scheme/1/175817.html. 43 See also:http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/welfare-plans-tied-to-Aadhaar-scheme/1/175817. html; ‘Aadhaar Card Now a Must’ http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-07-14/ hyderabad/29772518_1_card-enrollment-aadhaar-bogus-cards. 44 Another Significant Milestone for UIDAI: One Crore Aadhaar Numbers Issued, available at . 45 For more debates on the mandatory/voluntary nature of UID, see Sudhir Krishnaswamy ‘Unique Identity Numbers: The Enabler of Reform?’ India In Transition, Centre for Advanced Studies of India 2 January 2010 available at , See also Graham Greenleaf ‘India’s National ID System: Danger Grows in a Privacy Vacuum’ Computer Law & Security Review 26(2010) 479-491, 483. 46 Standing Committee on Finance on the National Identification Authority of India, Bill, 2010, ibid. at p. 32 at P. 32. 47 See FAQ, http://www.censusindia.gov.in/2011-Common/FAQs.html#D. 48 See Rule 17, Citizenship Rules. 49 See Section 8, Census Act. 50 Section 8(2), Census Act. 51 See Section 8 proviso, Census Act. 52 See Section 11(d), Census Act. 53 See Section 15, Census Act. 54 Selvi and Ors. v. State of Karnataka (2010) 7 SCC 263. 55 See Section 5, Privacy Bill. 56 See Section 9(3), Privacy Bill. 57 The National Identification Authority of India Draft Bill, 2010, § 2(e), § 2(h) and § 2(k) (define ‘biometric information’, ‘demographic information’ and ‘identity information’ respectively). 58 See UID website, Rule 3(3), Citizenship Rules, NPR Schedule. 59 Neera Mathur v. LIC, AIR 1992 SC 392. 60 Ibid. at Para 13. 61 R. Rajagopal v. State of Tamil Nadu, AIR 1995 SC 264. 62 Ibid. at Para 28. 63 Ibid. at Para 31. 64 Naz Foundation v. Government of NCT of Delhi. 65 BVerfG, 1 BvR 256/08 vom 2.3.2010, Absatz-Nr. (1 – 345), § 173–§ 174, http://www.bverfg.de/ entscheidungen/rs20100302_1bvr025608.html



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66 Supra note 8 at § 44. 67 P. 9, Database State. 68 Graham Greenleaf—India’s national ID system: Danger grows in a privacy vacuum, Computer Law and Security Review 26 (2010) 479-491. 69 International Migration Statistics—Guidelines for Improving Data Collection Systems, International Labour Office, Geneva. 70 http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2012-01-25/news/30663100_1_aadhaar-uidaibiometrics. 71 For eg. Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Liechenstein, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland have population registers that show data on international migration. See Id. 72 ‘UK destroys national Identity Register, Feb, 10, 2011’ - http://zeenews.india.com/news/world/ukdestroys-national-identity-register_686386.html. 73 BELPIC, http://www.steria.be/documents/File/casestudyBELPIC-EN.pdf. 74 Manual of Instructions for filling up thr NPR Household Schedule available at http://www.censusindia. gov.in/2011-Documents/NPR%20English.pdf. 75 See S. 23, THE NATIONAL IDENTIFICATION AUTHORITY OF INDIA BILL, 2010, available at http:// www.prsindia.org/uploads/media/UID/The%20National%20Identification%20Authority%20of%20 India%20Bill,%202010.pdf. 76 Envisioning a Role for Aadhaar in the Public Distribution System—Working paper, UIDAI available at http://www.prsindia.org/uploads/media/UID/Circulated_Aadhaar_PDS_Note.pdf. 77 Census Operations available at http://censusindia.gov.in/Data_Products/Library/Indian_perceptive_ link/Census_Operation_link/censusoperation.htm. 78 Supra. note 19 at § 5(1). 79 Supra note 9. 80 Govind vs. State of Madhya Pradesh, (1975) 2 SCC 148. 81 Supra note 8. 82 § 3(1), Privacy Bill. 83 Unique ID Cards will make Bank Account Phone Collection Easy, http://www.financialexpress.com/ news/unique-idcards-will-make-bank-account-phone-connection-easy/529183. 84 § 5(1) NIA Bill. 85 Sudhir Krishnaswamy, In Stasiland, privacy, identity, surveillance. The Sunday Guardian, Oct. 25th, 2011, available at . 86 § 38 and § 39, NIA Bill. 87 Mr. X. vs. Hospital z (2003) 1 SCC 500 40. 88 Amar Singh vs. Union of India (2011) 7 SCC 69. 89 Ram Jethmalani and Ors. v. Union of India (2011) 8 SCC 1. 90 Privacy Bill, § 70. 91 Ibid. at § 73.



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The Social Category of the Introducer Ashish Rajadhyaksha Senior Fellow, CSCS and Arun Menon Doctoral student, CSCS

In querying the ‘Introducer’, a key component of the Aadhaar structure, as a social category, this essay proposes a far more fundamental crisis—a potential disconnect between state structures and citizenship—this category is rather fantastically expected to bridge. Although Aadhaar itself limits the liability of Introducers, it is likely that further applications may impose further responsibilities as introduction shades into guarantorship. Specifically, in this, the paper queries the widespread invocation to a benevolent definition of ‘community’—a category that various State structures seek to tap into, as for example the National Population Register as well as the Banking Correspondents model. The paper ends by proposing a far more foundational crisis than we imagine here that the Introducer embodies.

CHHOTIYAL, PALAM GAON, DELHI: JULY 2011

Enrollments are in full swing. We arrive at 9 in the morning,

and straight away find ourselves in the middle of a stampede. The gates are firmly shut, and people are trying to push their way through with all kinds of paper: with whatever they have:



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Outside the gate: Chhotiyal, Palam Gaon, Delhi.

More than the chaos itself, which we have seen elsewhere, what is new is a large notice saying, in Hindi, ‘Aadhaar Smart Card’. This is of course a straightforwardly misleading line, since there is nothing called an Aadhaar Smart Card. Following the announcement, with a few statements about dates and times, came the really chilling next line, ‘Yahan par sirf Chhotiyal walonke hi banenge’ (Here the cards will be only of the ‘Chhotiyal-walahs’). What, we felt as we struggled with the crowds, was a Chhotiyal-walah? Things do not improve as we move inside an enrollment centre: the pressure is now intense. The representatives of the enrollment agency have to physically keep the crowds at bay: we are amongst those caught in the stampede. A young boy, Phool Singh, is carrying around a document. It doesn’t look much: it is a poor photocopy with ink striations, but it is the crucial document here—a letter from an ‘Introducer’. The mass-photocopied page turns original only with the mandatory rubber stamp and a photograph of the person being introduced:



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Interview with Phool Singh, a young boy, who has an Introducer letter with him.

The document itself is worth looking at. Satyameva Jayate Name: Dharmadev Solanki, Member, Delhi Vidha Sabha. To whomsoever it may concern. This is to certify that Shri/Shrimati/Kumari (blank), S/o, W/o, D/o (blank), R/w (blank) is personally known to me for the last three years. His/her date of birth is (blank) to the best of my knowledge and belief. She/he is not related to me. Signed (for). Phool Singh, the child carrying this document, knows it is valuable, and indeed as we speak to him we are assured by the staff that nothing more is now required for him to get his Aadhaar registration. Others are not so lucky. A young woman stands there, a boy clutching her sari, trying to get the attention of Rashmi, the President of the local Resident Welfare Association, claiming to be here only as a samaj sevika. Rashmi tells her that her documents aren’t sufficient. She can’t even tell from what she has produced whether the child clutching her sari is her child or not. Rashmi says she has gone hoarse telling the young woman that she can’t get her enrollment done here. Why not? Because the woman is from the Harijan In the Wake of Aadhaar 133


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Basti, and this enrollment is not for people from there. The Harijan Basti will soon have its own camps. What is the solution? You have to go to the MP or local MLA and get this introducer letter. That’s the only way.

Unnamed woman attempts to speak to Rashmi, President of the Resident Welfare Association, who tells her that she is from the Harijan Basti and cannot get enrolled here.

An old worker stands in the same queue. He doesn’t know whether he’s in or out. Has he had any trouble getting in? He has. ‘They tore up my children’s forms’. ‘Who did?’ ‘The people there’. Why? A crowd gathers. He’s an outsider. He’s not from here. The representative of the Enrollment Agency, an exArmymen’s outfit named Strategic Outsouring Services Pvt ltd, aggressively steps in. The most aggressive question of all: ‘Where do you live?’ From here (see accompanying video) the conversation is perhaps worth documenting in some detail:



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Unnamed worker trying to get himself enrolled at Badhiyal, Palam Gaon, he gets into a scuffle with others in the line, and then with an enrollment representative, because his identity documents give one address and the Introducer letter gives another.

‘Where do you live?’ ‘This is only for people from the gaon, not for outsiders,’ says one member of the public. ‘I am from Puran Nagar’. ‘No, only you’re an outsider. Only people from here are permitted in’. Soon, however, they smell bigger game. ‘Where are you from?’ one asks, aggressively. ‘Palam Gaon’, the man says. The Strategic Outsourcing person again steps in. He asks to see the man’s papers. ‘But it says you have come from Sultanpuri? Your identity card says Sultanpuri’. The man now has no answer. He can only point to the other paper the man has: the Introducer letter. ‘Where do you live?’, asks the Enrollment representative. ‘In which house do you live?’



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He finally looks at the Introducer form. ‘RZB, Dada Dev Road Palam Gaon, Rajnagar’. The form has that familiar address: ‘To whomsoever it may concern’. . . signed: Dharmadev Solanki. When we ask the Enrollment man whether there is any bar on people coming in from outside the neighbourhood, the man says, ‘This is areawise. People from this neighbourhood alone are permitted to come in here. Otherwise the crowd will be too much’. Is everyone here from Palam Gaon? ‘Yes’, the people standing by shout in a chorus, ‘We are all from here’.

WHO IS AN INTRODUCER?

An Introducer is a well known person authorised by the UIDAI

or by a Registrar to introduce individuals for enrollment. This mechanism was specifically created to allow the UIDAI system to reach out to the marginalised and excluded residents who may not have sufficient documentation to meet the proof of identity or proof of address. Hence, an introducer provides an assurance that the individual applying for an UID is indeed a resident, and to the best of his/her personal knowledge who they say they are. Registrars may provide a list of introducers with their name and UID. For various Registrars, we expect that this list will include officials (elected, gazetted and others), school teachers, headmasters, anganwadi workers. The UIDAI may seek the help of NGOs and other civil society organisations to provide additional Registrars to improve the coverage for the marginalised groups. (UIDAI document)1 It is probably not sufficient here to see the mass-xeroxed form claiming that the man knew (blank) for three years, nor to note that the scrawl is not that of the purported introducer. It is not even sufficient to track the notoriety of BJP MLA Dharmadev Solanki, signatory, worth ` 9.4 crore, presumably



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literate (11th Pass)2 but a man too important to personally sign the hundreds of Introducer letters floating about in his name. The issue here clearly is who can, and who cannot, enroll at the Chhotiyal booths: Aadhaar booths to which all Indian residents are entitled. Residents of the Harijan Basti are clearly forbidden entry here, and so even if they have their identity proofs, they definitely need this Introducer letter if they are to get in. The assertion that ‘(blank) has been known to me for three years’ now stands for two things: first, that the Introduction is a near-necessity and identity proofs for some people will not suffice, and second, that the reason for why it is necessary is because it overcomes, overrides, divides that otherwise are insurmountable: such as geographical divides—the man from Sultanpuri now passing off as a resident of Palam Gaon—or divides of caste—the woman from the Harijan Basti. This short paper explores the concept of the Introducer in the digital era, as specifically a means of leapfrogging otherwise insurmountable barriers. These are both social and technological barriers: while the social aspect is perhaps familiar, what of new technological barriers preventing people from (or then enabling people to) enter this new ecosystem without an ‘introduction’? We explore roadblocks that are apparently coming up in the smooth passage a functioning democracy: and the role that the Introducer is increasingly beginning to play as a means of overcoming such blockages to the system. At one level, the Introducer is someone straightforwardly one with pehchaan, one who knows people, or is known to them; at another level, it is a bestowal—I know you, so I can vouch for you. It is widely used: as we all know, even now, you cannot open a bank account or take a loan without someone willing to be an introducer/underwriter. The UIDAI defines an introducer elaborately, and distinctly: s/he is to be an individual of repute, a person in the know of the community, and also known to the registrar and the agency performing the enrollment. The primary purpose of the introducer is to provide an alternative system In the Wake of Aadhaar 137


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of identification to make enrollment possible, in instances where residents either have inadequate or no identification documents. Introducers have to be enrolled separately with Aadhaar. This Aadhar document3 specifies this process in detail, and the UIDAI portal also has a walk-through detailing which type of enrolling operators can access and upload an introducer’s file. The UIDAI says that: 1. Introducers are involved to the lowest possible unit of administration such that. . . the process of enrollment is not hampered due to lack of introducers. 2. At the grassroots and ground level, residents to have access to multiple introducers such that one introducer does not harass them. 3. Registrars can more or less approve any introducers, and need not limit them to their own departments. They can be social workers, postmen, elected local body members such as from the panchayat etc, village teachers, NGOs involved in the area such as for instance in the case of NREGA etc. 4. Introducers can also be credible organisations working for the welfare of the individuals and vulnerable minorities and other communities, they can be organisations hiring labor in the case of migrant workers, or even NGOs working in similar sectors such as the homeless etc. The introducer must be an individual, over 18 years, without a criminal record, and should have enrolled into Aadhaar prior to his appointment as introducer, and can be a representative of NGOs as well as other ‘credible organisations’.

‘HIS NAME IS SUBBARAO’

B. Satyanarayana,

Assistant General Manager of the State Bank of India, outlines the stellar role of that bank in setting up Banking Correspondents across the state of Andhra Pradesh: 138 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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What is an Aadhaar ultimately? It’s a proof of identity and proof of address. Suppose anyone of us goes to a bank branch for the opening of an account, what will they ask? They will ask for 3 things. One is two photographs, POI (Proof of Identity), and POA (Proof of Address). Suppose somebody is there is the village who does not have these two things. Still the CSP (Customer Service Point) operator signs. Because he is a local, he knows X, and knows that he is from that village, his name is Subbarao, etc. He can open his account without insisting for the POI and POA. No introduction. The CSP himself identifies him and his signature is enough to open the account. Even with Introduction part is different. He will have to give POI and POA. In this Total Financial Inclusion, the CSP has been given the powers to open an account where there is no voters’ card, no ration card.

Interview with Mr. B. Satyanarayana, Assistant General Manager, State Bank of India, Hyderabad.

Obviously, anyone cannot be a BC. The State Bank of India chooses BCs, says Mr. Satyanarayana, based on their local standing: We would have chosen (as) individual BCs (only) those who have some other activity, and he should not totally depend on it. He should be a kirana merchant or he should be doing some other business. He should be a local there for 5–6 years. He should have good respect in the village.



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Although at one level such an Introduction is a time-honoured practice, at another level it is likely that the concept, as being used by Aadhaar, is still a very new category. How does this introduction translate into a technological intervention? To Aadhaar, the purpose of the introducer refers to two specific instances: one, as a means of establishing a data environment around individuals who do not have sufficient documentation: around what we might now call essentially ambiguous data; and two, in domains such as the National Population Register, as directly emerging from the community. Unlike Aadhaar, the NPR does not have a stable category of the introducer, but it has a category very similar to the guy in the village, who is known to the kirana shopkeeper: a category it defines as a ‘Usual Resident’. The NPR has a Local Register of Usual Resident (LRUR) correction and validation process. The LRUR specifically addresses this question, of being known, of being in acquaintanceship with the community: which community then forms the basis for the NPR to establish that a person is who s/he says he is, and sometimes in spite of the documents themselves. Whereas the UID uses the introducer mechanism to bypass that particular problem, the NPR uses community validation to establish the credentials of a person through the compilation of a local register which is then made available to public scrutiny. The community for the NPR becomes the crucial threshold which then enables the proof, so to speak. What a person is, his relation to the state and his relation to both community and the people around him, takes on 140 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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prominence to become the basis on which an identity is now proved beyond doubt. Although, like the UID, the NPR too requires documentation for date of birth, a photographic identity card and residence proof, it operates through the Census to establish further relationships: within a household, a family unit and, crucially, within the community.

PEHCHAAN AND THE ‘USUAL RESIDENT’

Let us pause here and understand this a little more. As defined in the Census

of India, the NPR is a

register of usual residents of the country. It is being prepared at the local (Village/sub-Town), sub-District, District, State and National level under provisions of the Citizenship Act 1955 and the Citizenship (Registration of Citizens and issue of National Identity Cards) Rules, 2003. A usual resident is defined for the purposes of NPR as a person who has resided in a local area for the past 6 months or more or a person who intends to reside in that area for the next 6 months or more.4 You ought to have lived in a neighbourhood for six months to be a usual resident there. You ought to be known there. Numerous questions arise: what if you haven’t lived there for the past six months? Who decides ‘usual’ness? It gets worse. After this database is completed, it is planned that the electronic database of each individual will be printed. (The photograph) of the individual will also be printed if he/she is aged 15 years and above. These printed lists called Local Register of Usual Residents, would be put for display in the local areas (villages/wards) for scrutiny by the public as well as by the public representatives (Gram Panchayats/Ward Committees)5 To even a casual interpretation, this constitutes an explicit invitation for people to spy on each other. Anyone can see whose name is put up on public In the Wake of Aadhaar 141


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display, and say ‘I don’t know this person’. At one level it could mean ‘I can’t vouch for this person’, but at another, it could simply mean, ‘this person is suspicious’. Or anyone can say of someone else, ‘I don’t think this person is a Usual Resident because I haven’t seen him around in a while’: all these, unlike the somewhat benevolent idea of a smiling community where, as in an R.K. Narayan story, the CSP or the BC says he ‘knows’ Subbarao, presumably knew him from when he was a boy, produce various reasons for why I could simply say I don’t ‘know’ this person. Effectively, if someone does say this, it then becomes the burden of the person to have to provide his bona fides: not only that he says he is who he says he is (which is where Aadhaar leaves off), but that he is in addition a local. He would need to prove to what the Census simply speaks of as a ‘Competent Authority’, without specifying who this could be.

WHAT DOES THE INTRODUCER VOUCH FOR?

Let us move on. What, precisely, does the Introducer vouch for? There

are many institutions that have functioning Introducer categories. To take one instance, the Field Key Officer (FKO) of the RSBY: usually a person at the RSBY enrollment center, generally appointed by the government, i.e. a government employee, who uses his RSBY ID card to enable each enrollment performed in a particular RSBY enrollment center. In this manner every enrollment of the RSBY is in some manner tied back to the government employee and his RSBY ID card. In this case the employee is not in the classical sense an introducer, but a crucial element in the technological process of authenticating an enrollment: a crucial technological process that, it will be later argued, builds a system of trust by enabling a very specific hierarchy and chain of trust. He vouches then not for the person but for the process. This is important, since RSBY enrollment is managed through a process of either hiring enrollment centers, or groups that could run such centers (cf. Kerala Field Dossier for an interview with a member of the consortia



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managing enrollments in Karnataka, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh) with the necessary hardware to capture biometric details as well as print out the cards. Perhaps the best known category of Introducer is in banking. The Reserve Bank of India has the well-known guideline for opening bank accounts: A customer belonging to low income group who is not able to produce documents to satisfy the bank about his identity and address, can open bank account with an introduction from another account holder who has been subjected to full KYC procedure provided that the balance in all his accounts taken together is not expected to exceed Rupees Fifty Thousand (` 50,000/-) and the total credit in all the accounts taken together is not expected to exceed Rupees One Lakh (` 1,00,000/-) in a year. The introducer’s account with the bank should be at least six months old and should show satisfactory transactions. Photograph of the customer who proposes to open the account and also his address needs to be certified by the introducer.6 This appeared relatively straightforward until banks began burdening the introducer with significantly higher responsibilities. The famous instance that led to a major Supreme Court judgment in 2004,7 was this. In 1972, a Jamshedpur-based businessman, Manoranjan Das, introduced a man, Loknath Acharya, to the Central Bank where he had a current account. That October, Acharya presented three demand drafts for large amounts into his new account, followed by two self cheques. It turned out that the drafts were forged, by which time the culprit had fled. Then began the real problem for the introducer: the bank filed a complaint with the police accusing both account holder and introducer of fraud. Das, the introducer, was convicted by a trial court for cheating, and the High Court upheld the conviction. Finally, the Supreme Court declared that both the trial court and the High Court had committed a serious error: that Das had merely introduced Acharya to the bank only for opening an account, and this could hardly be seen as fraud or cheating. The judgment went on to hold that an introduction could not, without other evidence, be held liable for a fraud played on the bank by an account holder. As a consequence of the judgment, the news item goes on to state, given that introduction would In the Wake of Aadhaar 143


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from now become a necessary but not sufficient to open an account, since the introducer’s liability was limited, and banks would henceforth need to conduct additional background checks on prospective accountholders.8

BESTOWAL OF RECOGNITION AND HIERARCHIES OF TRUST

There are two very specific problems here. At one level, introduction is

meant to be, as per the Supreme Court ruling, simply a bestowal of recognition: I know you, and therefore when I vouch for you I only vouch for that fact. I do in person what the Aadhaar number will do once it is issued. But, as is essential even for Aadhaar’s further functioning—the famous apps to be mounted on Aadhaar’s authentication—such an act is meant to be used as a catalyst for subsequent acts: for financial inclusion, social inclusion, for possibly technological inclusion, and most crucially, for state inclusion: for the right of a citizen to access the state. With megaprojects such as Aadhaar, increasingly dependent on complex technologies, familiar social categories translate into information systems addressing the creation of data subjects—citizens who become data producers within the complex information hierarchies of the state, and therefore subject to those hierarchies in much the same way as existing citizens have been subject to the state. These hierarchies then require a system of trust—much as in the real world, where one needs to prove not just one’s identity but also what Richard Sennett once called being able to produce ‘believability in oneself ’: a system of trust that could make some subjects more real because more credible, than others—a ranking economy of sorts within a hierarchy of trust. Bestowal of Recognition At one level, the inability of a startlingly large number of Indian people to produce documentation about their date of birth, a photographic identity or proof of residence—and when they can produce some documentation, the poor quality of it—clearly demanded that the government put together a credible means of addressing the problem. Importantly, the nature of this barrier—a very specific, practical, barrier that limits the state’s ability 144 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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to enumerate a citizen—appears, in our field visits, less to do with the believability of the person, and more with the poverty of the documentation available. This in turn has meant that the onus of proving a person’s identity lay less on the person and more on the State’s ability to, so to say, produce credible authentication that can, to use current language, ‘de-duplicate’. Historically, there have existed various mechanisms by which states have regularized and documented those who have not been brought into its ambit, but rarely has an impasse such as this been faced by modern states. One curious consequence of this was seen in the Ratu block of Ranchi district, Jharkhand, where the Block Development Officer told us that the prime purpose of the Introducer was to introduce the programme to the villagers, and not the other way round.

Interview with Jyotsna Singh, Block development Officer, Ratu Block, Ranchi district, Jharkhand.

Her Statement is Provided in Some Detail: The UID programme was launched in the headquarters on October 2nd. The first phase was the Introducer phase. All the government agencies, BDO, all the departments of the Jharkhand governments, their officers and staff were all enrolled here. In our block are the Panchayat officials, the NREGA officials, field staff, doctors from the health department, Anganwadis are under the welfare department, the DPO from there, all their supervisors. Each village has at least 4–5 anganwadi centres for



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pregnant women and children of ages 0–5 are giving elementary education. All these people were involved in this introducer. After this phase, about a month and a half later when everyone had their ID cards, we started this in the villages. In the beginning we started with the panchayats. We made one model panchayat. The first one was Tarup (village). We began with the entries first. All the people involved in the introducer, took initiative and helped with the Aadhaar. Every day there used to be 30-40 people enrolled from the village. These people were good at liaising with the villagers, lining them up, identifying them and helping with the documents. The main task of the introducer was to introduce it to them. Since this was an outside agency programme (outside the panchayats) they had to imbibe faith in the people and explain the purpose of Aadhaar cards. The introducers were the mediators. They conducted a Gram Sabha first and told the people about the usage and importance of this card. . . The introducers worked very well. They picked one village at a time, one group at a time and gave them the date and time to come for registration. They were asked to bring photo IDs if there were any and bank account books. If they didn’t have a bank account, then we tied up with the bank and opened accounts for them on the same day. However defined, the introducer mitigates a barrier. S/he does so less by enabling particular individuals to have an identity, and more by allowing the state to appropriate for itself a system of recognition: a system that, we will now argue, has so far existed only in the level of the community. This is on the face of it a fraught move, given that several communities in their very structure are either resistant to, or may even defy, modes of state enumeration (e.g. the Caste Census).9 Making the problem harder still is the further fact of technology: the digital ecosystem. When the two come together, what we have is the state moving towards a communitarian system, i.e. emulating a system of community recognition and, second, in a simultaneous move, mapping upon this community new hierarchies dependent on digital technology—by which we mean new systems of technological recognition to create new layers 146 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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of authenticity: where one person could, following community endorsement, theoretically exist on terms that are more real than another person.

HIERARCHIES OF TRUST: PEHCHAAN AND FINANCIAL GUARANTEE

Let us continue with perhaps the commonest additional purpose, or

additional value, to which an introduction is attached: namely, that of a financial guarantor. We have already encountered this category in the CSP Operator who ‘knows Subbarao’ and who can, it appears, act upon that knowledge to not only introduce him, but do a few things more: Mr. Satyanarayana said that the plan was for local BCs to extend overdraft facilities from between ` 1,000 to ` 25,000 depending upon the nature of the transactions conducted in the accounts.

Interview with Mr. B. Satyanarayana, Assistant General Manager, State Bank of India, Hyderabad.

We wanted to give them a total package from the bank whatever they are eligible for. Say some over draft amount. ` 1,000 to ` 25,000 without any security giving it to a local villager. Suppose he has half an acre or one acre of land giving him a crop loan. Suppose



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his boy is going for some higher studies giving him an educational loan. Or giving a two-wheeler loan to him. There are so many things. Such a BC would, as per the SBI Corporate Centre’s recent guidelines, in their Financial Inclusion Villages, wherever they have CSP points, default become a Business Facilitator. The further link with Aadhaar enrollment is already on the cards, with some of SBIs key BCs (e.g. 4G Identities) already being Aadhaar enrollers. In this way, he says:

Interview with Mr. B. Satyanarayana, (continued).

All the CSP villages in the next year (and) all the contiguous villages nearby with population less than 2000 will be covered. Up to ` 50,000 crop loan, they become by default business facilitators. They will conduct a meeting with the FIC managers along with the link branch manager and, whoever is eligible, their crop loan application will be sourced though this BC and sent to the link branch. During that process these people will get the commission for sourcing the business. So their income level goes up. And we are also conducting the Chalo Gaon Campaign. It means that if a BC opens 25 accounts in that village he will be given a ` 2000 incentive. All these are no frill accounts with zero balance. If he opens 50 accounts he gets ` 3000 and if he opens 100 accounts he will be given ` 4000. There is another campaign going on called the Swabhiman Laksha 300. In this scheme, before 31st December all CSP points



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where ever we have opened they have to open minimum 300 savings bank accounts. The entire SBI initiative of setting up a BC network in Andhra Pradesh has been set up in the murky backdrop of the micro finance crisis that saw the passing of the Andhra Pradesh Micro finance Institutions (Regulation of Moneylending) Act, 2010, and clearly has to deal with that legacy, as we saw with some of the SBI’s new partners being none other than former MFIs: to take only one instance, Oxigen, or Sahyog Mirco Finance Private Limited, which have been awarded 69 villages. Given this legacy, in practical terms SBI also has had to face the risks inheriting the legacy of a social structure of guarantorship, also known as the Joint Liability Groups (or JLGs) that the MFIs had put together and which have been a major cause of social breakdowns in villages in that state. At one level, the kind of additional responsibilities taken by the kirana merchant mentioned earlier as the exemplary BC, say, in extending an Introducer role into approving an overdraft—clearly shade from mere introduction and into becoming guaranteeship. Indeed, there appears some likelihood that the overdraft may have to be underwritten by the BC through his own deposit with the State Bank. It was precisely such social pressures that had got the JLGs started in the first place, and we conclude this section with an interview with one such ‘Leader’ of a JLG in Jagganguda village, Shamirpet Mandal, near Hyderabad. Her name is Swapna:

Interview with Swapna, a woman who is deeply in debt, and also functions as a ‘leader’ in a Joint Liability Group in Jagganguda, Shamirpet Mandal.



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INTERVIEWER: How much does your husband earn? Swapna: My husband gets ` 5,000 per month. INTERVIEWER: Do you have your own house? Swapna: Yes. INTERVIEWER: Where did you borrow money if you need money? Swapna: Finance. INTERVIEWER: When did you borrow from a MFI the first time? Swapna: About four years back. INTERVIEWER: Which company? Swapna: SKS. INTERVIEWER: You borrowed only from SKS or are there others? Swapna: Yes, only SKS. We stopped about 6 months back. Until four years ago we were borrowing from SKS. INTERVIEWER: Did you stop borrowing because of the crisis or before that? Swapna: We stopped before that. We could not repay. My husband gets his salary on a monthly basis and we have to pay on a weekly basis. We were finding it difficult so we stopped. INTERVIEWER: How much loan did you take? Swapna: First time we took ` 10,000 and then ` 16,000. INTERVIEWER: How much did you pay per week (as installment)? Swapna: First ` 245 per week. For the ` 16,000 loan we had to pay ` 380 per week. INTERVIEWER: How many weeks did you have to pay ` 380 installment? Swapna: 50 weeks. INTERVIEWER: Did you get the second loan after fully repaying the first loan or did you get in the middle? Swapna: After repaying the first loan. After 25 weeks, we were offered a smaller loan (chinna loan), but we did not take it. INTERVIEWER: What was the stated purpose of the loan that you took? Swapna: I told them I wanted to buy a buffalo. They asked me if I actually bought one. I told them yes I bought. I was told that they will come to my house and check if I bought one. I told them they can come and I will show



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them a buffalo. But, I did not buy any. We used the money for other purposes. My youngest daughter was born so we had to use it for medical costs. INTERVIEWER: When you joined the JLG (Joint Liability Group), who were the other members? Were they your relatives? How did you all come together to form a JLG in the first place? Swapna: I needed money as did my sister. So we met Saritha and she asked us to form a group. I gathered another four and my sister gathered another four. We are in different groups. Saritha introduced us to the MFIs. Based on her introduction we were given a loan. INTERVIEWER: Can two members of the same family be a part of one group. Swapna: No. If two members of the same family are in one group then there will be problems if both of them face difficulties or if we go out at the same time. The other three members will not agree if two of the same members of the family do not pay. We searched for the other members. INTERVIEWER: Who are the other members? Neighbours? Swapna: Yes. Those who needed money. Saritha got together members like me who needed money. INTERVIEWER: You worked as a central leader. What is a central leader? Swapna: You had to ask other members, gather money to pay and ask them to sit silently. INTERVIEWER: What is meant by sit silently? Swapna: People start shouting; some of them say they don’t have money we are supposed to make them sit silently in order to conduct the meeting. INTERVIEWER: Where are the meetings held? Swapna: Either in our house or we go and sit in the community hall. We go and gather there and wait for the Saar. INTERVIEWER: What time do they come? Swapna: 8.30 or 9 in the morning. INTERVIEWER: What do you do if somebody does not attend the meeting? Swapna: We all go together to their house and shame (izzaatt) them. INTERVIEWER: All of you go? Swapna: Yes. INTERVIEWER: What do you mean by shame them? In the Wake of Aadhaar 151


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Swapna: Means we shout at them. Once we do that they either cry or borrow from somebody and pay the money. We trouble them to pay up. INTERVIEWER: What do the company people do? Swapna: They will ask us to ask the defaulters. Why should they interfere? INTERVIEWER: As a central leader, are there any benefits for you personally? Swapna: Nothing. I will collect the dues and then sign the company document saying that people have received their money and the company has received their instalment. Sometimes the saar says that I am a surety. I will tell him that I am not the only one responsible. Sometimes when the husbands are sick, I will sign saying that the husband is sick and the person has received the amount. INTERVIEWER: If a number of people require money, do they give the loan to the person who is recommended by the group leader? What if the whole group wants a loan at the same time? Swapna: Nothing like that. They follow their rules. Sometimes we reach a consensus and ask them to give the loan to a particular person.

INSTILLING TRUST: THE STATE TRUSTS THE INDIVIDUAL/THE INDIVIDUAL TRUSTS THE STATE

We must at this point ask what trust means in a system such as this. The

focus here has been to look at the hierarchies of trust that the introducer and other similar technologically enabled systems of the state require and simultaneously reinforce. We would also argue that every proof then requires an agency that lends it a certain credibility, which goes on to say that there may exists a hierarchy of such proofs: where some are more credible than others. We propose that at base, the Indian state has always had difficulties with producing a ‘person’, biologically or physically, before it: with processes similar to how a person is brought before the law. While the legality is probably well established, other parallel processes such as those Bernard Cohn10 outlines— ethnographic, cartographic, and historiographic modalities of the state that have been classically associated with how the nation-state conducted 152 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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its business, of managing both people and places—has a set of limitations where it can authoritatively command for an individual an identity that can be considered credible. Two questions arise here. First, why does the Indian state, which has such elaborate mechanisms as the Census of India, the Survey of India, the Economic Survey, the Human Development Survey, been found so wanting in defining those who remain undocumented? How does one ‘come into being before the state’ when the state has apparently no credible mechanism to account for the state to come into being before the individual? And second: the dependence on the community. It appears that the state now relies on the community as the model that can account for a person. But is this substitute mode feasible? While some communities, defined in specific ways, may need to be defined as such, can this mode be generalised to apply to the whole of the country? Could this now mean that recognition within the community, of the relation within a neighborhood, becomes the normative mode, one defining personhood through belonging to a location? Clearly, even at base, such a communitarian definition is rife with its own problems, and simply fails to answer this basic requirement: the assertion of the statement that ‘this person is a citizen’. The statement ‘this person is a citizen’ is of course both complex and powerful: and creates a multitude of issues for the state as it sets about endorsing/guaranteeing/validating the statement. Can it even do so if it is unable to produce this statement as a statement of truth?, instead producing the community as enabling this truth? Can the system function where the community enables the state to say that such and such person is now a citizen, simply because another person of repute has been able to say this? It becomes significant here to assert that community-driven categories, whether defined in ethnic terms of communities such as Delhi’s homeless, Jharkand’s undocumented, or the nomadic/adivasi/native tribes in Kerala, have found their own means to access the state. The problem is less that, and more one of whether development paradigms, and the inequalities that development creates, and digitisation, can arrive at an egalitarian definition In the Wake of Aadhaar 153


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of the citizen as individual, technologically so endorsed. Or can it be that we are we indeed at a crux, where the state is developing new ways to access individuals who have had no agency, no means to approach the state before such systems were in place? This is the crisis that confronts the social category of the introducer: who, if he has to fulfill his purpose, cannot be a new cog in a system that enables a set of new accesses, but also a critical catalyst for change that affects not just the citizen and also how the state functions and operates and affects how one comes into being before the state. There are two specific questions posed here and two experiences of the systems of the state that account for the introducer. They are as follows: What does the emerging category of the introducer enable for the disenfranchised? Does this new system of recognition mean something that has been studied in Internet research that looks at technology creating structures of recognition and authenticity that then produce hierarchies of trust, or are we looking at new ways in which the state creates and produces inclusion? Inclusion that then enables technological, financial, and it appears even social inclusion (that then comes to the aid of the disenfranchised)? The introducer occupies a very particular position, of a mediator between the citizen and the state and through whom, the fact—the truth of what the citizen says he is—can be verified. The undocumented and the disenfranchised have always posed problems to the state, and in India the state has usually bypassed rather than confronted the problem: making a person accountable before the law was always rendered distinct from making a person a beneficiary of the state’s systems: the latter did not necessarily require full citizenship. A person could receive ration from the PDS but not an EPIC or a voter’s identity card. Certifiers It is often the case that new database technologies work with relational structures rather than structures isolating or individuating ones. Increasingly, the technologies put to use by state structures work with a process that needs documented proof that is more than of oneself: it needs one to be in a relation to both things and to other people. It is this relation that the state now uses 154 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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to verify that a person is so-and-so from here or there. Certificate authorities that provide certification services for websites, to take just one instance, create an environment of authenticity using multiple layers and hierarchies of trust such that, say, E-certifier has been authenticated by D-certifier who has been verified by C-certifier in a tree that leads back to the root certification authority: where the sub-certifier will have more credibility, being backed by a hierarchy of certifiers and of trust. We propose that the new technological measures of the modern Indian State accomplish just this, that is create a web of relational certification agencies that verify an individual that also places him/her in a larger hierarchy of credibility and of trust, such that a person occupying the higher strata’s of this ‘ranking economy’ may well be able to access more benefits, more accesses and indirectly more agency and power in how the system itself functions.

NOTES 1

https://portal.uidai.gov.in/uidwebportal/help/UIDAI.htm?Introducer.html.

2

As computed by the My Neta project: see http://myneta.info/dl2008/candidate.php?candidate_ id=119 (accessed February 28, 2013).

3

‘Introducer Enrollment and Monitoring Process’, UIDAI, 2010 (http://uidai.gov.in/images/ FrontPageUpdates/ROB/D2%20Introducer%20Enrollment%20Monitoring%20Process%20-%20 Ver%201.2.pdf).

4

http://censusindia.gov.in/2011-Common/IntroductionToNpr.html (accessed February 28, 2013)

5

(http://egovreach.in/social/node/171) (accessed February 28, 2013).

6

http://www.rbi.org.in/scripts/FAQView.aspx?Id=82 (accessed February 28, 2013).

7

Manoranjan Das - Appellant Versus State of Jharkhand—Respondent, K.G. Balakrishnan and B.N. Srikrishna, JJ. Criminal Appeal No. 650 of 1998. D/d. 21.4.2004.

8

(http://www.business-standard.com/article/finance/introducer-not-responsible-for-frauds-byaccountholder-sc-verdict-104050701025_1.html). Accessed February 28, 2013.

9

Satish Deshpande and Mary E. John, ‘The Politics of Not Counting Caste’, Economic & Political Weekly, June 19, 2010 vol xlv no. 25, pp. 39-42.

10 Cohn, B. S. (1996). Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India, Princeton University Press, pp. 15.



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CHAPTER 6

Citizens’ Participation and Technology Interventions in Government Programmes Bhuvaneshwari Raman Centre for the Study of Urban Transformation, Jindal School of Government and Public Policy and Zainab Bawa Co-founder HasGeek and doctoral student, CSCS

The authors use the celebrated Nemmadi programme of Karnataka to explore larger questions about citizen and community participation in massive digital projects. Contrary to perception, digitisation does not always yield the democratic results expected: instead of decentralization of decision-making, we may have greater centralisation with the demotion of ‘street bureaucrats’, or field-level staff who make the direct contact with people. The authors draw on extensive field work in two taluks, Hosakote and Anekal, and speak to a range of stakeholders as well as a rarely-discussed group: the technologists themselves.

It is widely believed by both policy makers and academics that ICTs,

because of their reach, data visibility and accessibility, have an inherent potential to improve the manner in which the State conducts its business. The internet has been compared to an ‘agora’ or a public space where interactions between elected representatives and citizens, as well as between citizens can be organised. And so data available on websites set up by governments is not only seen to provide information to citizens about government processes, laws, and procedures, but also—it is believed—creates opportunities to monitor the state and to hold it accountable. Such official discourses on the rationale for introducing e-governance and ICTled development can only be described as technological determinism. Policy makers predominantly assume that technology has an ‘inherent logic outside 156 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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the influence of human agency’2 and that its outcomes can be predetermined. On the other hand, it has been also noted that technology does not develop according to an inner technical logic but is instead a social product, patterned by the conditions of its creation and use. Every stage in the generation and implementation of new technologies involves a set of choices between different technical options. Alongside narrowly ‘technical’ considerations, a range of ‘social’ factors affect which options are selected, thus influencing the content of technologies and their social implications (William and Edge, 1996:2).

HETEROGENEOUS COMMUNITIES, STREET AND SYSTEM BUREAUCRACY

Discussions on e-governance both in academic literature and

policy discourse tend especially to overlook the heterogeneous characteristics of communities. It is often suggested that opening up data will automatically neutralise existing power differences between various social and economic groups within a society. Several studies on state-society relationships, particularly in the Indian context,3 on the other hand show a wide divergence in citizens’ alliances with different functionaries in the bureaucratic hierarchy of the State as well as the geographical and political scales of the State.4 Consequently, their ability to establish claims on different parts and scales of the State too differs. When technology gets embedded in a milieu marked by differences in terms of interests among community members and their alliances with agents inside and outside the state, the terms—efficiency, accountability, and transparency—can take on different meanings and can also be highly contested.5 Also significant to this is the manner in which technology gets embedded in the State: something that has a direct effect on the outcomes of ICT interventions, particularly in the Indian context. Specifically, the oftmentioned bureaucratic rationality for introducing ICTs in government processes to discipline one part of the state, particularly, street bureaucracy,6 In the Wake of Aadhaar 157


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through its role replacement with another: ‘system bureaucracy’.7 Undergirding such rationality are assumptions of both the State and Society as distinct domains, and further assumptions that the State acts neutrally in its role as a mediator of conflicting interests in society. Government functionaries, especially those working on the ground, are often faced with competing claims on resources, particularly land,8 and demands from different citizen groups for related services which they have to negotiate in the course of fulfilling the state’s obligations towards citizens and in delivering services. In this milieu, cooperation, rule adherence, decision-making and maintenance of order take place through what Cleaver suggests are ‘the practical adaptations of customs, norms and the stimulus of everyday interactions’.9

EFFECTS OF PARTICIPATION AND APPROPRIATION OF TECHNOLOGY Reconfiguring Relationships with State Bureaucrats for Efficiency and Accountability An ICT interface between citizens and the State is commonly seen as a panacea for problems confronting the State in terms of its inefficiency, accountability gaps and lack of transparency. The rationality of many e-governance programmes is thus woven around re-configuring citizens’ relationship with street bureaucrats and elected representatives.10 ICT tools are often therefore accompanied by changes in institutional practices and decision-making powers.11 When tech nology is introduced to realign existing processes, implicated in it is also a struggle to refocus power relations within and between different departments of the State.12 Avenues of Participation: Technology and other forms of Engagement A technology interface may be only one of various ways in which communities engage with the State. Citizens use different avenues in their engagement



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with the State, including organisations/institutions, social networks and relations of everyday life.13 Institutionalised processes—including rules and codes of conduct—are however conventionally viewed as the only legitimate framework for guiding State-society interactions. Such an excessive focus on institutions and rules, procedures and formal protocols obscures the significant influence of everyday interactions and social relations on statecitizen interactions. Social networks are a dominant avenue of participation for different groups in society including both relatively less powerful economic and social groups14 as well as elites.15 The variety of avenues that citizens use to engage with the State to claims resources, or to channel their demands, are influenced by their perceptions and assessment of their situation, social conventions, societal relations, complex systems of loyalty, and their connections to the State.16 Appropriation of Technology Participation via institutionalised avenues, including ICT tools, does not automatically either strengthen the voice of citizens over decisions of the State, or transform the underlying political and ‘structural’ conditions that have given rise to vulnerability, exclusion, and subordination for certain social groups in the first place.17 In some instances, it may in fact reinforce existing inequalities. Communities participating in an online consultation may not, for example, have any influence over the decisions made, as such consultation might have no more than token value.18 Moreover, decisionmaking within the State is controlled by a select group of senior bureaucrats and elected representatives.19 If technology is then used to further centralise the decision-making process, how does it impact on different groups whose connections to the State vary in contexts like India? How do affected groups respond to the new situation? Open Data, Non-neutrality of information and impacts on participation Introduction of ICT tools in public administration are often justified on grounds that bringing transparency to the vast amounts of data held by the In the Wake of Aadhaar 159


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government will enable citizens to hold the State accountable.20 Different stakeholders including NGOs, think-tanks, academics, and corporations, among others, would be able to access information in government websites and use/reuse it for different purposes, including mobilisation of citizens, and reinterpretation of data.21 Advocates of open data often assume that information made available through e-government websites or in other forms of digital data are ‘rational’ and ‘open/complete’. However, contrary to expectations, the mere presence of information on e-government websites or portals may not guarantee free flow of information.22 Websites are used by some governments to promote State agendas which reinforce existing power relationships. Governments will still be able to act as gatekeepers of information because it is government officials who will ‘set the categories and structure in which the data is recorded and released’.23 Thus, what is purported as ‘open data’ may actually conceal underlying power relations and structures in a society. Some advocates of open government data argue that it is possible to remove information hierarchies and thereby create equality in society.24 However, opening up different kinds of data may have different repercussions on society. Government departments rarely maintain complete information/ data on sensitive issues, as such information may be used by competing agents/departments within the overall process of consolidating and maintaining power. Specifically, this is the case with land-related information where availability of perfect information on land claims is a myth rather than a reality.25 When land information held in certain records or forms, in this case, digital forms, is prioritised over other forms, it may result in burying contestations rather than producing ‘legible’ claims, as decision makers advocating ICTs in government argue.26 Moreover, merely accessing information is an entirely different issue from the ability to benefit from the information secured.27 In non-egalitarian contexts where social inequalities and information hierarchies already exist, open government data can accentuate inequalities and render the positions of groups with tenuous claims even more vulnerable.28 In such contexts, an opacity of data may actually be



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sought by competing groups to enhance their bargaining power. Open data may weaken their ‘quiet insurgencies’ over physical and political space.29 Selection of technology: Costs, Scale, and participation Cost, State capability and laws influence several aspects of ICT development programmes including their design, quality and institutional arrangements.30 The cost of technology is a major factor, one that affects State decisions on the choice of technology, and the selection of both vendors as well as implementers. Besides initial investments in technology and related infrastructure, there are the recurring costs of maintaining the infrastructure: such as collating, organising, updating, and uploading the data; data storage in newer retrieval formats; and in archiving public data. The irretrievability of data over long periods of time owing to both obsolescence as well as advancements in technology is also an issue to be dealt with in many ICTD programmes (CASC, 7th Report). This is critical, as costs may constrain the provision of temporally relevant data.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND KEY FINDINGS

We examined the relationship between communities, technology

and participation and each of these concepts individually in the backdrop of the case of an e-governance programme called the Nemmadi Kendras (NKs) programme implemented in the State of Karnataka in South India to improve citizens’ access to the State.31 The Government of Karnataka has argued that the introduction of ICT interface between the state and citizens would enhance the State’s efficiency, transparency and accountability. NKs have been projected by policy makers as a progressive intervention which provides an alternative avenue for citizens to engage with revenue administration. It is a top-down programme conceptualised by senior bureaucrats and actively supported by the technologists. A reading of many project reports indicate the administrative concern with dispersal of information and its control by lower level bureaucrats. An ICT interface was introduced to



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reconfigure the relationship between citizens and front line workers. It was accompanied by changes in the decision-making process within the institution. This research explored the following questions in order to permit significant inferences to be made about the role of technology in shaping community participation in the State. The questions are: 1.

What are the effects of Nemmadi?

2.

How do users engage with the State post-Nemmadi? How did the programme influence citizens’ relationships with the agents of the State?

3.

How were decisions on technical aspects such as software, database design, choice of vendors and database maintenance made?

THE CASE OF NEMMADI

In 2006, the Government of Karnataka introduced the Nemmadi Kendra

(NK) programme to improve their government-citizen interface, and so to enhance the ‘transparency, accountability and responsiveness of the government-to-citizen needs’.32 The programme was housed in the Revenue Department. NKs were to deliver two types of services: the issuance of digitised land records, or the Record of Tenancy and Crops (RTCs), and the Rural Digital Services (RDS) which is also linked to authorising one’s caste, income, birth status, permitting the claim of welfare benefits such as old age, widow and handicapped persons pensions. Records relating to land and domicile information issued by the Revenue Department are, it needs to be mentioned, vital for rural citizens to establish their claims on land and to avail of various services. Nemmadi was introduced to extend the rationale of an earlier e-governance programme called Bhoomi, widely hailed as a success story in putting together best practices in transparent management and delivery of land records.33 Bhoomi was originally introduced in 1989 as a pilot project under 162 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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a national programme called the Computerisation of Land Records,34 and delivered services relating to digitised land records viz., RTC and recording mutation. It was mainly implemented to maintain a centralised database of land records in order to regulate transactions relating to different types of lands that are linked to different types of institutions. In addition, Bhoomi was also a means to align different government departments in charge of revenue-related transactions and to bring them in line with a transformed State agenda. The scope of ICT interventions was extended via the Nemmadi programme to a further set of welfare-related services categorised under RDS. Besides providing information and aiding in service delivery, the Nemmadi technological interface was expected to catalyse the socio-economic development of rural citizens.35 The Kendras were established under a public-private partnership between the state government of Karnataka and a private consortium led by a private company called the COMAT. Figure 1 illustrates the institutional architecture of the NK programme:



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As shown in the figure, there are three broad groups of stakeholders, namely users, COMAT and the State. NK operations are executed through front-end kiosks and a back-end office. The Nemmadi kiosks were set up at the hoblis and the taluks. At the hobli level, they were established in the headquarters or in locations deemed appropriate by the private company and/or the panchayat (body of elected representatives for groups of villages). The district administration controls the kiosk in its premises. The back-end kiosks were situated in the offices of district administration in each taluk. Back-office operations are managed by both COMAT and the district administration. Citizens can apply for their RTCs and RDS records at the kiosks. Their applications are meant to be transmitted from the front-end to the backend office where they are processed and finalised. The final records are sent back to the front end kiosks for delivery to applicants. ICT interventions in India are introducted with technical and financial support from the national government.36 The National Informatics Centre, an autonomous body under the Government of India, provided the software for RTC and COMAT developed the software for RTS services.37 COMAT has also developed a Global Services Infrastructure (GSI) that provides a common platform to deliver the diverse services. Once online, it is synced with the central database at the state data center. Nemmadi Kendras have been set up in all hoblis and taluks in Karnataka. For the purposes of this study, we selected two taluks situated on the periphery of Bangalore, namely Annekal and Hosakote. There are four hoblis in Annekal and five in Hosakote, and there is a Nemmadi Kendra in each hobli. Earlier, we surveyed Tumkur district which is one of the few districts close to Bangalore. However, the extent of transactions via Nemmadi Kendras were fewer in Tumkur owing to the fairly stagnant land markets there. We were advised to choose areas where Nemmadi transactions were high in order to fathom the role of the technology in service delivery and state-citizen interface.38 The large number of transactions in Nemmadi Kendras in Annekal and Hosakote can be attributed in part to the fact that these areas, which are located on the peripheries of Bangalore city, are gradually being assimilated 164 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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in the Greater Bangalore region. Annekal district is fairly prosperous because of its location which has caused an upsurge in property values and property markets in the last decade. However, there are also pockets of extreme poverty in this district because migrant workers from different parts of India come here to work in manufacturing industries and belts in this district. They range from daily wage labourers to mid-level executives. There is also a substantial population of bonded labourers and daily wage cultivators in the agricultural belts of the district. Tribal groups also reside in some parts of Annekal district. The current generation travels to Bangalore city for work in the Information Technology (IT) and garment industries. Some members of the present generation engage deeply with technologies such as maps, websites and information databases to stake claims on the state and to raise awareness among the tribe regarding their entitlements from the state. Hosakote taluk is situated immediately outside the information technology corridor of Bangalore, namely Whitefield and ITPL (Information Technology Park Limited). Earlier, this area prospered because of voluminous property speculations and development here. However, in recent times, there has been a slump in property markets because of the stagnancy in land values. This stagnation has occurred because of factors such as shift in the city’s airport to North Bangalore, conflicts between land holders and claimants over ownership and use of properties, lesser building activity and large distance to the city centre and other urban hubs. Currently, most of the landholders in this region are small farmers. We visited 34 villages in total during the course of our research i.e., between May and August, 2010, for data collection. In the villages in both these districts, there are major conflicts between the landless and landholding groups. The composition, influence and resource bases of these landless and landholding groups have been shaped by historical trajectories of domination and marginalisation as well as the nature and content of their current alliances with political parties, political groupings based on particular notions of identities, local leaders and elected representatives. This dynamic shapes the interactions and hierarchies within the village ‘community’, thereby rendering each community heterogeneous and complex. These complexities, in turn, shape members’ access to services, information and resources, and In the Wake of Aadhaar 165


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the manner in which different groups within the same community interact with, or minimise the role of, ICTs in their everyday lives. In some villages, land has been acquired for allotment to SSIs (Small Scale Industries), for development of gated premises and infrastructure programmes from as early as the mid-1990s. The land use, ownership and acquisition-related conflicts have played an important role in influencing users’ perceptions of the importance of RTCs and RDS in their daily lives and mobilisations, and therefore their perception, use and appropriation of Nemmadi kiosks. Although the locus of Nemmadi programmes is the revenue administration, information relating to land claims and census information authorised by RDS services of Nemmadi are constructed by different institutions at the village level. Their practices relating to creation, maintenance and retrieval of information vary. For example, census information relating to birth, death and age are recorded in the registers of village level anganwadis. Anganwadi registers provide the basis for birth and death certificates issued via the Nemmadi kendras. Besides, cooperative banks are critical for land owners as loans and subsidies are routed through them. However, they maintain their own records of citizens’ information in a village. Hence, it was important to understand the various ways in which people, and the institutions they interact with, constructed records of information, and both maintained as well as used such information. For this purpose, we visited the offices of revenue administration at the village, Hoblis and district headquarters to interview different agents from the revenue bureaucracy and the village panchayat. Besides, we conducted interviews and detailed discussions with agents in different institutions who record raw information or who maintain databases of individuals and households in a village. We focussed on three institutions with which rural citizens engage intensively: the village panchayat, anganwadi centres and cooperative banks.



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POLITICAL ECONOMY CONTEXT OF NEMMADI

In explaining the political economy context of the Nemmadi

programme, we primarily focus on two aspects: first, land dynamics in the context in which both Nemmadi and its predecessor project, Bhoomi, were introduced. Both programmes were implemented in contexts that were fraught with social and economic inequalities. The sectors of administration in which these programmes have been introduced namely, land management and provision of welfare services, are intensely contested. Second, both rural and land administration have been complex political domains, given that governance bodies, elected representatives and bureaucrats, compete with each other to develop their own constituencies among people to enforce loyalty. In the context of land and rural administration, three institutions are significant: namely the Revenue Department, Village Panchayats and the Department of Surveys and Land Records. Real Estate led Development and Nemmadi ICTs were introduced in revenue administration at a time when there was a growing emphasis on land as source of economic development in India. In the 1980s, the Government of India shifted its focus from land reforms to computerisation of land records when the Ministry of Rural Development of GoI announced the Computerisation of Land Records (CoLR) Scheme to ‘streamline the maintenance and updating of land records’.39 This programme, importantly, was implemented in the Revenue Department, a powerful agency with a long history going back to colonial times.40 Digitised RTCs were thereafter elevated to the status of being the ‘only’ document to provide ownership, and therefore possession, of the land. There was a change in the State’s approach to recognising the claims of those who physically occupy or use plots or ‘occupancy’ tenants as against ‘tenants at will’. 41 In addition, there was also a shift in what came to be recognised as ‘legal’ titles. After digitisation, digitised titles alone could be accepted in courts as a proof for one’s claims to land: despite the fact that on-theground occupiers of a particular parcel of land used a variety of documents to establish their claims. In the Wake of Aadhaar 167


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Support for ‘clear titles’ that assigned a single owner to a parcel of land gained strength from several quarters, on the ground of attracting inward investment. The World Bank advocated it for the functioning of land markets in emerging economies. Technologists within the State too lobbied for clarifying titles. However, the complexity of establishing claims to a parcel of land in the Indian context typically stems from multiple factors: imperfect information regarding land claims, diversity of land types and tenure forms, and the institutional and legal regimes that have historically emerged as a part of that practice. It was argued that digitisation of land would iron out these complexities and that it was essential for establishing ‘property rights’ to facilitate the efficient working of the market. Moreover, the financial logic of several IT corridors and mega-infrastructure projects was directly linked to realising real estate gains. Even in villages, subdivision and assimilation of land parcels was actively taking place in the 1990s as both owners and real estate brokers (often Panchayat members and local leaders) were capitalising on the boom around land. Advocates of computerisation argued that maintaining land information was critical for the state government and the revenue administration to ensure that people were registering their transactions and that there were no leakages in incomes that ought to have accrued through stamp duties and registration fees. It was also a time when State departments were relying on land-based finance to finance their operations.42 It is in this complex period of heightened political and economic activity around land that senior civil servants, supported by IT entrepreneurs, called for introducing ICT in land administration.43 Institutional Dynamics Both RTC and RDS documents issued through Nemmadi Kendras affect the lives of rural citizens in fundamental ways. While RTCs are an important means to stake claims on land,44 RDS documents are a means to strengthen citizenship claims. When rural citizens have to interact with diverse agencies such as horticulture and sericulture departments, social welfare, health and the public works department, among others, they need both RDS and RTC 168 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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documents to make applications for services/benefits. The state government has made it compulsory to produce updated documents such as caste, age, and income certificates45 for admission of children in schools and colleges, to claim benefits under government schemes, and even to contest Panchayat elections. Further, registering births and deaths and acquiring necessary certificates is necessary to prove the ownership lineage of the land parcel in case of property disputes. These documents must also be produced during surveys that the government is now conducting to update information about land.46 Moreover, some of the RDS documents have acquired mandatory status under the laws of revenue administration and state government, even though it is widely known that the information contained in most of these documents is false even when supposedly verified by the revenue department.47 Incomes of applicants recorded in an income certificates are commonly underestimated in order to avail of government benefits and subsidies. Further, the process of verifying incomes is not foolproof.48 Revenue administration is organised around a hierarchy of officials headed by the Principal Secretary, a senior civil servant, who often hails from the Indian Administrative Services (IAS) cadre. Under him are the Deputy Commissioners who are also civil servants from either the IAS cadre or the Karnataka Administrative Services (KAS). Under them are the Assistant Commissioners, Tahsildars and Deputy Tahsildars, followed by frontline workers such as Village Accountants (VAs) and Revenue Inspectors (RIs) at the lowest end of the hierarchy. Revenue Department offices are located in different places i.e., in the individual villages, headquarters of village clusters (Hoblis), sub-districts (taluks) and districts (zillas). The geographical scales at which these offices are located also help shape the social and political distance between citizens and the State, which accordingly makes it either easier or more difficult for villagers to approach these offices for their specific needs. VAs were earlier typically operating from the village Panchayat offices. RIs have offices at the hobli (cluster of villages) level. The offices of Tahsildars (sub-district officers) are situated in the central town of the taluk or sub-district. Assistant Commissioners (ACs) operate from the sub-divisional (group of taluks) level, Deputy Commissioners (DCs) from the district (group of sub-divisions) level, In the Wake of Aadhaar 169


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Divisional Commissioners from the divisional (group of districts) level, and the Principal Secretary has offices in the state capital i.e. Bangalore. Ordinarily, rural citizens interact with frontline workers of the revenue department—VAs, VA assistants and RIs—in addition to local leaders, panchayat members and various kinds of middlemen, for securing RTC and RDS documents and to effect mutations and changes in RTCs. These frontline workers—or what we have called ‘street bureaucrats’—are the main interface between officials in the revenue administration hierarchy, villagers and other political agents in the rural society. Prior to the introduction of Nemmadi and Bhoomi, both VAs and revenue officials had extensive power and control over the process of issuing and maintenance of RTCs as well as census data. VAs had wide discretionary powers not only in issuing land records, but also in deciding how to prepare records under different circumstances and for diverse purposes.49 When floods or other disasters occurred, and when farmers needed verification regarding the extent and nature of their losses in order to claim government welfare, it was the VA who assisted farmers in representing their claims before the concerned state authorities. They were also responsible for announcing new government schemes. VAs also arbitrated in situations of conflicts over claims on land, either solely or with the support of elected representatives, local leaders, village elders or political groups. Before Bhoomi, VAs, and their assistants were responsible for maintaining manual records relating to RTC and mutation of land and crop history. The manual mutation was done by writing and rewriting over the same record, not only of legal transactions but also the ‘extra-legal’ claims negotiated among family members, between identity groups, and other members of the rural community. In effect then, manual maintenance of land records and mutation registers endowed frontline officials with information and systemic power to act as arbitrators to resolve conflicts involving multiple claims, as well as disputes over different land parcels in the village.



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The concentration of information and control over land records in the hands of VAs and their assistants has been a concern in the revenue department, evident in reports authored by bureaucrats, policy-makers and technologists closely connected with e-governance initiatives.50 Essentially, higher-level bureaucrats mark the manual maintenance of land records and the VA’s role and relationships at the village level is often viewed as inefficient, corrupt and lacking in accountability and transparency. It is also suggested that access to the VA is facilitated by influential persons and bodies in the village, thereby complicating government-citizen interface. Besides, as records are maintained in different registers, it is difficult to mine the data from disparate sources. This also undermines the potential for attracting investments and taking advantage of opportunities to raise finance through sale of records to private or other state agencies. Senior bureaucrats attribute the problems of revenue departments to the absence of a centralised records management system and the ‘monopolistic’ control of RIs and VAs51 over other revenue administration processes.52 To many, the initial purpose of digitisation under Bhoomi was to curb the powers and influence of VAs over the process of creating and maintaining land records and facilitating mutations. Nemmadi extended computerisation to include delivery of RDS documents further as a way to bring VAs and their seniors—RIs—in line with due process of service delivery. The ICT interface was adopted to reduce opportunities for direct interactions between citizens and frontline workers,53 and thereby to strengthen the state’s mechanisms of accountability and transparency. Senior administrators would now be able to monitor the work of field bureaucrats and hold them accountable for their actions.54 This would ensure that frontline workers followed mandated organisational procedures for issuing RTC and RDS documents without skipping any of the steps in the procedures. It was assumed that automation would restrict the use of discretionary powers by frontline officials.55 Third, by creating centralised databases, information scattered in different records at the village level could easily be retrieved by senior administrators which, in turn, would aid in planning and therefore attracting investment.56



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Upon its introduction, Nemmadi was made into a single window system. All requests and applications now had to be submitted to NK front-end kiosks, and the powers to decide on disputed titles, recording changes to one’s RTC (or mutation) was moved up to Revenue Officers and Thasildars in the district administration to the Deputy Commissioner of Revenue department headquartered in the city.57

EFFECTS OF NEMMADI – 1

A key rationale for Nemmadi was that, ‘in the context of IT, there

is reduced need for ex-post accountability as ex-ante control is tightened, because bureaucrats can no longer skip organisational procedures’.58 The technology interface was expected to pave the way for the creation of a new generation of professional bureaucrats and service providers, whose actions would now be guided by Weberian ideals of ‘neutrality’ and rationality in their interaction with citizens.59 In contrast, our findings show that securing services via Nemmadi has in fact become, for a dominant group of small and medium farmers with relatively less economic or social power in society, more costly and time-consuming than before. A consequence of this has been additional layer of bureaucracy and intermediaries to secure services. This also raises questions about the purported claims of enhanced accountability and benefits of data transparency. It is difficult to categorise Nemmadi’s effects in a linear frame of ills and benefits because citizens’ experiences with NKs (and therefore their perceptions of ICTs) vary: if we speak to users of its services, or to the service providers, or to decision makers located either in COMAT or in the Revenue Administration. Their relationship to Nemmadi can neither be confined to any one set of functions nor to any particular geography. In addition, user perception and experience of the programme differs depending upon social positioning, including the resources they can garner for applying documents and the social, political and economic networks they can mobilise for expediting the delivery of documents/services. For instance, daily wage labourers are positioned much lower down the socio-economic hierarchy. 172 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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Not only do they have less time and money to visit government offices for obtaining official documents, they also have less access to resources and networks which can provide them with information on how to procure government records and claim state welfare. It may be presumed that the introduction of Nemmadi would have made it easier for daily wage labourers to get income and caste certificates as well as avail pension schemes. However, interviews with government education officers, panchayat members and local leaders revealed that landless/daily wage labourers have not necessarily benefitted, and they were not aware that such a programme existed. On the other hand, real estate developers, local politicians and relatively well off groups seem to have benefitted from the programme, particularly from the opening up of land related data. Overall, although 40 services are provided through Nemmadi,60 most users visited NKs to obtain caste and income certificates, RTCs and to submit applications for pension schemes. User perceptions also differed depending on which services they were seeking and which state institution they were interacting with. A dominant view is that while Nemmadi itself has made it easier for users to procure RTCs, which are delivered without errors within a day’s time, rectifying mistakes in names and/or extent of land parcel in the digital RTCs is highly cumbersome. It has become more expensive now to correct mistakes and record mutations in digital RTCs, because authorising corrections and mutations in digital RTCs has been handed over to Assistant Commissioners (ACs) and Deputy Commissioners (DCs) whose offices are located in Bangalore. This change has forced brokers to be hired, and higher amounts of bribe to be paid for making changes in the digital RTCs. Bribes are now centralised at the level of the office of ACs and DCs and are charged on the basis of acreage. Most users explained that after the implementation of Bhoomi, it took a minimum of six months and more than ` 10,000 to correct records. If the error was serious—such as for example, the rectifying area recorded in digitised title—it was incumbent on the applicant to submit sixteen types of records along with their application. Each of these records were held in different offices at the district and the city level and involved In the Wake of Aadhaar 173


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negotiations with several administrations before they could be procured. The cost of the bribe also went up with the type of errors and the location of the plot in question. Some respondents stated that the high cost of bribes in the event of referrals to the ACs office created new opportunities for the Special Deputy Commissioner and the Thasildar at district level to bargain with farmers for higher payouts. Our respondents’ experience shows that even after more than a year of applying for correcting errors, some applicants were unable to resolve the issue. Many farmers fearing the time and cost involved in the process have not managed to either correct errors or to record mutations. This poses a significant risk particularly among small and medium farmers, as real estate developers with easy access to RTC records were targeting such plots in high end real estate localities.61 Although the digitisation of mutations was originally a significant feature of Bhoomi programmes,62 it was discontinued after a brief period.63 According to a technologist involved in the implementation of Nemmadi, it was discontinued because the revenue department did not have the confidence in the software infrastructure for rolling out the mutation process at the hobli level. The process of obtaining RDS documents, through Nemmadi has continued to be ridden with bureaucracy. Interviews with users, panchayat members and brokers revealed that the process involved in applying for RDS documents and services is more bureaucratic, and also more expensive, now than prior to Nemmadi. The emphasis on providing proofs of domicile and identity with each application further marginalises users such as landless and migrant labourers, and such persons and groups have to seek the assistance of middlemen, political activists and support groups in villages to get the necessary proofs in order to procure RDS documents and to claim government benefits. We also found that groups such as bonded labourers were so poor that the very process of applying for pension schemes and government benefits via Nemmadi was sufficiently expensive so as to discourage them from applying for welfare schemes. On the other hand, economically affluent users and panchayat members who were also involved in the real estate economy mentioned that they found the Nemmadi system to be more convenient. They explained that after a first-time application, their records had been entered 174 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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into the RDS database which minimised the need for identity verification on subsequent applications for the same documents. The demand for some services tends to be greater than that for others during certain periods of the year, which in turn also shapes user-perceptions of efficiency and transparency enforced through technology. During the months of April and July, when school and college admissions take place, the demand for caste and income certificates is high because these documents are necessary for admission. In this period, users may seek the assistance of brokers to expedite the verification procedure and receipt of the documents. Similarly, the demand for caste certificates increases exponentially among candidates contesting elections in sub-districts. During this period, brokers regularly frequent Nemmadi back-offices in the sub-districts and mobilise operators to quicken the delivery of caste certificates. Transparency: Opening Data for whose benefit? Nemmadi sought to improve the transparency of the state in two ways viz., placing information on land records in the public domain, and processing applications relating to RTC and RDS. On the other hand, data made accessible finds itself being is used by a range of publics, including land owners, those seeking to claim benefits, developers, investors from outside the community boundaries interested in land related information, etc. For example, RTC services are as much sought by land brokers and real estate dealers as by small and marginal farmers. These real estate brokers and dealers viewed the opening up of land records data by making it available on the Internet, and viewed the digital delivery of RTCs as a positive move. Their sentiments are reflected in the following statements: ‘The advantage is that you can see the records on the Internet if you know the survey numbers. You can also see details such as the name of the owner of the land parcel, whether the plot is north-facing, south-facing, eastfacing, etc. It is a very open system. So from anywhere in India, if you know the survey numbers, you can see this information. There is no objection as to



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who can see this information’. (Interview with Panchayat members, 15th July 2010). ‘. . . Nemmadi is good. We can sit here and see the details of the land anywhere in Bangalore’ (Interview with broker, 7th July 2010). In contrast, below is the view expressed by a community member belonging to a socially disadvantaged caste which problematises the transparency ushered by opening up land data: ‘K gate has become a developers paradise. . . this whole thing of anybody going and getting an RTC is really problematic. . . even if a owner does not want to sell, (developers) can mobilise force to pressurise to part with their land . . . So if you have information on one hand and ability to mobilise muscle power and money, the land is yours ’. (Interview with Dalit Sangarsh Samithi president, 29th June 2010). The comment by the activist from the DSS draws attention to the fact, that despite the apparent myth of uniform access to information, there are differences in terms of people’s ability to capture this information. Specifically, with regard to land, it is not only about having information, it is also the power to displace disposses current occupiers. Thus, the power between users affects their ability to capture this information to their advantage, but even more importantly, such visibility can pose new risks to the claims of relatively weaker groups. Not all users have the inclination or resources to make use of the information made transparent through Nemmadi. For example, in securing digitised maps, an applicant has to be supported with 15 documents proofs, which are maintained by different institutions at different places. As a result of the high cost involved with travel, time and cash in securing these document, this facility is used predominantly by large farmers. Nemmadi facilitated the flow of information that was once dispersed to real estate developers and state agencies particularly to assist in land acquisition. Official reports on both Nemmadi and Bhoomi cite the volume of RTC transactions as an indicator of the success of the programme. In contrast, 176 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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the above accounts suggest that both the volume of RTC transactions or their timely delivery does not necessarily reflect Nemmadi’s success in terms of improving citizens’ relationship with the state. Rather, the type of users seeking RTCs raises questions about who benefits from the reconfiguration of the citizen’s relationship with the State.

EFFECTS OF NEMMADI – 2

A significant development post Nemmadi is the emergence of

various intermediaries or middle men between users, Kendras and the State. Their role is perpetuated by the complexity of negotiating the state due to centralisation of decision making and the shifting relationship between frontline workers and users as discussed below. Cost of Participation Through Nemmadi, an attempt was made to decentralise the delivery of RTCs and RDS by setting up kiosks in the headquarters of every Hobli in the taluk. However, such decentralisation did not always guarantee efficient delivery of service because the location of the kiosks is not always convenient for residents of some villages. We observed that the increased physical and social distance of Nemmadi front-end kiosks influenced the decisions of some villagers to employ the services of brokers to submit their applications and subsequently to follow-up on its progress. Further, women applicants rarely visited these kiosks because of the time involved, difficulty of access and lack of knowledge regarding application and follow-up procedures. Erosion of Social Accountability A critical issue was the emerging relationship between street bureaucrats and rural citizens. Computerisation in the end occupies a minor role in the overall process of creating, verifying and delivering RTS and RDS services: its role is simply to provide the status of the application and facilitate digital delivery of documents. The crucial functions of verification and authorisation In the Wake of Aadhaar 177


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of applications must still be done by VAs. Following implementation of Nemmadi, VAs have transferred the accountability in delivery of records and documents to the computerised system because institutionally as well as legally they are no longer directly in charge. The Role of Brokers The complexity of RDS application process and the process of recording changes to land ownership or correcting mistakes in the digitised RTC has enhanced users’ reliance on brokers. One example is the manner in which users seek to rectify mistakes. According to an ex-panchayat member, errors in digitised titles relating boundary, area and mutation are yet to be resolved. In his view, the Nemmadi database is erroneous as it was developed from existing manual records, the survey had not been updated, and disputes over both boundary and ownership were not being easily resolved via Nemmadi. Consequently, local residents still rely on VAs and ex-panchayat members to rectify records held by the village level institutions including those of Revenue department. The tediousness of the hierarchical process under Nemmadi is compounded during specific periods in the year, such as between April and July, when there is a flood of applications for caste and income certificates necessary for children’s school and college admissions. Middlemen are important at such times because they can either directly or through their networks approach revenue department officials to request for exceptions, favours and use of discretion. In one instance, during participation observation, a user wanted the RI to look into his income certificate application in a way that would make it easier for his son to apply for a reserved category seat in medical colleges. Since as per regulations such requests are not legitimate, brokers assisted him in preparing a separate covering letter that explained his situation to the RI and agreed to follow-up on his application. In this way, citizens have to access/approach officials through mediators and middlemen, and to bypass the regulatory barriers introduced by the technology interface.



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Additionally, front-end kiosk operators have emerged as another set of brokers. These operators are employed by COMAT, but users perceive them to be government employees performing public service functions. Operators are either already part of the local political system by virtue of being members of political groups or by being related to landlords and local leaders. Or, they may get integrated into the dynamics over time as a result of their relationships with VAs and RIs, which they must cultivate and maintain as part of their executive responsibilities. They can therefore request these officials to quicken procedures for users who pay for hastening/bypassing the process. Sometimes, operators also perpetuate the belief that they have direct access to the network architecture and servers from which certificates and records are electronically transmitted to the front-end. We found that the servers from where information is transmitted between taluk offices, NKs and the state data centres are usually inaccessible because of traffic and poor infrastructure.64 Therefore, operators often ask users to wait or to come back another day to collect their documents. Over time, inaccessibility of the server is cited as an excuse to extract extra payments from users in delivering certificates. Appropriating Ambiguities Given the large-scale rollout of the system, significant ambiguities continue to prevail on the first time process, the procedure for subsequent applications in case of failure to update RDS documents at periodic intervals, and modifications in processes when new government policies and regulations are announced for different regions/districts in the state. An example: the attempt to issue ration cards via Nemmadi. Kendras were asked to distribute ration cards prior to both State and National elections in 2008 and 2009. Some Nemmadi kiosk operators locations used this opportunity to parallelly sell insurance packages and mobile phone connections. However, these ration cards were later revoked by the Election Commission on grounds of malpractices by political parties to create vote banks. One version of the story is that the number of cards issued via Nemmadi far exceeded census households in the area. Moreover, although COMAT’s central office stated that ration card issuance was a one-time activity, there has been considerable In the Wake of Aadhaar 179


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confusion on the ground. In some of the kiosks, we found operators accepting ration card applications whereas in others, operators told us that ration card applications were not part of the services that Nemmadi delivered. Following protests by users, temporary ration cards have been issued, but there is still confusion among card holders about the role of Nemmadi vis a vis the ration card service. When the issue was discussed with COMAT, one senior official acknowledged that the ambiguity about COMAT’s role exists on the ground. They pointed out that Nemmadi Kendra involvement in ration card issuance was linked to its earlier organisational legacy in 2005, when Karnataka introduced the Akshaya project and, as part of it organised surveys, COMAT was commissioned by the Food and Civil Supplies Department to re-distribute ration cards in the state. The ration card case is an interesting instance of how rules to make a service uniform can be interpreted/appropriated to cause major variations on the ground. Despite new strategies for implementation of a policy and a programme, legacies of former practices continue to keep the space open for maneuvering and negotiations. A consequence of these complexities and confusions result in processes and rules being locally adapted and modified.65

SOCIAL SHAPING OF TECHNOLOGY: DATABASE DESIGN, SCALE, AND THE TECHNOLOGIST’S RELATIONSHIP WITH THE STATE

A recurring theme in our discussion with small and medium farmers was to do with errors in the digital database. In order to understand the reasons as to why these errors occur we explored the factors influencing design of Nemmadi databases. Database Abstraction and Reduction of Information Digitisation effectively means copying information from manual records and inputting it. In reality, data entry from manual records into digital 180 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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systems is cumbersome and contentious. RTCs issued through Nemmadi kiosks rely on a database created by the National Informatics Centre for the Bhoomi programme. It is designed to store information contained in land records from the year 2000 onwards. The Bhoomi database was designed to standardise land information across the entire state. The columns and tables enforced a standard format of recording and managing land information, notwithstanding considerable inter-regional variations in the type of information contained in the manual records.66 A unique factor in Karnataka is of course that the state has been founded by combining four different regions, each of which had its own, very diverse, administrative and political systems for recording and managing land information. Bhoomi however uniformly recorded land extent in gunthas. Data entry operators therefore had to manually calculate and convert different measurement denominations into the metric system,67 and the inevitable errors occurred. Errors in the spelling of names of owners have also been attributed to poor record-keeping practices by VAs and to illegible handwriting. Additionally, land records were stored in multiple languages such as Kannada, Urdu, Tamil, Hindi, etc, and uniform spellings were absent.68 Additionally, in the process of creating a standardised database, it was arbitrarily decided to leave out information pertaining to tenure history. Cost of the Database Although technologists whom we spoke to were aware of the problems in the Bhoomi database, they felt that companies implementing e-governance programmes tend to continue with a bad system because it is cumbersome and expensive to develop a new database from scratch. If the system is so broken than you can no longer put band-aids on it, you already answered this issue of scale negatively. Then you have to do a hardnosed cost benefit analysis where you have to decide whether you will be ready to plug into a new system given the old. The problem with plugging into a new system is the hasards of change, training personnel all over again, etc. It is hard for anyone sitting outside of this monolith to say whether this is a hard choice or not. But often costs overrides these decisions.69 In the Wake of Aadhaar 181


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To weed out errors as far as possible, entries have to be done at least twice and cross-checked independently by two different operators.70 The costs of data entry consistently concerned revenue department officials during the implementation of Bhoomi, as a result of which services of VAs were eventually secured to enter data into the digital system. Moreover, governments cannot afford to keep up with dated technology because software and licenses are expensive to both build and to purchase. Besides, software companies looking for new markets prefer to abstract information so that the database can be tailored and can be generically applied to more than just land records, as reflected by the following narrative. . . .software companies, generally, like to abstract things away. You make systems that generically you could apply as much to land records as to other things. For instance, Bhoomi—there is a lot of talk about repurposing Bhoomi for demographic data as well. In our interviews with technologists, it was pointed out to us that it is not easy to decide between abstraction and customisation.71 Heavy customisation is expensive in terms of development and maintenance, but large scale abstraction ignores specificities on the ground and veers towards enforcing highly structured and rigid application of policies, laws and procedures, as was the case with the legalisation of digital land records under Bhoomi. The competitive tendering process also reinforces a trend among software companies to reduce costs associated with database construction. Very rarely do they highlight the problems of abstraction to the State when pitching for e-governance projects. As one technologist commented, ‘ . . . you just had to continue working with this faulty system. . . (the concerned senior bureaucrat’s biggest problem was that if he did not deploy it, he would lose credibility and power inside the State . . . For him, he had promised everyone that he would computerise the entire revenue system. So it was not possible for him to say that this is not working and I will not deploy it’.



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Effect of Scale on Database Design The scale of the programme also has a bearing on decisions about the extent to which databases can be customised. According to one technologist interviewed, ‘. . . governments harp on large scale because they are the only entities which can guarantee the implementation of initiatives and policies at that level’. The problem with the government’s approach was, in his view, that they search for a standard solution without taking specificities into account, and try to implement it in one go rather than experiment with a database and scale it up gradually. Technologists within COMAT too agreed that the programme’s problems with database errors was due to its scale, of rolling the programme quickly across the state before databases could tested on smaller scales. Technologists’ Influence over the State Technologists have had significant influence over the introduction of both the Nemmadi and Bhoomi programmes. A senior official of COMAT recounted the organisations director’s role in conceiving Nemmadi and lobbying for it. Nemmadi was the brainchild of RR who had written the background note for Nemmadi earlier along with bureaucrats. RR developed this concept note based on COMAT’s experiences with e-governance projects in the 1990s. . . We have a long history of implementing e-governance in the State. . . we are lobbying with 32 young district commissioners, all young IAS officers, clued to technology to extend e-governance to other domains.72 Databases such as the Nemmadi and Bhoomi programme used are usually designed and constructed by software companies with sweeping directives from government officials and policy-makers. The construction of databases is therefore fundamentally linked to the choices that technologists and decisionmakers in governments make regarding standardisation and customisation. Technologists who work closely with the e-governance programme or the application of ICTs in governance assess government officials’ understanding and capabilities of information technology to be poor in India. Consequently, the state relies on a select group of software companies and individuals to In the Wake of Aadhaar 183


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design, develop and maintain ICTs, which, in turn, gives these companies and individuals the power to influence both the design and the costs of technology. Technology lobbies are influential in bringing the agenda of e-governance to the table, the domains in which they must be introduced as well as in defining the terms of e-overnance contracts.73 . . . the e-governance systems in general, and in particular in Karnataka are all developed by software companies. They are not developed by experts from the revenue department. Since they are developed by external experts whose time is anyway valuable, they cannot sit and address every issue that comes up with data management. There is a process by which the design is developed. . . That is flawed to begin with. So they (the software developers) make a lot of choices simply in the interest of time. You have fixed time, fixed money. Get it done, that’s all. In the view of an e-governance specialist, the domination of select group of companies is also perpetuated by the State. Government officials tend to think of technology only in relation to few companies and their products. For instance, databases are associated with Oracle while software is predominantly associated with Microsoft/Windows. A technologist opined thus: I am not saying that with Microsoft and Oracle, you cannot get a working system—of course you can. But if you decide on a company first. . . and then search for a working system, then you have got it wrong. Opacity of Decision Making Process According to a technologist, the division of labour relating to database design and management between different software companies has resulted in serious gaps in accountability. The way (Nemmadi) is designed. . . it is completely different (companies or consultants). It is thus a collaboration of entities who are responsible for various parts of (designing and maintaining) system. And because the process says that you have to go through each of these steps for smooth operation of Nemmadi, and each of these different steps is controlled by different entities, 184 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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they always insist that it is somebody else who has not done it right. So the actual process bypasses all of these guys which means it is no longer by the book. . . For example, if you take just RTC alone, now the software was written by NIC (National Informatics Centre). NIC is not responsible for making sure that it works. They only do software development. They are not responsible for deployment. They just write some software, give you the code and say it is your problem now. So whose problem is it? The next level is the Bhoomi consultant. So what the government did was that they hired individuals on their own basis as contractors and made them responsible for the upkeep of the system. So the Bhoomi consultant is a designated official or a contractor whose job is to go to the taluk office and train people in using the programme, whose job is to talk to NIC and get it, and so on. So these guys do all kinds of odd jobs besides technical design. But they are not responsible for the actual upkeep of the system either. They are responsible for taking something for Bhoomi and taking it somewhere else. So the next step is fixing the data centre. There is a server sitting in the data centre. Now this server is owned by Reliance. Reliance rents the room in which the server sits. Reliance is not responsible for what goes on inside this room. So they are responsible for making sure who is allowed inside the room and out of it. So the operations within the room are managed by Satyam. Satyam is responsible for making sure that all these computers are online, they are connected to each other and so on. Satyam is not responsible for the software. They have nothing to do beyond making sure whether the internet connection works or not on these machines. And Reliance is responsible for providing the connections outside the room and the connection that goes inside the room. There are more layers still. The maintenance of the software on the computer is done by CMC (Computer Maintenance Corporation). So CMC’s salary comes from COMAT. So 3% of all of COMAT’s profits go to CMC as per the contract. So CMC is responsible for making sure that the software is running. But CMC did not build the software. So they have no idea how the software works and what to do if something goes wrong. So if there is a problem with the database and it is not writing records, CMC can’t do anything. They call the Bhoomi consultant. The Bhoomi consultant calls NIC and says there is a bug in the software. NIC says no, you did not deploy In the Wake of Aadhaar 185


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it correctly. So you try to get these guys into a room and say that something is not working. Which of you is responsible? None of them will take blame for it. In the present system, the design of the database was controlled entirely by the National Informatics Centre, which by virtue of its quasi-governmental status obtains all the contracts for design of databases. They also own the source codes, but the private companies who are implementing the programme too have access to source codes and thus can benefit from the information. The everyday management of databases—including operation of software and maintenance of hardware—are with different private companies. The overall supervision of the companies and consultants involved has also been contracted out. Consequently, when there is a problem in the system, no one can take the responsibility—as the above interview shows. In order to oversee the work of various private companies involved in the programme, the State has now brought in PriceWaterhouse Coopers as an overarching project manager. According to an ex-employee of COMAT, PWC brought in their own bureaucracy which, rather than solving the problem, was only slowing things down. Similarly, decisions relating to both selection of the technology and of vendors are at best opaque. As mentioned, RTC’s records of Nemmadi rely on a database prepared for Bhoomi, which was web based, whereas the system for delivering RDS is based on a work flow process and relies on a protocol called the Microsoft Messaging Queue which comes with Windows XP. The choice of this protocol means that an implementing agency such as COMAT is compelled to use a Windows-based system. When the vendor was lobbying the State to adopt this protocol, it was still at an experimental stage. Moreover, the software was not designed for low bandwidth conditions and consequently, there were problems in processing applications. However, companies like COMAT have no say over such technical matters given that the choice of the protocol and of the vendor was made by a senior bureaucrat on cost considerations rather than for technical capabilities. According to some technologists, IT companies like Microsoft call the shots as there are not enough technical capabilities within the State. 186 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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(the company) calls the shots when it comes to deciding which technologies should be used. This is because NIC has no expertise for building something this large. So NIC will do what somebody tells them to do. And C (the company) chose because (they) gave this all for free. If the whole process has gone through the tender process, then (one) would have to deal with competition. . . (the company) offered to help (the senior bureaucrat) set up all of this at a time when nobody else was willing to get into e-governance, back in the 1990s. So they gave him completely free advice. For (the company) it makes sense because if they give it away for free, but for COMAT it is costly as it is paying for all the licenses (when it buys) those Windows XP machines.74 Ironically, e-governance programmes including Nemmadi and Bhoomi, rationalised on grounds of making the lower levels of the State transparent, continue to remain opaque at higher levels. Technical Rationality to Unsettle Claims? Technologists’ explanations of current problems with the databases supporting Nemmadi programme usually focus on absence of robust data entry processes and failure to customise technology to local contexts. These explanations, valid in themselves, overlook the fact that land information is often incomplete: an incompleteness that stems not simply from intent but also from which accounts and histories of land ownership gain precedence over other competing narratives. The contested nature of claims on land renders land information imperfect by nature.75 Therefore, in practical terms, it is difficult to co-relate one owner to a single land parcel. This runs counter to the logic of programmes such as Bhoomi and Nemmadi which are instituted to create clear titles assume that ambiguities in claims stem from human errors, corrupt behaviour and design issues. However, what is sought to be achieved through e-governance programmes is to limit claims through actually freesing it in favour of particular groups but does not resolve the underlying contestations.



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REFERENCES Ahuja, M. & Singh, A. P. (2005a), ‘Appraisal of Computerisation of Land Records in West Bengal’; (2005b) ‘Computerisation of land records in Punjab’ and (2005c) ‘Computerisation of Land Records: Inter-State variations’ in: Habibullah, W. & Ahuja, M. (eds.) Land Reforms in India Volume 10: Computerisation of Land Records. New Delhi: Sage Publications. Ahuja, M. and Singh, A. P. (2006). ‘Evaluation of Computerisation of Land Records in Karnataka: A Study from Gulbarga District’. Economic and Political Weekly. Vol. 41 (01): 69–77. Bailur, S. (2008). ‘Deconstructing community participation in telecentre projects’, Working Paper Series no. 31. Manchester: Development Informatics Group, Institute for Development Policy and Management, University of Manchester. Bakker, L. Nooteboom, G. and Rutten, R. (2010). ‘Localities of Value: Ambiguous Access to Land and Water in South East Asia’. Asian Journal of Social Science 38:167–171; Bauer, M. W. and G. Gaskell (2000). ‘Qualitative researching with text, image and sound: a practical handbook’. London, SAGE. Bayat, A. (1997). ‘Street politics: Poor People’s Movements in Iran’. New York, Columbia University Press. Benjamin, S. (2000). ‘Governance, Economic Settings and Poverty in Bangalore’. Environment & Urbanisation 12(1): 35–56. Benjamin S., Bhuvaneswari R., Rajan P., Manjunath B., (2005) Bhoomi: ‘E-Governance’, Or An Anti-Politics Machine Necessary to Globalise Bangalore? Bangalore: International Institute of Information Technology. Bhatnagar, S. & Chawla, R. (2005). Bhoomi: Online Delivery of Record of Right Tenancy. In: Habibullah, W. & Ahuja, M. (eds.) Land Reforms in India. Volume 10: Computerisation of Land Records. New Delhi: Sage Publications. Bijker, W. & Law, J. (1992). Shaping Technology/Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change. Cambridge MA, London: MIT Press. Bijker, W. (1995). Of Bicycles, Bakelites, and Bulbs: Toward a Theory of Sociotechnical Change. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Bovens, M. & Zouridis, S. (2002) From street-level to system-level bureaucracies: How information and communication technology is transforming administrative discretion and constitutional control. Public Administration Review, 62, 174–184. Chatterjee, P. (2002). The Politics of the Governed. New York, Columbia University Press. Chawla, R. & Bhatnagar, S. 2004. Online Delivery of Land Titles to Rural Farmers in Karnataka, India. Scaling up Poverty Reduction: A Global Learning Process and Conference. Shanghai: International Bank for Development and Reconstruction/The World Bank.



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Cleaver, F. (2001). ‘Institutions, Agency and the limitations of participatory approaches to development’. In Participation, the New Tyranny (Cooke, B. and U. Kothari eds). London: Zed. pp. 36–55. Cleaver, F. (2004). ‘The Social Embeddedness of Agency and Decision making’. In S. Hickey and G. Mohan (eds.) Participation: From Tyranny to Transformation? Exploring New Approaches to Participation in Development. London: Zed Books. Corbin, J. & Strauss, A. (2008). ‘Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory’. Los Angeles, SAGE. Corbridge, S. (2005). Seeing the State: Governance and Governmentality in India, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dasgupta, P. and Serageldin, I. (2000). Social Capital: A multifaceted Perspective. Washington: The World Bank. Davies, T. (2010). ‘Open data, democracy and public sector reform. A look at open government data use from data.gov.uk’. M.Sc Dissertation, Social Sciences in Internet, University of Oxford. http://practicalparticipation.co.uk/odi/report/ wp-content/uploads/2010/08/How-is-open-government-data-being-used-inpractice.pdf. De, R. (2005). ‘E-Government systems in developing countries: Stakeholders and conflict’. In: Wimmer, M. A., Traunmiller, R., Grounland, A. & Anderson, K. V. (eds.) EGOV, Heildelberg. Springer, 26–37. De, R. (2009). ‘Caste Structures and E-Governance in a Developing Country’. In: Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance. Bogota, Columbia. ACM International Conference Proceedings Series. Denzin, N. K. & Lincoln, Y.S. (2000). ‘Introduction: The Discipline and Practices of Qualitative Research’. In N. K. Denzin and Y. S. Lincoln (eds). Handbook of Qualitative Research London, Sage: 1–28. Flyvberg, B. (1998). Rationality and Power: Democracy in Practice. Chicago: The University of Chicago. Fuller, C. J. & Hariss, J. (2001). ‘For an anthropology of Indian State’. In: Fuller, C. J. & Veronique, B. (eds.) The Everyday State and Society in Modern India. London: Hurst & Company. Gatty, N. (2009). Information Technology for Governance Reforms: Land Records Computerisation in an Indian State. United Kingdom: Institute of Development Studies, Sussex. Gaventa, J. (2004). ‘Towards participatory governance: assessing the transformative possibilities’. In S. Hickey and G. Mohan (eds.) Participation: From Tyranny to Transformation? Exploring New Approaches to Participation in Development. London: Zed Books. Gaventa, J. (2001). ‘Exploring Citizenship, Participation and Accountability’. IDS Bulletin 33 (2): 1–11.



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Gaventa, J. (1999). ‘Participation, Citizenship and Local Governance’ Background paper. Conference: Strengthening Participation in Local Governance. Brighton: Institute of Development Studies, Sussex. Gil-Garcia, J. R. & Martinez-Moyano, I. (2007) ‘Understanding the evolution of e- government: The influence of systems of rules on public sector dynamics’, Government Information Quarterly 24, 266–290. Grindle, M. S. and Thomas, J. W. (1991) Public choices and policy change: The political economy of reform in developing countries. London: Johns Hopkins Press. Gupta, A. (1995) Blurred boundaries: The discourse of corruption, the culture of politics, and the imagined state. American Ethnologist, 22, 375–402. Gurstein (2007). ‘Editorial’. Community Informatics and Systems Design. 3(1). Heeks, R. and S. Bailur. 2006. ‘Analysing eGovernment Research: Perspectives, Philosophies, Theories, Methods and Practice’. iGovernment Paper No. 16. Downloaded from: http://www.sed.manchester.ac.uk/idpm/publications/wp/igov/index.htm. Holston, J. (2008). Insurgent Citizenship: Disjunctions of Democracy and Modernity in Brazil. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Jackson, P. (2001). ‘Public Sector Added Value: Can Bureaucracy Deliver?’ Public Administration 79(1):5–28. Johnson, E. and Kolko, B. (2010). ‘Between the big brother and the digital utopia: e-governance in a totalitarian space’. Digital Icons: Studies in Russia, Eurasian and Central European New Media. Issue 3. Haila, Anne. (2007). ‘The markets as the new emperor’. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. Vol. 31, No. 1. pp. 3–20. Komito, L. (1999). ‘Political transformations: Clientelism and technological change’. In J. Armintage & J. Roberts (Eds.) Exploring Cyber Society conference proceedings Volume II. Retrieved July 2003, from http:// www.ucd.ie/lis/staff/komito/. Lipsky, M. (1980). Street-level bureaucracy: Dilemmas of individuals in public services, New York, Russel Sage Foundation. Madon, S. (2006) ‘IT-based government-reform initiatives in the Indian state of Gujarath’. Journal of International Development, 18, 877–888. Masaki,K. (2004). ‘The transformative unfolding of tyrannical participation: the corvee tradition and ongoing local politics in Western Nepal’. In S. Hickey and G. Mohan (eds.) Participation: From Tyranny to Transformation? Exploring New Approaches to Participation in Development. London: Zed Books. Meena S. D., Thakur V., Shukla D R., Sisodia O P. (2005). ‘Computerisation of Land Records: National Perspective’. In: Habibullh W. & Ahuja M. (eds.) Land Reforms in India Volume 10: Computerisation of Land Records. New Delhi: Sage Publications.



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Miles, M. B. and A. M. Huberman (1994). Qualitative data analysis: an expanded sourcebook. Thousand Oaks, Calif, Sage. Mitchell, R. K., B. R. Agle, and D. J. Wood. 1997. ‘Toward a theory of stakeholder identification and salience: defining the principle of who and what really counts’. The Academy of Management Review 22(4): 34. Nagar and Leitner 1998. Norris, P. (2001). Digital Divide: Civic engagement, information poverty, and the Internet worldwide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nuitjen, M. & Lorenzo, D. 2006. ‘Moving Borders and Invisible Boundaries: A force field approach to property relations in the commons of a Mexican Ejido’. In: Beckmann, F. V. B., Benda-Beckmann, K. V. & Wiber, M. (eds.) Changing Properties of Property. New York: Berghan Books. Oestmann, S. & Dymond, A.C. (2001). ‘Telecentres: Experiences, Lessons and Trends’ in Colin Latchem & David Walker (eds) Telecentres: Case studies and key issues (1–15). Vancouver: The Commonwealth of Learning. Oldenburg, Philip. 1976. Big City Government in India: Councillor, Administrator, and Citizen in Delhi. Tuscon: University of Arizona Press. Parycek, P. & Sachs, M., 2010. ‘Open Government—Information Flow in Web 2.0’. European Journal of ePractice, (9). Available at: http://www.epractice.eu/en/ document/313345 [Accessed May 23, 2010]. Raman, Bhuvaneswari. (2010). Street traders, place and Politics: A case study of Bangalore. PhD Dissertation, London School of Economics and Political Science. Rao, A. R. M. & Bhat, P. V. (2005). ‘Bhoomi: A Case Study’. In: Habibullah, W. & Ahuja, M. (eds.) Land Reforms in India Volume 10: Computerisation of Land Records. New York: Sage Publications. Riley, C.G. 2003. The Changing Role of the Citizen in the E-Governance & E-Democracy Equation: Commonwealth Centre for e-Governance. September 2003 (ed.) Ritchie, J. and J. Lewis (2003). Qualitative Research Practice: A Guide for Social Science Students and Researchers. London, SAGE. Rossel, P. & Finger, M. (2007). ‘Conceptualising e-Governance. Proceedings of the 1st international conference on Theory and practice of electronic governance held in Macao, China’: ACM International Conference Proceedings Series. Sanoff, H. (2000). Community participation methods in design and planning. New York: J. Wiley & Sons. Schlossberg, M. & Shuford, E. (2005). ‘Delineating “public” and “Participation” in PPGIS’. Journal of the Urban and Regional Information Systems Association 16, 15–26. Singerman, D. (1995). Avenues of participation. Berkeley: University of California Press Singh, V. & Gururaj, J. (2009). ‘Nemmadi Telecentre Project’. In: Bagga, P. K. & Gupta, P. (eds.) Transforming Government—e-Government Initiatives in India. ICFAI University Press. pp. 311–326. Stern, R. (2009). Diversity: A Challenge to Urban Governance. Toronto: APSA Toronto Meeting Papers. Strauss, A. L. and J. Corbin (1998). Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory. Thousand Oaks, SAGE.



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Thomas, J. C. 1995. Public participation in public decisions: new skills and strategies for public managers, 1st ed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers. von Haldenwang, C. (2002). ‘Electronic Government (E-Government) and Development: Does the Digital Divide Contribute to the Governance Divide?’ A paper presented at EADI-conference in Ljubljana. von Benda Beckmann, F and K (2010). ‘Multiple Embeddedness and Systemic Implications: Struggles over Natural Resources in Minangkabau since the Reformasi’. Asian Journal of Social Science 38:172–186. Waddington, M. and Mohan, G. (2004). ‘Failing Forward: going beyond PRA and imposed forms of participation’. In S. Hickey and G. Mohan (eds.) Participation: From Tyranny to Transformation? Exploring New Approaches to Participation in Development. London: Zed Books. Weiner, M. 1991. The Child and the State in India, Princeton University Press, USA. William, R & Edge D (1996). The Social Shaping of Technology. Research Policy (25):856–899.

NOTES 1

Ahuja and Singh, 2005a, 2005b; Bhatnagar and Chawla 2005; Chawla and Bhatnagar 2004; Komito, 1999; Singh and Gururaj, 2009.

2

William and Edge 1996: 857.

3

Benjamin 2000; Chatterjee 2000.

4

Benjamin 2001; Chatterjee 2000; Raman 2010.

5

Gaventa 2004.

6

Lipskey 1980:IX, 3; Zourdis and Bovens 2003.

7

Bovens and Zourdis 2003: 7.

8

von Benda Beckmann 2010; Bakker, Nooteboom and Rutten 2010; Nuitjen 2006.

9

2001: 42.

10 see Chawla and Bhatnagar 2006. 11 Ahuja et. al 2005; Chawla and Bhatnagar 2006. 12 see also Grindle and Thomas 1991. 13 Corbridge 2005; Oldenberg 1972; Singermen 1995. 14 Singermen 1995. 15 Dasgupta and Seralgedin 2000. 16 Cleaver 2004; Raman 2010. 17 Cleaver 2001:42. 18 Riley 2003. 19 Grindle and Thomas 1998. 20 Riley 2003.



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21 Davies, 2010; Ramanna, 2010; Kovacks 2007. 22 Johnson and Kolbe 2010. 23 Davies 2010: 5. 24 Parycek and Sachs, 2010: 5. 25 Haila 2007; 2008. 26 see Chawla and Bhatnagar 2005. 27 Rose 2008. 28 Benjamin et. al 2005; Haila 2007. 29 Bayat, 1997 , Holston, 2008. 30 Rossel and Finger 2007. 31 Fieldwork for this research was conducted under the aegis of the generous grant awarded by SIRCA/ NTU to Servelots, Bangalore. The authors would also like to acknowledge the support of B. Manjunath who assisted with the field research and analyses of data.. 32 Singh and Gururaj, 2009: 311. 33 Chawla and Bhatnagar, 2004; World Bank, 2006. 34 Meena et. al 2005. 35 Oestmann and Dymond, 2001: 1; Ahuja and Singh 2006; Bhatnagar and Chawla 2006. 36 Meena et. al, 2005; http://www.urbanindia.nic.in/theministry/subordinateoff/tcpo/tcpo.htm. 37 see also http://202.138.100.134/case-study/Nemmadi-rural-telecentres-aid-e-governance. 38 Interview with a technologist formerly associated with Nemmadi. Interview conducted on 22nd May 2010. The interviewee wishes to remain anonymous. 39 Ahuja and Singh, 2006: 69. 40 During the pre- and colonial times, it was responsible for collecting land taxes which constituted the main source of income for governments at that time Bannerjee and Iyer, 2005: 1192. In the colonial period, the Department maintained records of all types of land. Goyal and Deninger 2010:6 point out, that until the eighties, the revenue department relied on- “. . . land records were a fiscal instrument that focused on use rather than ownership . . . ” Goyal and Deininger, 2010: 34 6. It was in the interests of the administrators and the establishment at that time to maintain land records in order to maximise revenue collection. The importance of land taxes as a source of income for state governments paled into insignificance as successive national governments emphasised on redistribution of land and other land reforms in the first two to three decades following independence. At that time, there was less incentive for state governments per se to maintain land records through periodic surveys and other modes of updating. Revenue departments therefore continued to maintain “textual databases” for rural land records and focused attention and resources on priority functions other than maintenance of land information Goyal and Deininger, 2010:6. The emphasis on real estate led development since mid 90s was to change both the ways in which land records are viewed and the role of revenue department. 41 in Smith 1996:103 terms. 42 Benjamin and Bhuvaneswari 2005. 43 Meena et al., 2005. 44 Bhatnagar and Chawla, 2005.



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45 RDS documents have acquired mandatory status under the laws of revenue administration and state government even though it is widely known and acknowledged that the information contained in most of these documents is not accurate despite having been verified by revenue department officials. For instance, incomes of applicants recorded in an income certificates, is known to be underestimated because people prefer to declare lesser incomes in order to avail of government benefits and subsidies. Further, the process of verifying incomes is not foolproof. Interview with officials of Agricultural Bank and Panchayat members, July 2010. 46 Interview conducted with a member of a village council on 2nd July 2010. 47 Interview with Nagraj bank manager at Jigani on July 2010. 48 Interview with officials of Agricultural Bank and Panchayat members, July 2010. 49 Gatty, 2009. 50 Ahuja and Singh, 2005; Bhatnagar and Chawla, 2005; Rao and Bhat, 2005: 80; Singh and Gururaj, 2009. 51 Mohan and Bhat, 2005:80. 52 Singh and Ahuja 2005; Bhatnagar and Chawla 2005. 53 Singh and Gururaj, 2009. 54 Gatty, 2009: 34; Meijer and Bovens, 2005. 55 Bovens and Zourdis, 2002. 56 Ahuja and Singh 2005; Bhatnagar and Chawla 2005. 57 RTCs are available from NKs and also from the registrar s office in the taluk headquarters. Additionally, private kiosks authorised by the government also deliver RTCs. 58 Gatty, 2009: 34. 59 Gatty 2009. 60 Singh and Gururaj, 2009. 61 see Benjamin 2005 for more details. 62 Chawla and Bhatnagar 2006. 63 Gatty 2009. 64 Interview with a technologist who was involved with implementing e-governance projects in India. Interview conducted on 22nd May 2010. 65 We also found that COMAT has modified the process of delivering RDS certificates to first-time applicants in some districts. Applications are verified by checking against the database which the company developed when redistributing ration cards in Karnataka state. This process helps the company and its operators to expedite the delivery of RDS by bypassing the mandatory verification and authorisation by VAs and RIs on first time applications. It was also mentioned to us that DCs and Tahsildars have the powers to modify processes/regulations and adapt these to local circumstances in the districts. 66 Ahuja and Singh, 2005. 67 Source: Circulars issued by Revenue Secretary Mr. Rajeev Chawla dated 10th July 2003 available at stg2.kar.nic.in. Last accessed on 27th July 2010.



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68 We are grateful to Gautam John, Project Manager at Akshara Foundation, Bangalore for sharing this insight with us based on his experiences with maintaining digital databases. Interview conducted on 9th July 2010. 69 Interview with Alok and Gautam John conducted on 9th July 2010. 70 Interview with Gautam John conducted on 9th July 2010. 71 Interview with Alok Singh conducted on 9th July 2010. 72 Interview with Shailendra Nadige, General Manager, Operations, COMAT. 73 Conversation with ex-employee of COMAT, dated 11th August 2010. 74 Interview with Kiran, ex-employee COMAT and software entrepreneur, dated August 2010 75 Haila, 2002; World Bank, 2007.



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2


– The Experience



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CHAPTER 8

Field Visits An Identity Project field report

Through 2011, The Identity Project team conducted extensive field visits in seven states. These states were: Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh, Tripura, Delhi, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala. While the team visited several locations across states to view Aadhaar enrollments, it typically chose specific districts in each state for detailed explorations. While these were usually districts where Aadhaar enrollments were actually happening, we also on occasion chose some districts where Aadhaar had not yet reached. These districts have been outlined in the individual dossiers. The overall purpose of these visits was to get something in the nature of a 360-degree perspective on what digitisation might mean to specific localities. As described in the Introduction and as several of the essays comment, digitisation seems to be working with communitarian models, and the local experiences of community-driven delivery of benefit varied dramatically, even between districts within a single state. While some districts and states were using Aadhaar to inaugurate a digital infrastructure, we primarily focused on those districts that had a significant digital legacy prior to the arrival of the UIDAI: an ecosystem that had a community-led organicity. This was done to better comprehend how the UIDAI might be impacting, both positively and negatively, such digital structures. The three key areas the project short listed, where the impact appeared to be considerable, were financial inclusion, homelessness and migration. The first two are further linked to States: financial inclusion is primarily focused on Andhra Pradesh, though also of relevance to Tripura and Jharkhand; homelessness is specifically linked to Delhi. All three issues have been separately dealt with in this book (Sections 4, 5 and 6).



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In this section, we provide a brief glimpse of the kind of digital ecosystem that was emerging in each state and the issues and concerns that the Aadhaar project was raising locally. The section also highlights sections of the several long and unstructured interviews that were conducted with a range of stakeholders who included: 1. Enrollment Representatives and Local Implementers/Local Operators 2. Local and Village-Level Entrepreneurs/Local CSCs/Local Banking and Financial Correspondents 3. District-level administrators (and occasionally State-level bureaucrats) involved in IT implementation 4. Civil Society representatives 5. People being directly impacted by digitisation We viewed, and captured on video, several actual enrollments, to understand both the actual process and more importantly the ease/difficulty with which the process was taking place. We attempted in this to capture several enrollments, authentication pilots, PDS distribution pilots, and the actual workings of enrollers and verifiers. The mode was of a spontaneous vérité style done using amateur video, partly because it used light-weight equipment that permitted videotaping without excessively disturbing the process. Provisional conclusions 1. Each region, and almost each district, had a very distinct, even regional utopia: its own idea as to what the present situation was and what the change could now bring. Such techno-utopia is clearly not a new phenomenon: associated with state transformations riding on technological change, but the staggering diversity of such utopian imaginations may cause problems if things do not pan out as imagined. Faults with previous systems were now being openly discussed in a way



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that was almost inconceivable; since it widely appeared that we were on the cusp of new technology that was somehow going to solve it all. 2. Such utopia is almost certainly going to be temporary, for the authentication phase was very much in pilot stage. Problems with authentication, when faced, were being overcome manually, mainly because the pilots were still of manageable size, the attention of the bureaucracy massive, the sense of playing to a national stage palpable. 3. The very overwhelming emphasis in terms of the State’s response was on better policing: de-duplication effectively meant, for almost every official we spoke to, the weeding out of fake and ghost applications. The possibility that we may see an improvement in the quality of benefit was often lost within this overdetermined emphasis. As we saw with the rationale to defend, say, the mid-day meal programme in Jharkhand, such language of policing sometimes appeared extreme in part because no other rationale was easily intelligible to the administration. Interestingly, this attitude was strongest among states that had a longer tradition of using electronic databases: they widely believed that, barring authentication, they had everything else already with them. 4. The utopian dimension, both among the administration and the public, is significant in part because it almost entirely overrode the kinds of rational choices people might have otherwise made: to share, or not to share, their bank details, or the ambivalence of some (migrants, the homeless) who were weighing the pros and cons of registering (especially important given that this was not a mandatory exercise). 5. Despite efforts to dismiss the problems with biometrics, there were definite issues with biometrics we saw everywhere: both at the enrollment and authentication stages. Local estimates were around 10% problematic enrollments/authentications. 6. The social space of the Aadhaar centre was sometimes like the voting booths of yore, a distinctly political space, and on other occasions similar to the waiting rooms of ‘important’ state government offices where you 200 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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had to wait untiil you got your job done. We were less worried about petty corruption in the form of touts and more with political gatekeeping. This was most directly and explicitly evident in Delhi: however the evidence of such gatekeeping, especially with the Introducer mechanism, was noticed in some measure practically everywhere. 7. In contrast, there was a distinctly different attitude of the efficiency of the operators and supervisors: this had nothing of the ‘state’ about it. The possible link between this work and that of social network spaces may have contributed to this unusual amount of dedication. The Identity Project team was uniformly impressed with the dedication and patience of the operating teams across the country. Specific responses to specific state situations are mentioned in the relevant sections.



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Jharkhand An Identity Project field report

In early March 2011, the Identity Project team visited the Ratu block, Ranchi district of Jharkhand. Ratu has been a significant location for the entire Aadhaar project, being one of five pilot blocks that had been selected for Aadhaar-Enabled Payment to NREGA workers. Overall, pilots have been announced in four Jharkhand districts (Ranchi, Hazaribagh, Saraikela-Kharsawan and Ramgarh). The entire pre-history of digitisation in this state is dominated by NREGA. On the one hand, NREGA itself has been accused of widespread corruption: on the other hand, the intervention of Aadhaar in this state to make direct cash transfers to NREGA beneficiaries has been widely criticised: Bharat Bhatti, Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera have described the Jharkhand experiment as merely a ‘very poor cousin of much earlier and larger efforts to implement the BC model in Andhra Pradesh’, saying that it was not clear why the ‘MGNREGS should be used as a testing ground for UID applications when other, more useful options are available’.1 This controversy was the background to our visit. Some months before our March 2011 visit, in June 2010, the UIDAI signed an MoU with the government of Jharkhand, which charted out objectives for three major stakeholders within a three-tier structure—the UIDAI, the state Government, and the state identified/appointed registrars. It appeared that the state Government’s role was largely restricted to that of a facilitator for various implementation aspects of the UID—namely, testing technology and management of registrars (including financial support). At one level, the



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State Government did not seem to have any obligation apart from following ‘the process set out by the UIDIA for resolution of difficulties and conflict regarding matters concerning the UID project’. On its side, as per the MoU, the UIDAI’s role in Jharkhand was primarily prescriptive: the entire process, from evolving a funding mechanism for enrollment of residents to delivering the Aadhaar number, had been conceptualised by the UIDAI for the stateappointed Registrars and/or enrollment agencies to execute. The Registrars, the Rural and Urban Development Departments, was therefore to function as vendors to the UIDAI: including empanelling agencies for the implementation of the UID project. When the MoU was signed in June 2010, the UIDAI appeared not to have had clarity on who the Registrars would be. In a press conference at the time of the MoU, UIDAI deputy director general Nirmal Kumar Sinha was reported to have said that different departments of state government would act as registrars and coordinate with the department of I-T, which in turn would be the nodal agency to coordinate with the UIDAI. There was no mention of the Rural Development Department at this point. The introduction of this Department as the nodal Registrar of the UID in August 2010 was of some significance, if one read this along with the stated goals of escalating Aadhaar’s key local role as de-duplicating the NREGA and PDS databases. In September 2010 there were 51 agencies empanelled to carry out the enrollment process in Jharkhand. These included WIPRO, ITC Infotech India Ltd., Arcotech Ltd, CMS Info Systems Private Ltd, Eagle Software India Pvt. Ltd., etc. By December 2010 it became clear that none of the agencies empanelled by the registrars/UIDAI were willing to take up projects in Naxal districts such as Chatra, Latehar and Simdega. WIPRO, already the empanelled agent for urban and semi-urban areas, was willing on condition that it received a higher project fee. The problem was that allowing WIPRO to go ahead with the implementation meant breaching a clause from the



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MoU which allowed any one agency only a maximum of five districts for implementation. In January 2011, a third attempt was made to implement the project in Naxal hit rural areas in January 2011 (as per the Request for Quotation (RFQ) document published by the Rural Development Department in Jharkhand). On the obligation of evolving a funding mechanism for Aadhaar enrollment as mentioned in the MoU, the UIDAI decided in Nov. 2010 that families living below poverty line (BPL) in Jharkhand would receive ` 100 as a financial incentive to enroll. The mode of working was to directly deposit this amount into the bank account of the individual allotted an Aadhaar number. This strategy, conceptualised by the UIDAI and executed by the Registrar/ agencies, was in line with the objective of financial inclusion within which both the UIDAI and the Jharkhand Government were primarily viewing this entire enterprise. Incentives were planned for ‘Introducers’ in Jharkhand who would aid in achieving the UIDAI enrollment target of approximately 38 lakh MGNEGRA workers and BPL individuals in this region. No secondary information was available on how successful this scheme has been. The UIDAI also was offering financial assistance upto ` 200 to the state Government for each Aadhaar enrollment. E-districts project: One of the key features of the e-districts project of the NeGP was that it leveraged core infrastructure of SWAN, SDC, SSDG and CSCs. SWAN has been implemented in Jharkhand. The Common Service Centers (CSCs) were envisaged to provide high quality and cost-effective video, voice and data, content and services, in the areas of e-governance, education, health, telemedicine, entertainment as well as other private services, webenabled e-governance services in rural areas, including application forms, certificates, and utility payments such as electricity, telephone and water bills. Jharkhand has established 11 centres of CSCs. An amount of ` 319.69 lakhs was sanctioned for the e-district project in Ranchi in March 2008. PriceWaterhouse Cooper was the consultant for the same. Financial Inclusion: Aadhaar Enabled Payment System (AEPS) which includes Micro ATM devices administered by a group of Business 204 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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Correspondents (BC) are part of the process in achieving financial inclusion as envisaged by the UIDAI. Further as per plan this system would allow for both delivery of government services and subsidies (like MGNREGA payments), as well as regular banking transactions. AEPS in Jharkhand: Between Jan-March 2011, ICICI Bank, Union Bank of India and Bank of India began testing out the Micro-ATM transactions linked with the Aadhaar scheme. Union Bank of India (UBI), as an enrolling agency, began opening bank accounts for residents of Deoghar for issuing Aadhaar cards. The facility was planned to be extended to three blocks of Chaibasa sadar, Giridih sadar and Chandil. There was also a plan to establish a training centre and premises to establish a branch to deal with the lending of micro, medium and small enterprises. UBI had a target to cover 48 villages in Jharkhand, rendering its services to every region that has a population of over 2,000. Further, UBI had issued biometrics smart cards to over 40 lakh individuals since the inception of scheme in 2008. Since the scheme was being linked with the UID initiative in Jharkhand, a greater number of people having no proof of identity earlier would be enrolled into the bank. To this end the bank was carrying out awareness drives through puppet shows and dance drama in different corners of the state. It is clear even from the UIDAI’s report on the Aadhaar-enabled Unified Payment Structure (February 2012) that Jharkhand was the key pilot for testing out the micro-ATMs.2 By March 2011, over 50,000 Aadhaar linked bank accounts had been opened in Jharkhand with 40-50 online banking transactions taking place daily with online authentication as part of the proof of concept. Further, Union Bank, ICICI Bank and Bank of India were also conducting a pilot project across several districts to disburse NREGA funds through micro ATMs. In addition to these three banks, the UID Authority was also planning to rope in NABARD to include rural account holders in the core banking fold. Successful implementation of AEPS was widely envisaged to reduce the dependence on cash and will lower costs for transactions. Further, once the general purpose of Aadhaar-enabled micropayments system is in place, a variety of other financial instruments such as microcredit, micro-insurance , micro-pensions and micro-mutual funds are planned to be implemented on top of this payments system. In the Wake of Aadhaar 205


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NREGA in Jharkhand: Given the barrage of media reports on NREGA in Jharkhand, it was safe to assume that the Jharkhand NREGA implementation has been riddled with inefficiencies pretty much right from the start. Jean Dreze has referred to the State of Jharkhand as ‘one of the worst performing states as far as NREGA is concerned’3 owing to systemic corruption and ignorance of available rights. A few prominent instances are as follows. An exhaustive study in December 2008 conducted on the GOI’s decision to switch from cash payments of wages to settlement through banks reveals that in the case of certain districts (like Deogarh) ‘even wage payments through banks are not free of the maladies which afflicted the previous system of payments: corruption, fraud and misconduct’. The study further revealed that the ‘earlier nexus of corruption between contractors and gram panchayat officials (they probably meant block administration and not gram panchayats as gram panchayat elections in Jharkhand were yet to take place at the time of this study) now included banks as well. . . in fact many workers were completely unaware that an account had been opened in their name’. The mode was typically this: the block administration and the Panchayat Secretary would contract NREGA related work to private players, who not finding legal means to make margins would make a profit through swindling. To add to this, significant delays were occurring in the payment of wages to workers due to administrative apathy. Given this overheated situation, it was perhaps inevitable that the Jharkhand AEPS project would be especially watched, and would be treated as a benchmark by both the government and those opposed to Aadhaar’s implementation. While one side felt that Aadhaar was a bit like an uninvited guest, the commonest assumption among government officials was that Aadhaar was the best way available to clean up the system. Our meetings with several authorities confirmed that there was wide recognition that this was a ‘showpiece’ project, and was as such being very closely supervised. There was considerable unclarity as to what this new development would precisely do for NREGA: or even whether the problems that the new system would clean up were recent or systemic. Other problems, 206 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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that this may not eliminate corruption since a BC who wants to bend the system can still do so offline, or the problems with a high-rate of false rejects, we have dealt with elsewhere, and are common to all regions. On the other hand, there was also the typical enthusiasm of the people as a whole to the enrollment procedure. Bharat Bhatti’s review of the first stage of NREGA payments4 confirmed that people were taking to this new technology, considering it ‘closer to them, easier to use and less time-consuming than ordinary bank or post office procedures’. Former NREGA worker and presently agricultural labourer Manoj Mahto, believes for example that the Aadhaar card will permit loans to be made without a guarantor:

Interview with Manoj Mahto.

A parallel worry, which does not get mentioned in Bhatti’s study, that we encountered was this: the entire scheme was so heavily weighted in the direction of overcoming corruption that the fact of de-duplication overcame every other concern. While the need to ensure that there was no malpractice in NREGA payments was perhaps well taken, such emphasis on weeding out malpractice was clearly excessive when it came to midday meals for school children. Arvind Prasad, UIDAI’s Additional Director-General for Jharkhand, for example, said that they could have an authentication process in the midday meal scheme, and so: There will be a small set of devices like the mobile where children have to put their UID number, their name and fingerprints. After putting In the Wake of Aadhaar 207


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the fingerprint and UID number, authentication will be done from our server and immediately with some transaction ID this authentication will be answered ‘yes’ or ‘no’. If the UID number does not match the fingerprint the automatic reply will say ‘no’. It matches then it says ‘yes’.

Interview with Arvind Prasad Prasad, UIDAI’s Additional Director-General for Jharkhand.

On the midday meals, while the possibility that the number of children actually fed could permit some tracking of the amount of rice etc. given to a school, the heavy emphasis on policing may indeed have a reverse effect, that of policing school children having their midday meal:

Interview with Satyendra Singh, CEO of Jharkhand Agency for Promotion of Information Technology (JAPIT) Department of Information Technology, Govt. of Jharkhand.



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The bureaucrats we spoke to were certainly aware of the attention, and the fact that their responsibility was playing on a national stage: and so we saw some peculiar twists: for example, in the concept of the Introducer. Jyotsna Singh, Block Development Officer, Ratu Block, said that the Introducer phase was launched soon after the Aadhaar programme was launched on October 2nd, 2010. ‘All government agencies, BDO, all the departments of the Jharkhand governments, Panchayat officials, the NREGA officials, field staff, doctors from the health department, Anganwadis under the welfare department, the DPO from there, all their supervisors’—were first enrolled and then made Introducers. But their job was to introduce the scheme to the villagers, not the other way round. The main task of the introducer was to introduce it to them. Since this was an outside agency programme (outside the panchayats), they had to imbibe faith in the people and explain the purpose of Aadhaar cards. The introducers were the mediators. They conducted a Gram Sabha first and told the people about the usage and importance of this card. The main purpose of the card is to be the first identification. It is impossible to duplicate a card or make fraudulent ones because the number on each card corresponds to that person’s fingerprints which are never the same for 2 people. Iris scans are also unique even if the face is changed. Everyone in the village was told in great detail about this procedure and every house has to have it and every individual over 5 years of age will be given a card, and that the card will be useful for anything—for example admission in school, if one migrates to another state this has their permanent address and it is meant to identify people. All the people involved in the introducer, took initiative and helped with the Aadhaar. Every day there used to be 30–40 people enrolled from the village. These people were good at liaising with the villagers, lining them up, identifying them and helping with the documents. The introducers worked very well. They picked one village at a time, one group at a time and gave them the date and time to come for registration. They were asked to bring photo IDs if there were any and bank account books. If they didn’t have a bank account, then we tied up with the bank and opened accounts for them on the same day. In the Wake of Aadhaar 209


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Interview with Jyotsna Singh, Block Development Officer, Ratu block.

Asked how people could access their accounts, Ms. Singh said that his had to be wherever they opened their accounts. For example, the nearest bank to us is Ratu which is 5 kilometres away and everyone here are farmers. So, they have to go to the market anyway for business. The market is on Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Also they have to go to the town to purchase something or the other very often so they can go to their banks then. Jharkhand government has given schoolgoing children cycles especially to girls. So they go to school by cycle and can also stop by at the bank.

In addition, the other concern was the near-science-fiction optimism of total state planning that this new project could bring about, as we see in Deputy Commissioner of Ranchi, Mr. K.K. Soan’s ambitions for what would happen: The first thing would be that the UID would help with proper planning. Because if you have the UID for a particular pocket. Then you would 210 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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exactly know the total population. If we take one village and if we are sure that 50% of the population are women. Then we will be in a position to chalk out a plan for the population. See if the population is 500 then we would be in a position to provide 5 drinking wells or 5 hand pumps. If we know that the population is 700 then we will be in a position to increase the schemes for the villages. Slmilarly under NREGA. If we know that these numbers of people reside in a village we will be in a position to sanction more schemes for the villages so that they would avail the employment opportunities in their own villages. So these would help the state administration in getting the work done in a proper way.

Interview with Mr. K.K. Soan, Deputy Comissioner, Ranchi.

The pronounced utopian vision admittedly has another side to it: a more positive self-enabling dimension in the project, for now at least, as we saw with our interview with Birsi, a young woman from Tarup. She has not yet got her Aadhaar card, but expects to get it soon, after which she will have, for the first time, a pehchan-patra. Because she didn’t have one she could not contest the Panchayat elections, but will do so the next time.



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Interview with Birsi.

NOTES For video interviews with a range of Aadhaar enrollees in Ratu, see https://pad.ma/CER/info. 1

Bharat Bhatti, Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera, ‘Experiments with Aadhaar’, The Hindu June 27, 2012, http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/experiments-with-Aadhaar/article3573730.ece.

2

http://finmin.nic.in/reports/Report_Task_Force_Aadhaar_PaymentInfra.pdf.

3

Jean Dreze, ‘NREGA: Ship without Rudder’, The Hindu, July 19, 2008 http://www.hindu. com/2008/07/19/stories/2008071954741100.htm.

4

Bharat Bhatti, ‘Aadhaar-Enabled Payments for NREGA Workers’, Economic & Political Weekly, December 8, 2012 vol xlvii no. 49.



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Andhra Pradesh An Identity Project field report

The CSCS Identity Project team visited Andhra Pradesh on four occasions: the first time (March 25-27, 2011) to Hyderabad to meet with State government officials and to view Aadhaar enrollments; between March 30-April 3, 2011, and later in April to Shamirpet and Maheshwaram in Ranga Reddy District, and then, when the decision was taken to focus on the financially excluded, an extended field visit to several locations in the Kurnool district in October 2011. The project also conducted an extensive public consultation in Hyderabad, ‘Digitisation of Identity and the Financially Excluded: The Specific Instance of Andhra Pradesh’ (details available on http://www.identityproject.in). Andhra Pradesh of course occupies a very special place in India’s overall efforts at putting together a digital governance, with its famous database of ration cards, put together by the Department of Food and Civil Supplies, to which several of its key poverty alleviation schemes, crucially the Indira Kranthi Patham and the Rajiv Arogyasri health programme, are already linked. Equally, the history of the self-help groups going back to UNDP-World Bank support from the mid-1990s remains to this day almost unique in the country, and the basis in the present for the present-day effort to set up a network of branchless banking in the form of banking correspondents across the state. As with all such pre-existing ecosystems, the only purpose that Aadhaar will now serve, it is widely believed, is to clean up fake and ghost cards, and generally to stop leakage.



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The pre-history of the FCS database: the ` 2 per kg Rice Scheme: Nothing speaks more foundationally to the State’s political history than the famous ` 2 rice scheme, going back to the plank that saw N.T. Rama Rao’s Telugu Desam’s rise to power in the early 1980s. Originally introduced in 1982-83, it enabled families having income less than ` 6,000 per annum to get rice at a subsidised rate (subject to a ceiling of 25 Kg per month). These households were issued green cards (which were later converted into white cards) and others yellow cards. The yellow card holders were eligible for the same quantity of rice at ` 3.50 per kg. The ` 2 rice scheme lead to a sharp increase in ration cards and has continued to grow even in the recent past. A report on the state of PDS in December 2009 throws up some interesting facts: PDS coverage in rural AP is extensive, and rural AP constitutes 83% of the total Fair Price Shops in the state. Districts in coastal Andhra have a better network as compared to Rayalaseema and Telangana regions. Famously, AP defines poverty more inclusively (60% of state population) than the central governmment does (16% of state population), and so the state displays low errors of exclusion. And the most famous fact of all: the number of state BPL cards in AP is greater than the number of BPL households, indicating high errors of inclusion particularly in the rural areas. The wholesale and retail margins of PDS commodities in AP seem to be low for both rice and wheat. One of the inferences of this research is that since the existing margins provided to retailers is not attractive, it has led to large scale leakage and pilferage. One report, ‘The Report of the Working Group on PDS and Food Security for the Tenth Five-Year Plan’ has provided state level estimates of diversion of grains from the PDS, and it is found that 19% of rice and 15% of wheat in Andhra are diverted to open markets.1 One of the significant recommendations of the study is therefore that the state should work towards adopting a ‘decentralised system’ which would provide flexibility of choice of grains and in addition also work towards subsidy rationalisation. These recommendations are prioritised over the state government’s claim of ‘distributing computerised ration cards along with bar coded coupons with a view to provide universal coverage, elimination of 214 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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duplicate cards and cards with ineligible/non-residents/non-existing families known as bogus/ghost cards’. These measures are not being implemented from the point of view of improving PDS targeting, which seems to be the immediate need. On Aadhaar Enrollments in the State: In many ways, the cleaning up of the ration-card structure provides the overdetermined rationale for the entry of Aadhaar, which was launched in March 2010 when the Andhra Pradesh State Government signed an MoU with the UIDAI. The MoU was in line with the standard roles and responsibilities that the UIDAI had established with other state governments. Here the role of the State Government was to facilitate the enrollment process by identifying Registrars, providing logistics and liaison support to the staff and representatives of the UIDAI, etc. The role of the UIDAI was prescriptive: pertaining to conceptualising the process of enrollment including evolving a funding mechanism for enrollment of residents into the UID system to delivering the Aadhaar number. The Food & Civil Supplies Department is the lead registrar for AP. Biometrics (iris and thumb impression) had earlier been used by the Civil Supplies department to issue Ration Cards and Job Cards for the National Rural Employment Guarantee program. The plan here was to match the Aadhaar data with the existing data with Civil Supplies and Rural Development departments. A new clause (9i) pertaining to the Civil Supplies Department, the lead Registrar, seems to have been introduced in the UIDAI’s MoU with AP. This states that the ‘Registrars can collect any data in addition to what is prescribed by the UIDAI for the purpose of rendering any service based on UID number’. Critics of the UIDAI have seen this as rendering ‘the UIDAI assurance that only basic identity information will be collected (to prevent discriminatory profiling) useless’. In August 2010, proof of concept (PoC) tests were conducted in 10 regions of AP (8 rural and 2 urban) in an attempt to define biometric standards, and to identify and weed out technical glitches in data capturing. Personal identification information such as name, gender and age were also collected. The biometric data collection exercise was held twice over 56 days across the In the Wake of Aadhaar 215


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10 locations. In September 2010, the Civil Supplies Department shortlisted 32 vendors for carrying out the enrollment process in seven districts of AP. Allegations were raised by vendors against the department for irregularities in finalising the bids, and in defense the Civil Supplies Minister asserted that vendors were asked to submit revised rates only so that they could get the most competitive price, and that this exercise had saved the Government ` 20 crores. The revised ‘floor price’ of ` 26 for Hyderabad, ` 28 for Ranga Reddy and ` 27 for East Godavari per enrollment was established. Four firms were empanelled by the Registrar: Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services, Smart Chip Ltd, Infronics and Techsmart India. Smart Chip has over a decade experience in Smart Card Management system in the area of transportation, e-governance and enterprise. Smart Chip is a member of the global smart card group Sagem Orga. Sagem Orga brings the expertise of two smart card powerhouses; Germany based ORGA Kartensysteme and French company Sagem Défense Sécurité which in turn is part of the multinational high-tech group SAFRAN Morpho. However, in November 2010, vendors voiced grievances against the Registrar for allegedly allotting more ‘stations’ (each station comprises 10,000 people) to some vendors than what was opted originally in the bids. This led to the cutting down of ‘stations’ for other vendors who had deposited the same amount. (Allegedly, in some cases the Registrar has allocated 400 stations while the original bid was for 100 stations). The UIDAI has set a target of 3 crore allotments for AP by the end of fiscal 2011. The first phase of implementation which started in Oct 2010 included seven districts in AP: East Godavari, Srikakulam, Adilabad, Hyderabad, Ranga Reddy, Chittoor, and Anantapur. The enrollment process that started in Oct 2010 hit several roadblocks leading to a few modifications in the overall process by Feb 2011. The boxes below attempt to capture these issues. The enrollment procedure was as follows: 1. Fill Pre-enrollment form after entering Ration Card No. 2. Download forms online (in Telugu or English) and submit forms offline at DPL centres along with ID proof. 216 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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3. Procure and submit enrollment forms offline and provide ID proof— As per rules, passport, PAN card, driving license, bank ATM card or even address cards issued by postal department can be submitted as proof of ID. 4. Await call for Iris and Biometrics scan to Designated Photo Location (DPL) centres on specified days through the media. 5. Form can take only 4 names. For additional names photocopy of form needs to be made and attached to the original form. Among the Initial Glitches that Emerged 1. Enrollment forms were in short supply. 2. People who could not read either English or Telugu found themselves falling prey to brokers who charge ` 15-20 per form fill-up, ` 50 to deliver an enrollment form to your doorstep and ` 200 to complete the whole process from form fill-up to biometrics scan in a day. 3. Confusion over ID proofs to be submitted. Some DPLs accept only Ration Cards. 4. 10-15 day wait for biometrics details capture due to shortage of DPL centres and staff. 5. DPLs not accepting photocopied forms as repetitions of the serial number was causing duplication problems in the system. From February 2011 onwards, i.e. just before our first visits, some of the above problems were sorted out in the following ways: 1. Enrollment stations increased from 80 to 120. 2. Procurement of additional 200 kits to record biometric data. 3. State Government decided to provide ration only to bearers of Aadhaar linked smart cards (thus previous claim of choice based Aadhaar rendered false).



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4. By mid February 16 lakh people from seven AP districts had completed Aadhaar enrollments, ~3.8 lakhs had been allotted Aadhaar numbers. The local ecosystem—the kinds of programmes that were considered friendly to digitisation: Access to Food: One of the main tasks that the Aadhaar number has been entrusted with in AP was ‘choosing the beneficiaries of the right to food law’ put in place by the National Advisory Council (NAC). The Aadhaar number was, at the time of our visits, expected to assist in achieving this goal of making food available to genuine beneficiaries of the PDS through UID-linked smart cards and computerisation of PDS operations, through eliminating bogus cards and through preventing diversion of subsidised food grain. The plastic Smart Cards that were being issued had an embedded chip that could store and update varied types of information, and are in wide use in the state: including for train passes, driver's license, health insurance and library cards. For the PDS, smart cards could store food grain eligibility and, if required, fingerprint details of each household member. Compatible machines placed in ration shops then would read this information and print a receipt for each transaction (see the Maheshwaram Experience, below). The smart card would, it was expected, have the encrypted data including Aadhaar and ration card numbers of the card holders and family members and their entitlement. While Aadhaar numbers are being targeted at all residents including children above the age of five, Smart Cards are being specially targeted at Below Poverty Line (BPL) families. Identification of genuine BPL families has been an existing issue with the Government. For instance, it was found that the five richest persons of a particular district were included in the BPL list. Now, State Rural Department Secretaries envisage synchronising UIDAI’s biometrics data with data from BPL census operations to arrive at a genuine list of BPL families. The impetus to State Governments to issue Smart Cards comes in the form of financial incentives from the Finance Commission. Each state would 218 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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be reimbursed ` 50 per capita towards the costs incurred. Additionally, ` 126 crore had been earmarked for AP and an additional amount of ` 10 crore would be provided to each state for upgrading their IT infrastructure. One of the problems faced with the use of smart cards as virtual ration cards was that it required ration shop owners to use machines for deciphering biometric cards which they have been generally reluctant to do. Besides, and perhaps more importantly, the lack of written and easily readable information on the smart card about the precise entitlement of the customer for different commodities leaves the scope for cheating by the shopkeepers. Thus, this system could serve only a limited purpose of keeping the fake beneficiaries at bay, without effectively plugging other malpractices. In order to get around this, it has been widely proposed that the Smart Card be used as an authentication tool and that food coupons be provided, which carry food entitlements. In that case, biometric verification would need to be done only once a year at the time of distributing coupons. Responses from such a pilot process in MP have shown that this system seems simpler and more consumer-friendly. In addition to tightening the PDS and executing the Right to Food Law, the authentication aspects of Smart Cards are also planned to be used in the following services in AP: Rajiv Arogyasri: This now-globally famous health flagship scheme of the state government was started in 2007 as the Rajiv Aarogyasri Community Health Insurance Scheme (RAS) to reduce the financial burden of spending on health to the state’s poorest citizens (BPL families). It is meant to improve access of BPL families to treatment of selected diseases that require hospitalisation and/or are relatively expensive to treat (i.e, all procedures covered are emergency/life-saving in nature and require specialist physicians and/or equipment not available in most district government hospitals). The RAS is a Public Private Partnership (PPP) fully financed by GoAP—based on the BPL figures and insurance premium (below) the government incurs a cost of approximately ` 8 billion annually on Insurance Premium. In the Wake of Aadhaar 219


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The scheme was originally introduced in three backward districts of Mahboobnagar, Anantapur and Srikakulam on a pilot basis, and was extended in a phased manner to 23 districts of the state. By march 2011, the scheme was being extended to 20.4 million BPL families encompassing 70 million people. The entire scheme was, at the time of the field visits, being implemented by the Star health Insurance Company. It covered 950 surgical procedures through an established network of healthcare providers (primarily private, but also some Government), and also included pre-surgery related OPD consultation, diagnostic tests and medical treatment regardless of whether patients ultimately required surgery or not. Apart from this, free food and transportation were also provided to patients who were admitted. All members of BPL families—identified based on the state’s previously existing ration card systems—become eligible as beneficiaries with an annual benefit per family of ` 2 lakh (BPL families may also receive additional funds in certain cases in which costs exceed the maximum benefit). This transaction was cashless for the covered procedures; the annual premium of ` 400 was paid for by the AP government and approved care was provided for free at the point of service. There have been some concerns expressed about this scheme. Between 2009 and 2010, researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health conducted a survey of two relatively rural districts of AP (Warangal and Nalconda) to establish the extent to which RAS offers financial protection to BPL households. Around 75% of the households studied reported owning a RAS health insurance card. The findings of the study included the following concerns: 1. Households with RAS insurance cards generally reported higher treatment expenses than those without, particularly among those using facilities (which includes both hospital and all other levels of health facilities and providers). 2. RAS was designed to cover costs of only the most expensive and rarest of health conditions whereas BPL patients incur burdensome expenditures for all hospitalisations. 220 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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3. Surveyed population showed preference for treatment outside the public sector and at higher-level facilities. The actual utilisation for common primary care needs is modest to non-existent. 4. Survey revealed that patients in AP may present themselves at any health facility (public or private) and at any level of care regardless of severity of the motivating health conditions. The study recommended ‘a gate keeping system for those who use government facilities and consume governmental resources is long overdue’. For the Identity Project’s own findings and responses, see below (The Health Question). Indiramma (Integrated Novel Development in Rural Areas and Model Municipal Areas): The main stated objective of this scheme has been to saturate the delivery of basic needs to specific activities in villages and towns (all Gram Panchayats) over a period of 3 years beginning 2006. This included bringing various welfare schemes like housing, drinking water, link roads, medical care, primary education, nutrition and old age pensions under one scheme.The AP Government earmarked ` 7,725 crore for the entire scheme of which ` 6,207 crore was set aside for individual beneficiaries and the rest to groups. The Plan in 2006 was to build about 20.12 lakh houses (17.67 in rural areas and 2.45 lakh in urban areas). Of the beneficiaries in rural areas, Scheduled Castes were planned to be allotted 3.48 lakh houses, Scheduled Tribes (2.04 lakh), Weaker Sections (7.39 lakh) and others (3.29 lakh). The government planned to spend ` 30,000 per house: ` 25,000 for the construction of the house, ` 2,750 for building toilets, and ` 3,200 under NREGA for laying foundation for beneficiaries to begin building their own houses. In urban areas the amount earmarked is ` 42,750 which includes ` 2,750 for building toilets and ` 40,000 for construction of house. Additional expenditure would be borne by the beneficiary. It was mandatory for a toilet to be in every house.



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The loan repayment could be done in between 120 to 180 installments at an EMI of ` 220. Beneficiaries would, at the same time, be educated on how to pay property tax and water tax on a regular basis. Indira Kranti Patham: In 2004, the Government of AP introduced this project, perhaps the most significant of the state’s many initiatives. The IKP was meant to expand its role in Self Help Groups (SHG) consisting of rural poor women. This took off from an earlier initiative ‘Velugu’ launched by the State Government with World Bank support in 2000. IKP leverages the federation structure (Zilla Samakhyas—Mandal Samakhyas—Village Organisations—Self Help Groups) and the principle of subsidiarity, and is managed by an independent Society for the Elimination of Rural Poverty (SERP). By the time of our field visits, especially in Kurnool, we realised that the SHG network under IKP had gone beyond credit into several major nontraditional areas, including 1. Land Access Programme where several million hectares of government land has been assigned to the poor in Andhra Pradesh over the past decades. Under IKP, the State government has launched a comprehensive land development project that works towards bringing a certain percentage of this area under productive use. 2. Marketing of commodities like maize, neem, soybean, coffee, lac and red gram. 3. Distribution of old-age pensions. 4. Community Managed Sustainable Agriculture (CMSA). 5. Community based food security system. 6. Dairy interventions have with livestock being purchased through SHG-bank linkages and with the SHG network setting up bulk milk coolers and milk procurement centres.



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The total expenditure of IKP since inception up to February 2011 was ` 2390.89 crores. CSCS visited one village in Kurnool, and has a detailed video of the village:

For a detailed interview with Vijaya Bharathi, a senior SHF federation leader, who was the project officer instrumental in establishment of the SHG movement in the district, see here: https://pad.ma/CKQ. She has been with the SHG movement since the early 1990s when the SHG movement started as a UNDP experiment. The leader traces in detail the origin, growth of the SHG movement, which is the world’s biggest poverty alleviation programme. She highlights the initial difficulties and the recent advances made by the movement in creating awareness amongst the poor. Scholarships and Fee Reimbursements for minority students: Through the AP Minority Finance Corporation (APMFC), the state government provides scholarships under five heads, pre- and post-Matric, fee reimbursement, incentives scholarships, employment and training, for economically backward minority students whose family income is below ` 1 lakh per annum. A clause stating that ‘if the distance between the residence of the student and institution is below 5 KM scholarship will not be sanctioned’ further delineates the objective of these schemes.



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For 2010-2011, the APMFC had allocated a sum of ` 13105 lakhs for State Government schemes and ` 4500 lakhs for Central Government Schemes totaling approximately ` 1.8 billion. LPG connections—Deepam Scheme: The Government of India has historically attempted to encourage fuel switching from biomass to cleaner commercial fuels by providing large universal price subsidies to kerosene, sold through the Public Distribution System (PDS), and LPG sold in 14.2kilogram (kg) cylinders by dealers belonging to state-owned oil companies. A scheme providing price subsidies, however, does not address one of the barriers to household fuel switching to LPG: the high upfront cost associated with the start-up of LPG service. For example, a new LPG user in the state of Andhra Pradesh (AP) must pay ` 1,000 for an LPG connection in order to receive an LPG cylinder and then must purchase an LPG stove and associated accessories at an additional cost of ` 1,000 or so. The combined cost of LPG connection and stove purchase makes it difficult for many poorer households to start using LPG as a cooking fuel. In order to help overcome this barrier, the Civil Supplies department launched the Deepam scheme in July 1999 whereby the connection fee was paid by the government for below-poverty-line (BPL) households possessing white ration cards. Those who did not possess white ration cards were also eligible, provided that their Self-help Groups passed a resolution attesting to their BPL status, or they had been recommended by Mandal Revenue Officers. Deepam’s stated purpose is to reduce drudgery among women and children from wood collection and cooking, improving the health of household members by reducing ambient concentrations of smoke and other harmful pollutants, and protect forests from further degradation. The scheme was originally designed to cover 1 million rural and 0.5 million urban households, and to this end, the State Government agreed to pay the total cost of ` 1.5 billion for the 1.5 million LPG connections. The total number of connections authorised was increased to ~1.7 million in 2002, with the overall target increased to 3.0 million. By Oct 2009 ~3.6 million connections had been released under the scheme.



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In return for the release of additional subsidised LPG provided by the Centre Government to cover the Deepam scheme, the State Government of AP agreed to surrender 5 litres of kerosene per month for each household enrolled in the scheme. This was done by reducing kerosene rations for urban Deepam beneficiaries and rationalising the distribution of kerosene through the PDS. The Deepam beneficiaries have to cover other upfront costs of taking up LPG—the purchase of a stove and associated accessories—amounting to a sum of ` 1,000.

THE HEALTH QUESTION An Identity Project field report

The UIDAI’s Imagination for Health In an undated vision statement on its website, 2 the UIDAI proposed that health-related applications could provide the kind of ‘killer application’ that could energise people to go and get themselves a UID card. The vision essentially proposed that, whereas the string point for the project would have to be the aggregation of records from various population databases such as the census, the PDS system, voter identity systems, etc., while dealing with the challenge of duplication, such databases my well leave a large percentage of the population uncovered. And so, it would be useful to get an application that could provide demand side pull: created either afresh or fostered on existing platforms by respective ministries. The UIDAI document pointed out that public health in India is seeing a revolution both in terms of (1) greater commitment towards government financing of public and primary healthcare; (2) pressure to meet the MDG goals; (3) consequent creation of large supply platforms at national levels such as the NRHM, RSBY and complementary state level initiatives such as the Rajiv Arogyasri insurance scheme in Andhra Pradesh.



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The major challenges identified were: (1) lack of detailed denominator (i.e. target population to be covered) focussed services delivery by the government’s rural and urban healthcare systems at district and subdistrict levels; (2) poor tracking of health conditions by the ICD-10 disease classification system and; (3) lack of ability to roll out, at scale, expansion of ambitious national health insurance schemes like the RSBY. Essentially, the statement proposed this possibility: the assembly of an integrated routine health system that can capture and track population level disease conditions by linking citizen IDs with hospital or other medical facility records generated through facility visits: which could then: (1) inform the public health system of the prevalence of various routine disease conditions; (2) help prepare the health system to respond to unforeseen epidemics. It suggested that a partial example of the first category was in evidence with the Rajeev Arogyasri insurance scheme in Andhra Pradesh. However, scaling such a project across the country could only happen with coordination between the UID project, the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Labour. In this, the launch of the RSBY (Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana) by the Ministry of Labour was ‘a great example of a killer app waiting for a platform’. It was intended to provide in some form, in partnership with states, insurance coverage to the country’s entire population. But, since the launch, only approximately 5.4 million individuals in some 370 districts of 18 states had been covered (at the time of the report). Although RSBY does have a provision of a card and supports a putatively large but very simple field registration effort, the UIDAI proposed that a partnership with Aadhaar could: (1) provide an additional and fresh, unlikely to be duplicated source of registrations for the UID; and (2) more importantly, in conjunction with linkages to a routine health information systems, could improve public health in terms of efficiency and outcomes.



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INSURANCE, MEDICAL INFORMATICS, AND ELECTRONIC HEALTH RECORDS (EHR)

It is interesting that the UIDAI foregrounds the RSBY and the

single possibility of making insurance available to the country’s entire population— and does not mention the two other partners that go alongside insurance to define the healthcare economy in its entirety: namely, the medical informatics industry and the role that electronic health records (EHR) play in developing that industry. This was the explicit vision that the Indian Association for Medical Informatics (IAMI) had prepared for the UIDAI: the vision of how healthcare IT systems could overcome their ‘fundamental problem’, namely of the inherent inability of disparate systems from multiple vendors to identify the same patient accurately at all times. The purpose of the EHR, as a universal identifier, would then permit all such vendors to be able to target their delivery directly to the concerned customer/ patient.3 A separate statement on the IAMI’s e-health portal outlines the mechanism more elaborately. Proposing that the UID scheme has ‘opened up new vistas for the healthcare sectors’, it says that the ‘medical industry could build up a database using Aadhaar as base for seamless use by various healthcare providers’, and asks for sequel steps by the Government to develop EMRs/ EHRs through suitable legislation and policies that would legally accept digital signatures, and provide guidelines to standardise records formats, nomenclature, and communication protocols to enhance interoperability of IT applications across healthcare spectrum. Once these regulatory norms and standards are put in place, various HCOs, ISVs (independent software vendors) and stake holders shall come forward to develop and implement EHRs. The linkage of EHRs linked to the UID of the patient will ensure achievement of ultimate objective of ‘one EHR for each patient, accessible anywhere, anytime’. Also, automated transactions shall create a trail that permits medical audit thereby increasing accountability. In addition, adhering to standard treatment guidelines and clinical pathways shall enable clinicians to practice evidence based medicine.4 In the Wake of Aadhaar 227


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ONE EHR—ACCESSIBLE ANYWHERE? PRIVACY AND HEALTH CARE RECORDS

The significant absence was, in our research, the near-complete

absence of any debate on the possible consequences of sensitive information regarding people’s health records being freely available with the industry. In the absence of anything resembling the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) Privacy and Security Rules in the USA, the potential for both financial misuse as well as straightforward privacy violation is huge. Among the very few instances of protest at the lack of healthcare privacy, groups working with sexuality minorities have been especially concerned about the way the government’s computerised management information systems have sought to monitor various interventions, including asking for the names of those treated and details of treatment. In 2011, the Delhi-based Naz Foundation chose to return money given by the Delhi State Aids Control Society rather than supply names. They have asked how EMRs containing sensitive health data can be kept confidential and secure in digital datasharing environments.5

THE AROGYASRI INSTANCE

The Arogyasri programme of the government of Andhra Pradesh

has been widely hailed as a landmark development in the Indian healthcare scenario. The Identity Project conducted several field interviews in the State, and also spoke at considerable length with Mr. A. Babu, the CEO of the programme. About Arogyasri

The programme was launched in 2007 and is widely credited to the vision of former Chief Minister Y.S.R. Reddy, and was originally targeted at the below-poverty line (BPL) population.6 The programme claims it does not 228 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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especially need Aadhaar except as a leakage-stopping mechanism, since they use FCS data. Their members total about 70 million individuals and 85% of the state’s population. The crucial structure is that patients can go to any empanelled hospital of their choice, and the system presently has 241 private and 97 government hospitals. The system’s crucial component is the team of arogyamithras: facilitators available in all hospitals to register, facilitate the treatment and guide patients for all services. Aarogyamithras are available in PHC / CHC / Area Hospital / District Hospital to ‘guide and facilitate cashless treatment in the network hospital’. At present, the number of private hospitals far outnumber the government ones, and there is major demand for empanelment (by one account, only 40% of the 832 applicants are currently empanelled hospitals, and 250 applications were rejected, 95 have been delisted, de-empanelled, or suspended). All hospitals have to deliver the 938 procedures for free, according to pre-agreed clinical guidelines, conduct a ‘health camp’ every week at a place chosen by the Trust, and provide all those who attend with a general health check and a screening for relevant health conditions; patients attending these camps account for 45% of Aarogyasri admissions. Hospitals must fulfill several other conditions too, including employing an Aarogyasri medical coordinator, providing medicines for use after discharge, providing a follow-up consultation, and making available to the Arogyasri reception a computer, printer, scanner, digital camera, webcam, and 2 mbps connectivity. The really important feature is that the day-to-day running of the scheme is contracted out to a private insurance company, selected through a competitive tender. The insurer empanels hospitals under the supervision of the Trust, pre-authorises care within 12 hours of the hospital requesting it (the Trust also signs off on the pre-authorisation), verifies the care has been delivered, checks its quality, and then transmits payment to the hospital electronically within 10 days of the patient’s discharge.7



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PERCOLATION There seems no doubt that the programme has become part of everyday life in rural Andhra. Several of those interviewed in both Kurnool and Rangareddy districts said they had Arogyasri cards (all interviews are online): here we present one detailed interview, mainly because it outlines the specific Arogyasri experience in some detail: Sheikh Shah Valli: aged 26, from Gonegundla. He is uneducated and, with his father and three brothers, owns 10 acres of land, and has taklen additional land on lease. He cultivates onions and millets, and only 3 out of the 10 acres of his land is irrigated. He has had a major kidney operation under the scheme. On the Arogyasri treatment

Q: A: Q: A: Q: A: Q:

How have you benefitted from Arogyasri? We told them that we don't have the money. We had spent some of our own money for my kidney treatment. What have they done? They removed my kidney because it had become dysfunctional. Did they do a transplant? No they said it requires a lot of money. You did not have any personal money?



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A: Q: A: Q: A: Q: A: Q: A: Q: A:

Q: A: Q: A: Q: A:

Q: A:

No, all the expenditure at the RR Hospital was paid for by the Arogyasri scheme. Where is the RR Hospital? In Kurnool. They even provide free meals. They operated upon me and kept me in the hospital for a month and 20 days. You did not spend anything from your own pocket? No sir. Do you have the Arogyasri card? Yes. Do you know anyone in the government? Do you have political connections? No. I don't know anyone. So you just took your card and they operated you. I have no political connections. I am a farmer. We went and asked the hospital and they agreed to operate me. I took my Arogyasri card with me. They told me that I will have to be in the hospital for a month. It’s been 3 years since I have been operated upon. The first two years I did light work and opened a bunk (shop). I don't do too much farm work now. You had such a big operation. Did it happen without anyone’s influence? I got tests done in Kurnool. They sent me to Hyderabad to get some tests done. Both the tests showed the same results. Which hospital in Hyderabad? I don't know the name. I knew a driver there. Do you have any relatives in Hyderabad? Yes, I have an uncle who is in the police department. The doctor here had written my report. So they did the tests based on that. I came back here to have the operation. Apart from you, has anyone in your family benefitted from Arogyasri? My mother had a heart attack. We had to take her to Kurnool. They took veins from her thighs to repair her heart valves. That was a In the Wake of Aadhaar 231


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Q: A: Q: A:

year ago in Hyderabad. My father knows all this since he usually accompanies her. How much did you spend on this? Only my father knows. Even for this operation you father hasn’t spent anything from his personal money? I know about my operation. My father knows about the other operation.

On the number of ‘cards’ he has

Q: A: Q: A: Q: A: Q: A: Q: A: Q: A:

Does your father have an Arogyasri card? My father, mother, wife and I have it. Do your brothers have it? They too have it. Do they take bribes when they give you the card? No, they did not. They distributed it for free. Who distributed it? That I don’t know. The gram sevaks give it to us when cards with our names came. Did you make an application? Only my father knows. Because we are usually at work. All the three brothers have it. Recently they said they would give another card, Adhaar card. . . Did they take photographs? No, they haven’t given it yet. We applied but it hasn’t come.



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Q: A: Q: A: Q: A: Q: A: Q: A: Q: A: Q: A: Q: A: Q: A: Q: A: Q: A: Q: A: Q: A: Q: A: Q: A:

Did they take your fingerprints and photographs? Yes they did by they haven't give us the card yet. What is a rachabanda card? They said that they will give it for my family under that but they did not. Did you get a receipt? We gave photos, address. . . Did you fill a form. . . Yes, we bought a form for ` 2–3. . . Did you buy the form? Yes sir. My family, i.e my wife and children were made to take a photograph and give it to them. Who did you give this to? The people who made the list. Did they take the fingerprints of all your five fingers? They did not take fingerprints. They just took our photo and gave us a receipt with a seal on it. Did you have to take a photo of your entire family? Yes. How many cards do you have in total? We have 3 cards in all. How many cards do you have individually? Just one. Do you have a voter card? Just my father, mother and brother have it. My wife and I don’t have it. Do you have a ration card? Yes, I have a ration card. Does it have a photo? It has my father, mother, wife, daughter and me. Five of you have one ration card. I get 20 kgs of rice for that. You have the white card? Yes sir. In the Wake of Aadhaar 233


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Q: A: Q: A: Q: A: Q: A: Q: A: Q: A: Q: A: Q: A: Q: A: Q: A: Q: A: Q: A: Q: A:

Does your father have a pension card? My father has a voter ID card. Not voter ID card, a pension card? We had applied for it but never got it. Both my parents don’t have it. You have no other cards? No. Has the government given you a house? Yes, it has. Because I don’t have a voter ID card they haven’t reimbursed my bill. Under the Indirammailliu Scheme? Yes, my brother has got a double house. I haven’t got it. Have they given you a site? Yes. Have you built a house on it? I have. But they haven’t given you the money for it? How much money is pending from them? They just gave me ` 10,000 and 10 bags of cement. They need to pay the balance. What is your total cost? My father has the bill. We just put the roof and stopped construction as we ran out of money. You don't live in it? No, it’s incomplete. How much were they offering you to build the house? About ` 45,000 and cement. They just gave me ` 10,000 and ten bags of cement. Do you avail work under the 100 days work scheme? Yes we go at times. Do you have the card? No we don’t.



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Q: A: Q: A: Q: A: Q: A: Q: A: Q: A: Q: A: Q: A:

Why don’t you have the card? We went but they did not give it. Why didn't they? When it is time to get it we would have gone to our farms. Lots of people have it. Do you have a bank account? We have opened it but do not operate it. What bank? Andhra Bank. Have you taken a loan from any cooperative society? I have taken a bank loan. What's the purpose? For the farm. How much did you take? My father knows that. For your farm or your fathers. All the farmland is in my father’s name.

PRIVACY ISSUES: CONVERSATION WITH MR. A. BABU, CEO, AROGYASRI TRUST

The former CEO outlines in considerable detail the history, scale and

present achievements of the programme. The complete interview is online and is an extremely significant statement.

As a part of his presentation, Mr. Babu showed us the confidential side of the programme’s digital data, online. We reproduce relevant excerpts. Although the camera is only focused on the presenter, he is showing us on a giant screen the kind of data he is able to track:



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Excerpts

Mr. Babu: (Selects one case at random): I will go to one case, for example. This is the case. We can see the patient on the bed here. The social economic parameter of the case is the 16 digit unique number of the health card, that is there. Here this data, this is the family. This guy is lying down in the hospital. Do you know where this photo came from? It came from the 80 million databases. That is there in the card database. We are clearly establishing the identity here. If this doesn’t come out that fellow isn’t covered under the scheme. We analyse this, we verify that the person has come and all his details, his registration details, his previous treatment details are available. His reference route, how he came to the hospital. His admission notes. All that you see in a hospital, the management system. His admission notes, his clinical notes, his vitals. Pre-organisation details that deals with the doctor, treatment plan and other things. We can see the doctor’s name is here, his qualification is here, his MCI registration number is there. His telephone numbers are there. We are keeping all these things to fix the responsibility and our doctors will speak to the doctor if there is any doubt while giving the approvals. And all these clinical parameters are there, his package is there. In this case, we have the previous case also done.



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This patient has undergone two dialysis earlier. Now here we can see the previous history and there are the EMRs. All his EMRs are available here. EMRs are Electronic Medical Records. All kinds of reports, Doppler films. Now we also have angiograms like this coming into us. All these things x-rays, angiograms, blood analysis reports, colour Dopplers everything flows to us online. Doctors look at it on our end. If it is an angiogram, it is looked at by a cardiothoracic surgeon or a cardiologist at our end. We see whether indications are there for his treatment for the patient. If that is established we give our approval. So nobody can cheat us in terms of unindicted procedures or other things. The technology is helping us in analysing this data. We analyse the data and give approvals and then for example. . . this case. . . we give our approvals like this. You can see the approval. Dr. Vijaythirumala Reddy and Dr. Srivani. Two doctors are approving it. The approving remarks are there. This is the case (that) has now come: claims and account number is verified. Operation node is available; post treatment state of the patient is available. Discharge summary is taken from the system including his advice for the future and other things. The post discharge data which has to come to us. In this case, it is a colour Doppler that we require. Then the billing including the taxing and other things and the claim. The claim processing and his payment and other things. We also have discharge photographs coming to us so that we know that the patient has been discharged along with (unclear). Looking at all these things you can see that there is a definite route along which the patient moves. And his claim is paid only after all this takes place. And claim is paid by electronic transfer. No cash, no cheque, nothing. We can see what the hospital is doing. What we are processing the hospital can see. No pick and choose of file. If you give pick and choose option in India there is corruption. Move my file get this much percentage.



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What of privacy? Is there any check on dissemination on the kind and extent of data the man seems to have at his fingertips:

Mr. Babu: We have only given clinical parameters to the treating doctors. He has to sit in front of the computer only for a short time. He has to be with the patients, he shouldn’t just sit in front of the computer. So we have subdivided the work. These 18 people include the Arogyamitra, the paramedics in the hospitals, nursing staff, lab technicians, doctors and treating doctors. Then from our side the pre-organising doctors, the executives and the claim doctors. At the same time we have ensured that there is data security. You know it is patient-related data. We cannot open it up to 200 people. Only authorised doctors can look at it. We have very clearly separated that aspect. It is one of the reasons developed countries are very stringent with the security. They think of too much security but nothing is implemented. If you carefully split it up where the medical data is seen only by the doctors and the socioeconomic data which can be seen by others. Hand holding data is there where you can trace and follow up with the patient. This training programme has helped us to spread this message. 9500 people have been trained. The results, in terms of the kind of the close monitoring of every stage in the medical process, the prior history of the patient and the subsequent tracking of his health, was staggering in its detail. For complete video, go here: https://pad.ma/CIZ/info.



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THE MAHESHWARAM EXPERIENCE An Identity Project field report

The Identity project visits the Maheshwaram Mandal, Ranga Reddy district, where Aadhaar-enabled Fair Price Shops are being piloted. Background: In 2011, as part of the overall national initiative towards computerisation of the Public Distribution System, the state of Andhra Pradesh announced the completion of the digitisation of their ration card database across the state—and also the next phase for implementation. This phase involved issuing Smart Card-based solutions in all Fair Price Shops (FPSs). This phase of the project was being piloted at the Maheshwaram Mandal of the state’s Ranga Reddy district. At Maheshwaram, Smart Cards had been issued to beneficiaries covering 36 Fair Price Shops, along with PoS terminals for the purpose of commodity distribution. This was intended as a more or less single-stroke solution to an enormous number of problems. The October 2011 Report of the Task Force on an IT Strategy for PDS and an implementation solution for the direct transfer of subsidy for PDS Food and Kerosene8 had attempted to define an IT Strategy for PDS, alongside an implementable solution for the direct transfer of subsidy for food and kerosene. This strategy, it was claimed, was in line with the 2009 Report of the Justice D. P. Wadhwa—appointed committee on computerisation of PDS Operations, commissioned following a Supreme Court directive (People’s Union for Civil Liberties v. Union of India, W. P. (Civil) No. 196 of 2001). The 2011 Task Force had identified a string of problems with the PDS system (quoted in the essay by Sarkar and Chami in this volume). The Maheshwaram Pilot was one of the most high-visibility of four pilots taken up by the Department of Food and Public Distribution: the other three were initiated in Assam, Chhattisgarh and Delhi. The Maheshwaram effort therefore came at the head of several initiatives attempted by the State Government, going back to the Ration Card Designated Photography Location (DPL) centers setup in 2006–07 to collect and verify declaration forms and to enter beneficiary data in computers: a process that had at the time also In the Wake of Aadhaar 239


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included iris scanning for each member of thefamily, and the subsequent introduction of bar-coded coupons. During our visit at 10 am, distribution of ration at the FPS was in full swing. We focussed mainly on two key areas: (1) Was the process happening relatively smoothly, and in this, were the people involved (both beneficiary and shopkeeper) able to handle the emerging glitches? (2) Whether a structure of familiarity, and eventually a language of description, complaint and resolution was emerging, by which people were able to adopt new technologies. Excerpts from converations, and initial findings Maintaining two separate books: Smart cards had been issued for the ration shop being covered, and these were indeed linked to Aadhaar numbers: but a number of people (estimated by the people there to be at around 10%) whose names were on the ration roll had not yet received these cards. To this list, of known customers without cards, was a second list: known customers with cards, but turning up a negative authentication. Since both of the names were locally known, an earlier manual list was maintained, despite a digital database coming in, to cater to these groups. The vendor confessed, however, that she was also keeping the bound book for her ‘personal reference’, suggesting some reluctance to move to the next stage.



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INTERVIEWER: What is this? What is the bound book? Speaker: This is the old ration card. They write the details of the other commodities like palm oil, apart from the rice, sugar and kerosene etc. INTERVIEWER: Are they writing in the book even after you have got the smart card? Speaker: No, it’s not necessary. There is a bill that comes now. INTERVIEWER: So the number and the fingerprint need to match. You needn’t swipe the smart card? Speaker: No. INTERVIEWER: The card is swiped only when the fingerprinting details are to be stored on it. Speaker: You can put the card in here. But we don’t use that option. INTERVIEWER: So you just enter the number and fingerprint. Speaker: Yes. INTERVIEWER: So what is it showing you? Speaker: It shows what the card holder is entitled to. If it’s a 4 member family then they get 16 kilos of rice. If there are 3 members then it is 12 kilos. But if you enter 20 kilos for a family of 4 then the machine rejects it. INTERVIEWER: So the machine shows you what the entitlements are? Speaker: Yes, the message ‘quantity exceeds eligible amount’ appears on the screen. INTERVIEWER: So the entitlement details are stored on the card? Speaker: Yes. You can only enter the quantity of rice the person is entitled to. If you enter 30 kilos the machine rejects it. The 16 kilos of rice can be taken in two instalments of 8 kilos and 9 kilos. INTERVIEWER: So how many kilos are you taking now? Speaker: 16 kilos. Should I show you the slip? INTERVIEWER: Yes. Speaker: So as soon as you enter rice, the machine shows the next item, sugar. Then it shows wheat which we don’t have. There are 5 to 6 items in total. It shows all the items that are in stock. So there is palm oil, kerosene etc. It does not show the items that you have already taken.



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And elsewhere

INTERVIEWER: Are you writing on the sheet even after people have got smart cards. Speaker: You needn’t write it. It is for my reference. Biometrics issues: There appeared to be definite issues of biometrics not matching. Excerpts: INTERVIEWER: Is the fingerprinting working without any glitches? Speaker 1: Yes. There are some whose fingerprints don’t match. There are some people whose names appear on the systems but their finger prints don’t match. Speaker 2: There are some people old people whose names and fingerprints don’t match. INTERVIEWER: So then what do you do? Speaker: We submit a photocopy of the Aadhaar paper and get their details re-entered. INTERVIEWER: Can you explain the procedure for correcting fingerprints that don’t match? Speaker: There are some old people like this couple here who are 60–70 years old. Their finger prints don’t match. None of their fingerprints match. The name appears but their fingerprints don’t match. In which case we cannot give the rations. Only when their fingerprints match will the entitlement details appear on the system. So we submit a copy of their ration card and Aadhaar card. Then they set it right. INTERVIEWER: So how will you get their new finger prints on the system? 242 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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Speaker: Their finger prints are already there in the Aadhaar database. INTERVIEWER: So what if their palms are badly damaged or they don’t have fingers at all. Is there an alternative? Speaker: You can use three fingers on both hands. One of them has to match. INTERVIEWER: So then they enter the changes into the system. Speaker: Yes, they take the machine away to update it. INTERVIEWER: Have you bought this system or was it given to you by them? Speaker: They gave it to us. Speaker: So, my fingerprint doesn’t work on the system they can take my wife’s fingerprint. Even my children can put their fingerprints and take the rations. INTERVIEWER: So then what is the issue with the 2 cards that don’t match at all? Speaker: They are just the husband and wife in the family and both their fingerprints don’t match. INTERVIEWER: So do they ensure that the fingerprint works. Speaker: Yes. INTERVIEWER: Did the gram panchayat people give you the machine. Speaker: No, the Aadhaar people. INTERVIEWER: So do you call them on the helpline and they come? Speaker: The come once in a month, the Aadhaar people. They ask for a list of people whose fingerprints don’t match. So we give them the names along with photocopies of their Aadhaar and ration cards. They take the machine to update it. When we first got the machine more than 50 people had problems. Then about 25 still had issues and this month about 10 people have had issues with their fingerprints. So they have promised to come and set the it right. INTERVIEWER: Do you know how much the machine costs? Speaker: They said it costs ` 30,000. Speaker 1: This is the number we call when we have problems. It is the people who manufacture this machine. In the Wake of Aadhaar 243


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Speaker 2: So this family’s names are showing up twice on the system (double names). So their names don’t match. The Aadhaar people say that it will match only of the name appears once. And elsewhere: INTERVIEWER: The third finger too does not match. Speaker: This is the family whose name appears twice. Speaker: Give your card. Speaker 2: I haven’t got my smart card. Speaker: Some have got their smart cards and the others haven’t. INTERVIEWER: Do you take the fingerprints of the people who haven’t got smart cards? Speaker: Yes, their details are on the system so it works. INTERVIEWER: So there is really no use with the card to swipe it. etc. Speaker: No. They can just bring their papers. Speaker: The whole family is having problems with the fingerprints. INTERVIEWER: Can you show me the choices the machine shows? You can put three fingers. Left thumb, left index finger and right index finger. Speaker: Yes. Speaker: We have been trying for three months. But it isn’t working. INTERVIEWER: So they haven’t got their rations for three months? Is this a white card? Speaker: Yes. They haven’t got rations for three months but we have given them 2 months rations after making a note of it on humanitarian grounds. Of course, only after the officer approved. They are daily wage labourers. Availability of Stock: It appeared that lack of availibility of stock was being overcome mainly through human intervention. Relevant excerpts: INTERVIEWER: Suppose you do not have stock of a certain item on the day the sale is being made e.g. palm oil. What do you do? Speaker: We don’t enter palm oil on the system. When we have it they can put their thumb impression and take the item. So since that the only thing they haven’t taken. Only that item shows up.



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INTERVIEWER: So you get this many rations this month. Are there any other items that are not in this list? Speaker: There is wheat and toor dal (kandhi pappu). We do not enter items that we don’t have in stock. INTERVIEWER: What are the total items available for ration? Speaker: Now we give out only 5 but there are 7 items in total. INTERVIEWER: So the other two items are wheat and toor dal (kandhi pappu). You don’t have them in stock now? Speaker: Yes. INTERVIEWER: So people can come and take them when the items are in stock. Speaker: Yes. INTERVIEWER: Can you please explain what you are saying? Speaker: This is the stock. It shows how much stock we have received and sold in 15 days. INTERVIEWER: So does the machine give you a daily report? Speaker: Yes, we give the update option after about 50 people have bought their rations. It automatically gets updated to the central database. INTERVIEWER: How is this connected to the grid? Speaker: Online. It shows the stock we have left as well. INTERVIEWER: How many Antodaya cards do you have? Speaker: 45-50 members. INTERVIEWER: Now you said that you give them only stock that is available. How do you update it on the machine when they take rations the second time round? Speaker: Its simple, we don’t enter the items we are not giving them. The next time they come they enter their fingerprints and it shows what they haven’t taken. Then we give that to them. Speaker 1: Put you left finger on the system. Put the other finger. INTERVIEWER: What’s happening now? Speaker: It’s showing how much rice they are entitled to. It says 16 kilos. INTERVIEWER: How many white cards does your dealership have?



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Speaker: White card meaning WAP. If you deduct the Antodaya cards the rest are white cards. INTERVIEWER: What’s the error message saying? Speaker: It says ‘fingerprint mismatch’. Speaker: Madam, white cards have the code WAP and Antodaya cards have the code YAP. If you have YAP then you are entitled to 35 kilos of rice. INTERVIEWER: What about for white cards? Speaker: It varies, 16-20 kilos. INTERVIEWER: What are the entitlements for a 4 member family? Speaker: 20 kilos. If it is a poor family, even a single member family can get 35 kilos. INTERVIEWER: So even the whole Antodaya family can get 35 kilos? Speaker: Yes. INTERVIEWER: What about a white card family of 5? Speaker: 20 kilos. INTERVIEWER: Who gets 16 kilos? Speaker: A family of four. INTERVIEWER: So an Antodaya family gets 35 kilos irrespective of how many members it has? Speaker: Since it is for the poor, even a single member family gets 35 kilos. Not too many people get the YAP card. INTERVIEWER: How many people have Annapoorna cards? Speaker: Three people. INTERVIEWER: What is an Annapoorna card? Speaker: They get their 10 kilos of rice free of cost. INTERVIEWER: Who is eligible for an Annapoorna card? Speaker: Those classified as the poorest of poor. INTERVIEWER: Do you own this dealership? Speaker: Yes. Speaker: Finger matches. So now it shows 35 kilos of rice. INTERVIEWER: So is this a big family. Speaker: Anyone in a family can come and take the rations.



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INTERVIEWER: So the rest of the entitlements are same across all card types? Like palm oil, kerosene, sugar etc.? Speaker: Yes. It’s just the rice quantity that changes. INTERVIEWER: Does it show the name of the person on the receipt? Speaker: Yes, it shows the name of the family member and their card number. Speaker: These were given as part of the Rachabanda scheme recently. It is a temporary ration card. INTERVIEWER: How many people got this? Speaker: 4 members. They don’t have the cards yet. They get three month rations against the three coupons on the card. INTERVIEWER: This is a list of all the people who didn’t get their cards. Speaker: Yes, now this is a list of people who have the cards. These are the people who are yet to get cards. They are the new entries. INTERVIEWER: What I am asking is these 10 people are yet to receive a card out of the 27 people you have applied for together? Speaker: No, it’s a new list. Speaker: This is receipt of the new entries that were added recently. INTERVIEWER: Do new memberships come within a month? Speaker: When they started 50 members did not get their cards (out of all the people who had applied). Then we gave copies of the Aadhaar and ration cards. The next month about 25 members out of the 50 who had applied got their cards. Then we re-applied for the people who did not get the card the second time round. The rest of them haven’t got their cards as yet so their details are not on the machine. INTERVIEWER: Do they take the machine and go? Speaker: Yes. INTERVIEWER: How long is your shop open? Speaker: 15 days. INTERVIEWER: When do you get your stock? We get the stock 5 days after we have paid by DD (Demand Draft/Banker’s Cheque). INTERVIEWER: Do you pay on the 1st of every month? Do you determine the quantities based on the previous months records? In the Wake of Aadhaar 247


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Speaker: No we pay by the 20th of every month. INTERVIEWER: Do you pay for the stock you sold or stock you are to receive? Speaker: Stock we are to receive. INTERVIEWER: At what rates do you get your stock? Speaker: Only my brother knows. INTERVIEWER: What rate do you get it at? Speaker: We make a 20 paisa profit per kilo. We sell it at ` 2 a kilo. We get sugar ` 13.35. We sell it at ` 14. INTERVIEWER: What about for Pink card holders, do the prices vary for them? Speaker: Pink card are for job holders. INTERVIEWER: Do you buy rice at a different rate for pink card holders? Speaker: Pink card holders don’t get rice. They just get kerosene. INTERVIEWER: They don’t get rice, sugar etc. Speaker: No. Pink cards are for people with government jobs. See the complete video here: https://pad.ma/CJL/info

NOTES 1

Surajit Deb, ‘Public Distribution of Rice in Andhra Pradesh: Efficiency and Reform Options’, Economic & Political Weekly, December 19, 2009, vol XLIV no 51 http://www.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/ files/Public%20Distribution%20of%20Rice%20in%20Andhra%20Pradesh.pdf.

2

http://uidai.gov.in/UID_PDF/Working_Papers/UIDandPublicHealth.pdf.

3

http://ehealth.eletsonline.com/2009/10/iami-emphasises-need-for-utilising-uid-in-healthcare/#.

4

http://ehealth.eletsonline.com/2012/01/aadhaar-opening-up-of-new-vistas-in-healthcare-gpcapt-dr-sanjeev-sood-hospital-administrator-and-nabh-empanelled-assessor/.

5

http://www.dnaindia.com/analysis/column_lack-of-strong-privacy-law-in-healthcare-a-bigworry_1649366.

6

https://www.aarogyasri.org/ASRI/index.jsp#.

7

http://blogs.worldbank.org/developmenttalk/health-system-innovation-in-india-part-ii-aarogyasri .

8

Report of the Task Force on an IT Strategy for PDS and an implementable solution for the direct transfer of subsidy for Food and Kerosene (Nandan Nilekani, Chairman), October 2011.



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Tripura Nafis Hasan Researcher, Azim Premji Foundation and former Project Coordinator, The Identity Project

The CSCS Identity Project visited Agartala and neighbouring locations in the West Tripura district in December 2011. Tripura is well known for having received an award for leading the Aadhaar enrollment process in the country. As per the UIDAI portal, Tripura is the fifth-highest state in UID enrollment. This dossier and the accompanying essay speaks of how digitisation provides an aspirational image that Tripura produces for itself, in stark contrast to other states from the North East. Tripura has had a long history of identification practices as part of state governmentality. Tripura has been identified through several unique categories in the past—as a border state signifying issues of security; a state where citizenship certificates needed to be issued considering potential infiltration from neighbouring Bangladesh; a state identified as having a large community of scheduled tribes known as the Tripuri community; a state issuing permanent resident certificates (maintained in a register of residents) after certificates of citizenship were curtailed in 1971; a state whose population required to hold MNIC cards as proof of their citizenship (after the NPR exercise was conducted in the state) and now as a state being identified as successfully enrolling its residents into the Aadhaar database. Amid this legacy, Tripura now defines itself as an ‘e-state of the future’, and thereby also translates into the emergent virtual domain several of its present political conditions.



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INTRODUCTION

In July 2010, the Tripura State Government signed an MoU with the UIDAI,

though actual enrollment began only in December of that year. This MoU is in line with the standard roles and responsibilities that the UIDAI has established with other state governments. In May of that year, the state government of set up a state level cabinet committee on UID Implementation, under the chairmanship of the Chief Secretary, to oversee the implementation of the UID project. Subsequently, the Rural Development Department (RDD) was appointed as the Registrar for the UID enrollment in Tripura. The RDD’s commissioner, Kumar Alok, is also the head of the Joint Working Group for Aadhaar enrollment in North Eastern states. As with Andhra Pradesh, here too the MoU has a specific clause that allows registrars to collect ‘any data’. What the implications of these are at the ground level will need to be investigated. The majority of Tripura’s population is rural (~85%) and the RDD therefore plays the role of a nodal agency in the delivery of both central and state schemes. Some of the state sponsored schemes include: NREGA, Indira Awaas Yojana and Swarnajayanti Gram Swarosgar Yojna. The Enrollment Agency in Tripura is Alankit Assignments Limited. This firm was incorporated in the early 90’s as a wealth management firm and later diversified into managing eGovernance projects. Within the eGovernance portfolio, in addition to the UID project, the company has been involved in creating TIN facilitation centres, performing the functions of an income tax intermediary for the e-Return scheme and creating a National Skills Registry along with NASSCOM. The firm intends to leverage its vast network of service centres ‘of 1275 branches spread across 623 cities’ to enroll residents into the UID database. So far, as per the company website, it is involved in enrollment in 16 states across India.

Tripura was the first state in the North East region to begin Aadhaar enrollments in December 2010 and as of mid May, Alankit Assignments had issued a total of approximately 5,80,000 UID numbers (20% of the population) through approximately 450 enrollment stations spread across 250 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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several enrollment centers. For the purpose of enrollment, the State has been divided into four zones: 1) North Tripura with head quarters at Kailashahar; 2) South Tripura with headquarters at Udaipur; 3) West Tripura with head quarters at Agartala; and 4) Dhalai with headquarters at Ambassa. Importantly, three of these zones border Bangladesh. As of May 2011, approximately 3,00,000 UID numbers had been generated in West Tripura, 1,30,000 in South Tripura, 1,15,000 in North Tripura and 40,000 in Dhalai. Since Tripura has, historically, been home to immigration from Bangladesh, the field work attempted to track the nature of local resistance given this background. We found discussion on this within civil society, particularly in the context of Assam, on the question of whether the Aadhaar number could replace the existing work permit regime associated with illegal immigration. These discussions also threw light on the specific nature of micropolitics in and around bordering regions of North East India and offered cues to the kind of questions that can be taken into the field. In addition, there is of course a significant presence of Army and Central Para-Military Forces (CPMF) including both police and Tripura State Rifles (TSR) jawans. Enabling Demand: From a preliminary survey of reports available, it was clear that, while foreseeing the authentication uses for the Aadhaar number, the state government of Tripura had cast a wide net. The Director General of the UIDAI, speaking in Tripura on the benefits of Aadhaar, had stated that, ‘the issue of unique identities would help the citizens to access benefits, improve the governance and deliver public services and substantially reduce transaction costs, leakages and frauds in the service delivery system’. This sentiment, expressed as early as January 2011, one month after enrollments had begun in the state, finds its way in several state reports, including that of the 2011–12 budget presentations. In this presentation, the role of Aadhaar has been implicitly linked to the introduction of Business Correspondents as the preferred mode of financial transactions for MGNREGA workers. In addition, the use of Aadhaar is also foreseen in linking MGNREGA work with ‘the activities of other Departments through a synergised convergence’. The



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other major use of the Aadhaar number is being seen in the opening of bank accounts. As a background to the governmental services that Aadhaar is being put to, it is useful to create a list of key existing services under the aegis of the Registrar (RRD) which could have a possible use for the Aadhaar number in Tripura. Indira Awaas Yojana: A central scheme for aiding rural poor (defined as per BPL guidelines) in construction of dwelling units and renovation of existing unserviceable homes. This scheme has been in practice since January 1996. In Tripura, as per the 2008–2009 financial report on the RDD’s website, close to ` 100 million has been released under this scheme since inception. The guidelines for Identification and selection of beneficiaries stated that ‘beneficiaries. . . will be selected from the Permanent IAY Wait lists prepared on the basis of BPL lists in order of seniority in the list’. This, seen in conjunction with the recent exposition of BPL scams in the state, points towards the RDD’s insistence on the use of Aadhaar to clean up its database. Interestingly, the current BPL census began from Tripura, and has already become contentious with the ruling Left Front debating over the enumeration methodology. Swarnajayanti Gram Swarosgar Yojna (SGSY): A central scheme to assist BPL families in economic upliftment through the creation of Self Help Groups ‘through the process of social mobilisation, their training and capacity building and provision of income generating assets’. Again, in Tripura, as per the 2008, 2009 financial report, close to ` 38 million has been released under this scheme in that financial year. However, no mention has been made of this in the 2011–12 budget presentation referred to earlier in this document. In this scheme, as in the above, identification of beneficiaries from the BPL list is a key issue for the Rural Development Department. MGNREGA: Implementation of this central scheme has been one of the major goals of the Tripura RDD. Total funds released under this scheme as per 2008–2009 financial reports are close to ` 48 cr in that financial year. 252 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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However, the 2011–2012 budget presentation states that fund allocation of NREGA has been reduced because of which the state government ‘will not be able to guarantee 100 man-days of work to each card holder in view of increase of wage rate and also increase of price of construction materials’. Further, as stated above, payments were planned to be made through the business correspondent model as well as ‘dovetail the MGNREGA with the activities of other Departments through a synergised convergence’. Common Service Centres (CSCs): In accordance with the National eGovernance plan, CSCs in Tripura are being set up at village level for delivery of all e-Governance service. As of April 2011, 83 such centres were already in place and a remaining 62 were in the process of being set up. In addition, State Wide Area Network (SWAN) has been set up and Agartala City Area Network (A-CAN) integrated with it for running e-governance applications. Tripura and the UID project: Tripura is the first state in the North East (NE) region of India whose government has taken the Aadhaar project extremely seriously and one of the few states in the country to have completed close to 89% of enrollments of its population. This seems exceptional considering the cold response from other states in the NE region. In Meghalaya, contestations over collection of KYR+ information led to a deadlock between the state government and the postal department, and a subsequent halt of the project. In Assam, the government has not yet, approved enrollments into the Aadhaar database. Similarly, neither Nagaland nor Sikkim have shown great enthusiasm in enrolling their residents into the database, though the project has been on for a while. The CSCS project visited Tripura in early December to understand this demand for the UID, and in particular, to look at the local cultural and political contexts in which the enrollments are taking place. Historically, the state has undergone several identification mechanisms attempting to authenticate both citizen and resident status of its 3 lakh odd population. Seen in this light, the UID is in some instances interpreted as just another ‘document’ for safekeeping, to be produced on demand to a representative of the state but whose transformational potential remains ambiguous. In the Wake of Aadhaar 253


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Yet, seen from the vantage point of the state, the UID seems to strengthen a historical relationship of reciprocity between the state and the centre, with Tripura becoming the model state not just for the UID enrollments, but also for completing implementation of the ‘e-district’ apparatus under the National eGovernance Plan. In addition, the state is in the process of developing a plan to introduce UID-based authentication mechanisms into several delivery schemes, sometimes contrary to economic rationale. In turn, the Centre has allocated funds or is in the process of doing so for several of these initiatives. What follows is an account of interviews with representatives of both state and civil society and an attempt to make sense of apparent contradictions between the mentality of the state and historical problems of housing and unemployment in this largely rural state. Through this paper, we would like to suggest the emergence of a maturing market mediating both the state and the subject, transforming Tripura’s enterprise culture and emerging as the site for constitution of resident identities.

Agartala: Elderly women display their voter’s identity cards while standing in a queue to exercise their franchise at a polling station for the 13th Tripura Assembly election (PTI Photo).

The State’s perspective: Generally, demand from residents for enrollment into the Aadhaar database seems to be a function of, firstly, a desire to be on the right side of governance, if and when Aadhaar begins to matter in day to day negotiations with the government and secondly, mobility, consistently being explained by residents as undisturbed and unrestricted access to travel



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within and outside India. A third reason for enrolling into the database, perceptible in Tripura, stems from in the manner in which local governance portrays Aadhaar to its residents. In this context, the Tripura government’s insistence of Aadhaar being an ‘important document’ must be read against a long history of identification practices as part of state governmentality. Seen from both the central and the state government’s perspective, Tripura has been variously identified through several unique categories—as a border state signifying issues of security, a state where citizenship certificates needed to be issued considering potential infiltration from neighbouring Bangladesh, a state identified as having a large community of scheduled tribes known by the state as the Tripuri community, a state issuing permanent resident certificates (maintained in a register of residents) after certificates of citizenship were curtailed in 1971, a state whose population required to hold MNIC cards as proof of their citizenship (after the NPR exercise was conducted in the state) and now as a state being identified as successfully enrolling its residents into the Aadhaar database.

Tarun Debnath, Rural Development Department, Tripura.

In an interview that we had with Tarun Debnath, chief engineer of the Rural Development Department which is the nodal agency for Aadhaar enrollments in the state, Debnath referred to a ‘tradition’ of high demand by residents for state sanctioned identification. To make his point, Debnath took the example of the election register (Tripura is the first state to have covered 100% EPIC and the voting per cent turn out is generally high as well). Also he said, people are always ready In the Wake of Aadhaar 255


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to comply with the instructions of the government. On the other hand, Debnath also referred to instances where the state government is planning to make the use of the Aadhaar number mandatory. Instances such as, MNREGS, PDS, SC and ST certificates land records, Register of Residence, and Labour department are among 12 ‘sectors’ that the GoT is aiming to make Aadhaar-enabled. Debnath also points to the fact that the Aadhaar document is accepted as a proof of Identity and a proof of address by any government service. The dominance of the state within the UID paradigm, at least in Tripura, takes off from but also adds to, what seems like an aspirational image that the state produces of itself. As discussed above, compliance with the NeGP guidelines for IT infrastructure points to this image making, but more importantly, the lack of political or emotional resonance of these 21st century solutions in the lives of urban and rural residents surveyed, who are mired in what might be called 20th century problems of housing and employment, points to the self-aggrandising agenda of the state. Contextualising this ‘image making’ points to certain compulsions in the nature of its dependence on the centre for funds, as historically Tripura has been a low revenue generating state having no industries of its own (a reason often stated for seeking development funds for the state). In the context of Aadhaar, two instances point to this dependency. Debnath mentioned that the state government has made a proposal to the UIDAI for ` 10.4 crores for building an Aadhaar authentication infrastructure which will allow for the use of the 12 digit number to authenticate a resident. Tripura is the first state in the country to make this request for what is increasingly been seen as the contentious second phase of the Aadhaar project. Secondly, in an informal interview with V. K. Gandotra, Alankit Assignments Ltd., the only empanelled agency for conducting Aadhaar enrollments in Tripura, the state government seems to have been promised an additional amount of ` 22 per enrollment (in addition to ` 50 already being received) by the UIDAI, on completion of 90% enrollment of its population. This seems to be a unique strategy that the UIDAI is employing vis-a-vis Tripura, but it also seems to be in the nature of the state’s historical relationship of dependence with the centre as far as funding is concerned.



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More instances of the state’s ‘image’: The attempt here is to make sense of a specific moment in the history of development in Tripura when government-speak embodies, fairly nonchalantly, two seemingly contradictory characteristics of the present: having 85% of the state’s population inhabiting rural areas with little or no access to network connectivity and Tripura being celebrated as the first state in the NE region and one of the few states in the country to have completed implementation of the ‘e-district’ model as part of the National eGovernance Plan. The ‘e-district’ model comprises a State Data Centre (SDC) which houses all digitised government records, a State Wide Area Network (SWAN) that consists of a series of optic fibres that allow transfer of data from SDC’s to front-end delivery points called Common Service Centres (CSCs). Our preliminary field work in Tripura reveals that CSCs, prima facie, are also great front ends for the state government to display its enthusiasm for technology. Consider the case of a CSC in Uttar Majlishpur of Jirenia block, 20 Km North of Agartala city, where the state government has on display a tele-homeopathy apparatus that allows video conferencing facilities with doctors in Agartala, Kolkata, and Mumbai. Surprisingly and in contradiction to the avowed functions of, a CSC, the Uttar Majlishpur CSC does not offer any governmental services. Further, the Village Level Entrepreneur who runs this CSC is an employee of the well known microfinance institution Basix. This is interesting as it points to the situation of scarcity of liquid funds (discussed below) in villages across Tripura. On inquiry, the CSC is said to attract at least one patient a day for homeopathy treatment, but caters to only very basic ailments.

Amitabh Dutta, Rural Development Department, handles the MGNREGS for the state. In the Wake of Aadhaar 257


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A third instance of state imagemaking is the introduction of Aadhaar into the Business Correspondent (BC) structure, which in states like Andhra Pradesh is being considered unnecessary, as the existing BC model already has incorporated a fingerprint based authentication mechanism involving the use of smart cards. In Tripura all job card holders of the MNREGS employment scheme have already been issued biometric smart cards with authentication facilities. The state government incurs ` 200 per smart card, a significant amount considering that Tripura provides most jobs in India under this scheme. Amitabh Dutta from the Rural Department explains the plan to scrap smart cards and introduce Aadhaar-based authentication as the preferred mode of identifying wage earners. In Dec 2011, Senrysa Technologies has been empanelled by the Rural Department to begin incorporating the UID number into the BC model. The extent of incorporation is hard to determine: we were not successful in getting any documentation from Kumar Saha, CEO and MD of Senrysa. However, Saha claims that the integration is easily achievable. What compulsions would make a state government incur this financial loss, especially after its avowed inability to generate funds for development in the state? Shailaditya Sarkar, Regional Consultant, Department of IT, Government of India, suggests that the Tripura government’s imagination of upgrading technology for governance has to necessarily do with the political environment of the state. What he is probably referring to is the CPI (M)’s pro-youth ‘image’ to retain its voter base which as reported through a electorate survey, consists of more younger people than middle-aged. Civil Society and Enterprise Culture: We would like to suggest that there are diverse perspectives that members of non-state groups have towards state directed governance techniques in general and specifically towards Aadhaar. Consider the case of V. K. Gandotra of Alankit Assignments, who represents a private enterprise negotiating government procedure, who claims that the state government is unrealistically demanding from him enrollment of an additional 37,000 people (about 1% of the state population which would get the desired 90% completion) after his team has combed the region for possible enrollees. He says that the desired percentage has been 258 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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calculated on the basis of the 2001 census whereas the total population residing in Tripura has presently decreased, owing to urban migration. Gandotra is contemplating going back to certain areas for the second time in the hope of finding fresh people to enroll. We are not so concerned with the veracity of his numbers, rather with his suggestion that an identity mechanism touted as ‘voluntary’ by the centre is being construed in this manner by a state for reasons that are complicated and deep rooted.

Goppur Mian, richskaw puller, borrower from Basix, runs a small shop, has done work for NREGA.

In the case of actual residents, especially in the rural areas, the imagination of Aadhaar or, rather, the techno-liberal imagination that the state is placing it within, appears to be in another register as compared to locally specific problems. From conversations with village people in Uttar Majlishpur, one got the sense that the main problem facing the rural poor is lack of sustainable livelihood in the face of increasingly reduced incomes from agriculture. Attempts are being made by local people to engage in several kinds of occupation to keep afloat for which easy access to cheap credit becomes a necessity. Goppur Mian, a below-poverty-line category Bengali resident of Uttar Majlishpur, traditionally belonging to a farmer community, is now immersed in several modes of livelihood: riding a rickshaw for the last 12 months, working as a labourer under the MNREGA scheme, sourcing groceries from the city to sell at a small shop that his wife looks after as well as farming on land that belongs to somebody else for which he gets half the In the Wake of Aadhaar 259


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output. Further, on being asked if he makes use of government services, such as free housing under IAY, he is equivocal in his response, saying that he never applied for a house and then changing his stance to being on the panchayat wait list. This sort of equivocation is common among residents of Uttar Majlishpur while talking about the panchayat, especially in front of panchayat officials who dominate the village people easily. Going back to Goppur Mian, the initial capital for his shop comes from a loan taken at an interest rate of 2% reducing from Basix. The loan is repaid in installments of 12 or 18 months and the loan contract also includes medical insurance from Royal Sundaram for ` 500 per day for 5 days of hospitalisation of the loanee. Speaking to Mithun Debnath from Basix revealed that about 5% of the population of his village has already availed loans in a period of 20 months for investment into small businesses such as production and distribution of bamboo products, starting of grocery stores as Goppur Mian did, fishery business, fruits and vegetable shops, etc. In his opinion, the people of the village have greatly benefited from this financial assistance in becoming independent in producing and selling wares without the aid of brokers. More importantly, Mithun suggests that with the availability of finance, skilled workers have begun to start business enterprises in the village itself rather than migrate to the city. However, incidence of daily travel between village and city has increased with village people doing multiple jobs throughout the day. For instance, on return to Uttar Majlishpur after working for 20 years in a dairy in Agartala city, Dipankar Debnath took a loan to start a business for making furniture which he claims is running extremely successfully. This transformation in lifestyle is not restricted to a particular class. Mithun Chakrabarthy, recounts the risks involved in becoming an entrepreneur. In April 2011, Chakrabarthy appeared for, and cleared a written test that Basix conducted for the designation of a village level entrepreneur (VLE) and put his personal savings in a Xerox machine, a fan, and a tube light (amounting to ` 45000) to start-up the only CSC in Uttar Majlishpur. Basix invested in a computer, printer, UPS, and furniture for about ` 70,000–80,000, whereas IL&FS designed the portal for tracking patient medical history and also provides the homeopathic medicines on a regular basis, and now the state 260 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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government has provided a V-Sat dish antenna for connectivity for video conferencing with homeo doctors. Chakrabathy does not draw a fixed salary; instead he works on a business incentive model as a certain percentage of the loans sanctioned. In addition he has been given an advance of ` 2000 from Basix and also keeps the ` 10 one-time registration fee per patient. Before becoming a VLE, Chakrabarthy worked for a money-marketing firm under the heavily advertised but somewhat suspicious Rose Valley Conglomerate. These instances point towards the maturation of the market, not just as a site for exchange and transaction but also a site on which individual identities are being established and contested. With the appearance of malls and business parks, Tripura seems to exist at the cusp of a transformation that could place it alongside larger states dominated by burgeoning capitalism. From the interviews, there seems to be an unquestioned belief in the state. In this context the UID cannot and does not penetrate into the everyday lives of people, whose identities are being constituted and re-constituted by the vagaries of the market place. The UID, however does seem to strengthen the image of the state, as the modern, liberal, techno-centric face of Tripura, directed outwardly in a reciprocal relationship with the centre.



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The Idea of Tripura: a case of digital governance Nafis Hasan Researcher, Azim Premji Foundation and former Project Coordinator, The Identity Project

Tripura, like several states in India’s North East, has a complex cultural history, and complex relations with India. The problems of illegal immigration, issues involving tribal identities, insurgency movements etc., have led to a history of efforts to provide identity documents. However, almost uniquely in the region, Tripura is aggressively pushing ahead with a digitisation programme, almost as if to reinvent itself as an e-state of the future. This essay explores with digitisation means to that ambition.

Tripura has been reported as the Unique Identification Authority of

India’s (UIDAI) ‘success story’ (The Asian Age, 2011). In September 2011, it claimed the highest percentage of Aadhaar enrollments in the country. This led to the Tripura Rural Development Department (RDD), nodal office for Aadhaar enrollments in the state being awarded an ‘Aadhaar Excellence Award’, ‘for achieving Maximum Coverage of the target population for Aadhaar based on Census 2011 figures—more than 70% throughout the state’ (UIDAI 2011). I visited Tripura to understand this extraordinary demand for Aadhaar, and in particular to look at the local cultural and political contexts in which enrollments are taking place. My conversations in Tripura revealed great enthusiasm by the RDD for continuing with high number of enrollments (even drafting a proposal for enrolling Tripura State Rifles personnel) and also initiating pilot projects to tag Aadhaar with several social sector databases, marking the introduction of the authentication phase of the Aadhaar project in Tripura. 262 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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This paper attempts to analyse how digitisation is impacting the idea of the state in Tripura: and when I do this, I consider Aadhaar to be only one part of the overall process. I suggest that this drive to digitisation takes off, from but also adds to, what seems like an aspirational, mythical image that the state produces of itself. While agreeing with Anant Maringanti’s argument that the UID programme must be understood as transforming ‘the terrain on which citizen’s transactions with the state and the market agencies occur’,1 I contend that, given the ‘success story’ of Tripura, and quite apart from the implicit assumption that the state is a neutral arbiter of public interest, Aadhaar also provides Tripura with a definitive opportunity to fashion an idea of itself. While arguing for an anthropology of the modern Indian state, Fuller and Harriss, quoting Philip Abram on the difficulty of studying the state, say, ‘according to Abrams, the state is not an institution, let alone a thing, but “an ideological project”,1 so that the key to the problem is to acknowledge. . . the cogency of the idea of the state as an ideological power and treat that as a compelling object of analysis’.2 Further, in addition to ‘a state-system. . . a palpable nexus of practice and institutional structure . . .there is, too, a state-idea, projected, purveyed, and variously believed in different societies at different times’. I would like to apply this understanding of a ‘state-idea’ to analyse if (just) the idea of a digitised population, isolated from the materiality of technology or money that digital processes bring in their wake, also merits thought from the state in Tripura. I use another instance, that of Tripura’s compliance with the guidelines of the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP), to analyse the ‘state-idea’, contending that the lack of political or emotional resonance of these 21st Century solutions in the lives of urban and rural residents surveyed, mired in historical problems of housing and employment, points to a self-aggrandising agenda of the state and, as Dipankar Sinha puts it, ‘a convenient mechanism [for the state] to bypass many of its responsibilities, and no less dangerously, a perceived short cut to (mainly hyperbolic) claims of “impending” success’.3 This lack of resonance in the everyday life of residents can be gauged from the comments of an academic from Tripura University, ethnically belonging to the minority tribal community—‘I can show you the who’s who [of the In the Wake of Aadhaar 263


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legislative assembly]. . . most of these people who are members are born in Bangladesh’. . . That is why they have a craze for this [Aadhaar number]. . . I don’t need [the Aadhaar number], its not important to me, documents are not important to my people, I don’t need it. . .4

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES

Historically, the Manikyas are credited with a liberal immigration

policy with regard to Bengalee migrants. These immigrants, mostly from the Sunderbans, sought refuge for food and shelter, though in later years as British imperialism peaked, members of revolutionary Communist groups such as Anusilan and Yugantar from West Bengal, also sought, and were readily provided, political refuge. Gayatri Bhattacharya, in a seminal study on governance in this period, recounts the setting up of an ‘Immigration and Reclamation Department’ by Maharaja Bir Bikram Kishore, through which ‘about 102400 ha. of lands were reclaimed and distributed among the immigrants’.5 Bhattacharya further explains: After Noakhali riots in 1946 several thousands of refugees came here. Maharaja formed a welfare committee for refugees with Bharat Thakur as President and Mr. Eade of New Zealand Baptist Missionary Society of Arundhutinagar as the secretary, and Rana Bodhjung and Maulavi Tamisuddin as members. Six big huts were set up as camps. Huge amount of money was spent from the personal coffer of the Maharaja. . . (ibid. 12) However, Bhattacharya’s exhilarating narrative of the maharaja’s generosity is mired with instances of imperial self interest. Consider this: the tribal subjects of the Maharajas were habituated to the wasteful practice of Jhuming. So for extension of plough cultivation in the State the King of Tripura encouraged the Bengalee immigrants who were efficient in plough cultivation. . . The Maharajas of Tripura were great admirers and patrons of the Bengali culture too. Even the state language 264 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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of Tripura was Bengali. So the kings encouraged the immigration of the Bengalees. (ibid. 11) Post 1947, both economic and cultural imperatives took a back seat as the political imperatives of a divided region translated into an unimaginable 2000% rise in immigration between 1947 and 50–51. Till this period, Bhattacharya contends, given the ‘welcoming’ nature of the Manikyas, and the ‘liberal’ outlook of the government of India towards Bengalee refugees in the first few years after partition, migration does not seem to be associated with notions of legality or illegality, terms that have now become synonymous with Tripura and border states at large. Notions of legality or illegality appear when the Indian state begins to identify and categorise its population, producing in every intervention a document, whose shape, size, and colour has evolved. In Tripura, such notions begin to take form, not with the introduction of ‘arrival coupons’ to check Bengalee migration post independence, but with their sudden withdrawal in 1971. Bhattacharya writes, ‘an office with adequate staff was set up at Akhaura Border near Agartala to register and issue the arrival coupons to the refugees. [However] the registration was stopped for the first time with effect from 1 May, 1958 and it resumed in the year 1964 but finally stopped with effect from 26 March, 1971’.6 Similarly, the passport system, as a result of the Nehru-Liaquat pact of 1950, was introduced in 1950-51, but was stopped before the war broke out in 1971. In the course of this history, older means of identification took on newer forms (as in the case of entry coupons being replaced by citizen certificates). In other cases, the same document multiplied into several instances of its kind. Thus, Professor Sukhendu Debbarma of Tripura University recounts the proliferation of state documents as arbitrators of a legal existence, establishing documentary identity and regulating access to various facets of public life in a border state signifying issues of security— Citizenship certificates, Schedule Caste certificates, Permanent Resident certificates maintained in a register of residents and issued after certificates of citizenship were curtailed in 1971, Multipurpose National Identity cards (MNIC) as proof of citizenship (issued only to a percentage of the population after a pilot National Population Register exercise was conducted in the state In the Wake of Aadhaar 265


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in 2003) and now as a state being identified as successfully enrolling its residents into the Aadhaar database.7

Sukhendu Debbarma, Tripura historian, speaking on the state’s identity-card legacy.

That the Unique Identification (UID) or Aadhaar number is being referred to as an ‘important document’8 by both state and civil society (even if for contrasting reasons), suggests that we may now well add this to the historical category of documents, albeit documents purveyed as ‘new’, biometric based arbitrators of state-subject relationships, and read this new turn against the long history of identification practices as part of state governmentality. From the state’s perspective, it is the invocation of an unquestionable ‘importance’ that surrounds documents that drives demand for the Aadhaar number, while in the case of residents, it is both fear (in some cases from prior experiences of missing out on state produced legality) as well as a general lack of clarity on what this number will eventually do, that drives demand. That the state maintains the importance of legality associated with documents is apparent in the Aadhaar enrollment process. Tarun Debnath, Chief Engineer, RDD said to me, ‘only those who have a valid POA [proof of address] and POI [proof of identity] are allowed to enroll [into the Aadhaar database]’.9 The ‘Introducer’ enrollment model that the UIDAI has developed for people (such as the homeless across the country) who are without documented proof of residence or identity, does not find favour in Tripura. This further evidences Ranabir Samaddar’s observations about ‘massive ‘securitisation’ of governance in the wake of developmental tasks’.10 In this 266 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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context, Aadhaar, as a mechanism of preventing the ‘illegal’ migrant from gaining state produced legality, suggests that ‘the development discourse is now mixed with the security discourse’.

THE ‘STATE-SYSTEM’

Before analysing the ‘state-idea’, which is the thrust of this paper, some

mention must be made of what Ralph Miliband had called the ‘state-system’. The state in Miliband’s imagination stood for ‘a number of particular institutions which, together, constitute its reality, and which interact as parts of what may be called the state system’.11 Of specific interest to the state in Tripura is Miliband’s view of the ‘state-system’ producing ‘state-power’ by furthering the interest of capital. Generally, demand from residents for enrollment into the Aadhaar database seems to be a function of, firstly, a desire to be on the right side of governance, if and when Aadhaar begins to matter in day-to-day negotiations with the government, and secondly, mobility, consistently being explained as undisturbed and unrestricted access to travel within and outside India.12 A third reason for enrolling into the database, perceptible in Tripura, stems from the manner in which the local government portrays Aadhaar to its residents. In contrast, in states like Himachal Pradesh, private enrollment agencies seem to be playing a dominant role within the Aadhaar paradigm as compared to the state government.13 In Tripura, the state’s insistence of Aadhaar being an ‘important document’ takes a new angle when Debnath refers to instances where the state government is planning to make the use of the Aadhaar number mandatory. The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), the Public Distribution System (PDS), Schedule Caste (SC), and Schedule Tribe (ST) certificates, land records and the Register of Residence (RoR) are among 12 ‘sectors’ that the Government of Tripura is aiming to make Aadhaar-enabled. In addition to questioning the ‘voluntary’ nature of the UID programme, these plans also pose a question to In the Wake of Aadhaar 267


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economic rationality. Consider the case of MGNREGS. The Rural Department has already spent ` 200 per biometric smart card to secure wage payments to job card holders, the largest in the country, only to scrap it in favour of another card which carries an Aadhaar number but performs exactly the same function. I met Amitabh Datta, an official managing MGNREGS, who detailed the manner in which his department had entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Tripura Gramin Bank for disbursal of wage payments under MGNREGS. As per the MoU signed in September 2010, just one month before Aadhaar enrollments started in the state, the Rural Department was enlisted to assist in the enrollment of MGNREGS workers for creation of biometric smart cards as per the new system. This system entailed the disbursement of wages by the bank through its network of Business Correspondents (BCs). The BCs would enter a village once every week, with a biometric smart card reader, authenticate the worker through her fingerprints and make the wage payment. Kumar Alok, the then Commissioner and Secretary of the Tripura Rural Department was a signatory to this MoU but had subsequently joined the UIDAI. However, the linking of the BC model with MGNREGS seems to have been implemented successfully, as reported to me over the phone by Kumar Saha, CEO and MD of Senrysa Technologies, the biometrics consultant for the project. He told me that the proposed linking of Aadhaar with the BC model was in fact the next in line, which in his opinion was as easy a task as the previous one. This provides evidence to the school of thought that locates the logic of Aadhaar within the capitalist paradigm of vendor proliferation. But that is not all. The state’s seemingly illogical move to its earlier BC model, an expensive identity mechanism, in favour of Aadhaar is backed by a ` 10.4 crore proposal to the UIDAI (of which ` 50 lakh was already disbursed in Dec 2011) for building an Aadhaar authentication infrastructure which will allow for the use of the 12 digit Aadhaar number to authenticate a resident.14 Tripura is one of the first states in the country to make an initial request for authentication pilots, the critical second phase of the Aadhaar project, 268 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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now gaining traction with similar pilots conducted in Jharkhand. Another evidence of the materiality in extolling Aadhaar as an ‘important document’ lies in V. K. Gandotra (Head, Alankit Assignments Ltd, the only empanelled agency for conducting Aadhaar enrollments in Tripura) insisting that the state government seems to have been promised an additional amount of ` 22 per enrollment (in addition to ` 50 already being received) by the UIDAI, on completion of 90% enrollment of its population.15 This seems to be a unique strategy that the UIDAI is employing vis-a-vis Tripura, but it also seems to be in the nature of the state’s historical relationship of dependence with the centre as far as funding is concerned.

THE ‘STATE-IDEA’

The attempt here is to make sense of a specific moment in the history

of development in Tripura when government-speak embodies, fairly nonchalantly, two seemingly contradictory characteristics of the present: having over 95% (Tripura State Portal) of the state’s population inhabiting rural areas with negligible access to internet connectivity (Census 2011) on one hand and Tripura completing over 70% implementation of the ‘e-district’ project (Department of Information Technology 2011) as part of the NeGP, on the other. Whence this imagination?

Bidyut Datta, Directorate of Tripura.



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Bidyut Datta, a senior technology officer at the Directorate of Tripura (DIT), marvelling at the sudden transformation in the IT landscape of the state, says, ‘. . . rapid change in the last few years. . . all this SWAN, CSCs, SDC, all came in the last 2 to 3 years. . .’16 On why this sudden change, Datta explained, ‘For the Agartala City Area network, we did two projects. One was A-CAN [Agartala City Area Network] and the other extension of A-CAN. More offices came with this request’. Now, Datta explains, offices come with their own funding. ‘Previously, only IT department was imposing [digitisation], now, departments are coming with their requests’. He pauses, I interrupt. ‘So what’s the driving force behind this’? ‘Driving force basically is to get easy service. If you put e-Governance in the scenario then to give service to the citizen it will be easier, the process will be speedy’. Does Datta feel that the citizens of Tripura have the necessary computer skills to use these services? ‘Life is becoming speedy. . . so people want quick service from the government. Under Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, free computer education [is provided] to tenth and twelfth students. They are the key persons; those will come with a request of my citizenship certificate, my permanent resident certificate, with such requests. In schools you are giving computer knowledge, so easily this awareness process is going on’. This proyouth image is also invoked by Shailaditya Sarkar, Regional Consultant, DIT, when he suggests that the Tripura state’s imagination of upgrading technology for governance has necessarily to do with the CPI(M)’s agenda in the state. In a survey conducted on the demography of the 2009 electorate in Tripura,17 it was noted that the CPI(M) has marginally greater support from people below the age of 35 than above it, suggesting that the party is keen to continue promoting technology to attract younger people. Further, as mentioned above, going by the 2011 census data, of the 8,42,781 households identified by the census across urban and rural Tripura, only 1% have been identified as owning a computer or laptop with internet connection. The majority of these connected households are in Agartala, leaving the large rural population dependent on state run kiosks or Common Service Centres for government services, which will lead to an expansion in the consumption demand for digital technologies and services.



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The ‘e-district’ model comprises of creation of a State Data Centre (SDC) which houses all digitised government records, a State Wide Area Network (SWAN) that consists of a series of optic fibres that allow transfer of data from SDCs to front end delivery points called Common Service Centres (CSCs).18 My preliminary field work in Tripura reveals that CSCs, prima facie, stand in stark contrast to the guidelines proposed for them by the central government, thus appearing as one more vehicle for state image making. The Guidelines for Implementation of CSCs positions them as ‘Change Agents—that would promote rural entrepreneurship, build rural capacities and livelihoods, enable community participation, and collective action for social change—through a bottom-up model with focus on the rural citizen’. (Department of Information Technology 2006). However, consider the case of a CSC in Uttar Majlishpur of Jirenia block, 20 km North of Agartala city, where the state government has on display an telehomeopathy apparatus that allows video conferencing facilities with doctors in Agartala, Kolkata, and Mumbai. Though the government claims, through research conducted by an organisation called One World Foundation India (2011), that tele-ophthalmology centres across the state have catered to over 1,28,200 patients from April 2007 to July 2011, these figures seem apropos of nothing. Neither does the literature on the 40 vision centres (Directorate of Information Technology), nor talking to IT consultants reveal why eye treatment or homeopathic treatment for common ills merits digitisation, in preference to several other medical services. According to a report by the Indian Society of Health Administrators (2004), rural Tripura has historically suffered from ‘Diarrhoeal diseases and ent[e]ric [typhoid] fever’ with 47.7% of the population not having access to potable water in the mid-90s. Information on the Tripura State Pollution Control Board (TSPCB) website (2002) further states that ‘the prevalence of dysentery appear[s] on the rise when compared with the past figure of 1985 and that of 1993–94 and 1999–2000’. Further, it cautions that ‘improvement of the drinking water quality becomes an urgent necessity; to offer remedial measure; treatment of water and improvement of distribution system become essential’. More recently, hepatitis has been reported as a ‘killer disease’ especially among the tribal community in the state. (oneindia news 2008).



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Mithun Debnath,, Village-level Entrepreneur.

Yet investment in telemedicine centres by both state and private enterprises is at its peak. This CSC, has as its singular object of interest (surprisingly no other government services are available here), a telehomeopathy centre, a single room, manned by Mithun Debnath, a Village Level Entrepreneur (VLE) and sustained by a motley set of investors— Debnath’s personal savings are invested in a Xerox machine, a fan and a tube light (amounting to ` 45,000); a Micro Finance Institution (MFI) company called Basix, has invested in a computer, printer, UPS and furniture for about ` 70,000–80,000; Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services Ltd (IL&FS)has designed the portal for tracking patient medical history and also provides the homeopathic medicines on a regular basis; the state government has provided a v-sat dish antenna for enhanced connectivity for video conferencing with doctors. I asked Debnath what I had asked the DIT the previous evening—‘Why did you start e-homeopathy here?’ Debnath skirted the question, claiming that it was a state government initiative and he only earns the one time registration fee. ‘But what is the demand for homeopathy’? I ask. ‘On an average per month there are 32, 35 or sometimes it becomes 45 people’,19 says Debnath. Further, he says, ‘people come here for treatment of tumors, fish bones in their throat, fever, cough and cold, stomach pain and chest pain. . . those who come in a critical condition are not treated here, they are sent to bigger hospitals, at their own costs’. Could he show me a demonstration of the video conference? Unfortunately, no doctor was available at that time, but Debnath was happy to show me the IL&FS portal tracking patient 272 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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medical history, with name, disease, drug administered and so on. On the question of privacy of medical records, Debnath brushed it aside as a non-issue. ‘Whoever has come here for treatment, something good has happened for them, the feedback has been good’. Basix, for the record, is one of the several MFIs at the vortex of the farmer crisis in Andhra Pradesh, reportedly taking blank cheques from its debt-laden customers.20 For the present, however, loan financing seems to be on the ascent in rural Tripura and going by the responses of residents as well as the CSC staff in Uttar Majlishpur, the credit aspects of Basix is in far greater demand than its video conferencing facilities. In its 20-month existence, Basix has already provided loans to about 5% of Uttar Majlishpur’s population. Loans are taken to start sundry businesses such as bamboo handicrafts, bamboo mats, grocery stores, fisheries, fruit and vegetable stores. The loan attracts an interest of 24% per annum on a reducing balance and is paid back in either 12 or 18 month easy monthly installments. Going by the Andhra Pradesh example I ask, ‘What happens if somebody is unable to make the repayment’? ‘Yes, sometimes there are problems, sometimes when people fall ill, or there is an accident in the family, then there is a problem in repayment. But along with the loan there is a hospital insurance attached from Royal Sundaram. If any customer is in hospital he/she gets ` 500 per day for five days of hospitalisation’. In his opinion, people of the village have greatly benefited from this financial assistance, independently producing and selling wares without the aid of brokers. More importantly, Debnath suggests that with the availability of finance, skilled workers have begun to start business enterprises in the village itself rather than migrate to the city. However, incidence of daily travel between village and city has increased with village people doing multiple jobs throughout the day.



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Lack of adequate finance, as starting capital, can open up new dimensions of rural poverty, given the present dependence on multiple sources of income. Gayatri Bhattacharya’s account of refugee rehabilitation in the 1950s suggests that migrants in Tripura shunned rural areas, flocking to towns where, in addition to the rehabilitation provided by the government, options to buy land from underprivileged locals were reportedly sought out. Over time, however, as land became scarce and commercial jobs diminished, a reverse trend set in, leading to about 80% of the displaced workers getting engaged with agricultural activities by 1961.21 However, over the next decades, incomes from agriculture began depleting as a crisis in agriculture management began erupting nationwide. Subsequently, a new category marking rural poverty emerged —the Below Poverty Line (BPL)22

THE GAP

Bidesh Chandra Roy, Panchayat Secretary, Uttar Majlishpur.

The CSC in Uttar Majlishpur is housed in the panchayat office, and along

with its much celebrated appendage—a pay per use community hall—stands out conspicuously. Bidesh Chandra Roy, Panchayat Secretary, describes the demography of Uttar Majlishpur—‘About 80–90% of people are in the non-service 274 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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[government] sector. Of these most are BPL. We have given 652 MGNREGS cards to the BPL people’.23 However, by his own admission, the BPL list he showed me had not been updated since 1992. ‘So what about the poor not in this list’? I ask. ‘Yes, new people may have come, but we don’t have an updated list so it’s not our problem. ‘How is the list made’? I ask. ‘The central government BPL survey is happening, after that the final list will come’ says Roy. ‘What problems are there in this village’? I ask. ‘There are no problems as such . . . people get work, they get REGA [MGNREGS wage payments], they get old age pensions, they get widow pensions, they get free housing through the Indira Awas Yojna, they get many schemes . . . There are no problems’. Roy goes on to describe the rigorous manner in which Aadhaar enrollments were completed for 80–85% of the population. ‘First we conducted a Panchayat meeting, after that we conducted miking24 in the entire area, we went to everybody’s house and called them to the Panchayat office for enrollments’. ‘What did you tell people during miking’? I ask. ‘We said this [Aadhaar] is very important information, this is the main document in India, even on an international level Aadhaar has great significance . . . that’s why we asked people to come for enrollments’. He continues, ‘we did this for 15 days, till 10–11 P.M. in the night. If we have a few more days we could get 90%–95% of the population’. ‘Didn’t people say that they already have several documents, like resident certificates, so why this’? I ask. ‘Yes, they did, but we convinced them that this is a very important document, you have to do this [get enrolled]’. That the techno-liberal ‘state-idea’ is at odds with the workings of the ‘state-system’ in Tripura is best exemplified by the fact that BPL records have not been updated since 1992, suggesting that anyone not in that list does not get access to the ‘host of benefit and services’,25 with or without Aadhaar. This anomaly, prima facie, leads to other questions of ‘state-system’ malfunctioning, the most obvious being the case of a BPL person transitioning into APL, yet accessing services meant for the poor.



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CONCLUSION

In conclusion I would like to describe a few lived experiences of

recipients of both the ‘state-idea’ and the ‘state-system’, suggesting that beyond the documentary notion of identity that the state provides, residents of Tripura (as in other parts of the country) derive much of their existential self-identity from occupational choices, increasingly getting diversified as agricultural incomes continue to decline and opportunities are sought in small sundry businesses. Curious about the rosy picture panchayat Secretary Roy had painted, I asked Goppur Mian how his experience with state services for BPL residents had been— ‘Have you opted for the Indira Awas Yojna scheme?’ ‘No. . . I took a loan from my landlord with some trouble and built this house’.26 ‘So you don’t need IAY right now’? I ask. ‘I need it! If they [Panchayat] give it I definitely need it, I am a poor person . . . They [Panchayat] do give it, if one needs it badly’. ‘So why are you not asking for it’? To which Goppur Mian replied that he didn’t need a house now since he had one, but if the government was giving it for free he would like to have one for his four children who are going to get married soon. After an introspective moment, Goppur Mian relented, ‘Okay, I will tell them [Panchayat], give me one house for my children’. A few minutes later he disclosed that he had already told the Panchayat about his family and they had given him a ration card, and that his name was on the IAY waiting list though he couldn’t be sure. This sort of equivocation appeared to be common among residents of Uttar Majlishpur while talking about the panchayat, especially in front of panchayat officials who clearly dominate over the village people. Goppur Mian, a farmer by profession, had taken to driving a cycle rickshaw when his father fell ill twelve months ago. Since he didn’t own any farming land, he had to incur the cost of raw materials and equally share profits with his land owner. To meet expenses during this family crisis he started riding a rickshaw in Mohanpur or Agartala or wherever else he could make some money. He didn’t try the tele-homeopathy services either since his father seemed seriously ill. 276 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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To further append his income, Goppur Mian does work for MGNREGS, but he didn’t specify the nature of work. ‘Some people get the digging job card, some get the farming card, some get the road building card’. Very recently, Goppur Mian had taken a loan at an interest rate of 2% reducing from Mithun Debnath of Basix to set up a grocery store that his wife would look after. They planned to start with basic amenities—‘sabji, biri, cigarette, chawal’. In another instance, on return to Uttar Majlishpur after working for 20 years in a dairy in Agartala city, Dipankar Debnath took a loan to start a business for making furniture which he claims is running extremely successfully. This structure of work life is not restricted to a particular economic class. Mithun Debnath himself, who has lived all his life in Uttar Majlishpur, has made similar moves on the circuits of employment. Before taking what he considers a calculated risk to generate an income through the CSC and the sale of loans for Basix, he was working for a money marketing firm called Rose Valley, peddling what has come to be popularly known as ‘chain marketing schemes’. Participants join this ostensible direct marketing scheme by first making an initial investment (varying from a few hundreds to many thousands of rupees) and then by referring new members to the scheme. On joining, the holding company provides each member with a starter kit comprising of publicity material and the product they have chosen to sell. The starter kit, however, is only a front for the underlying profit that is made in the form of a bonus received on every new enrollment. In 2010, the same year in which Debnath accidently bumped into the Panchayat Secretary who encouraged him to apply for the job of a VLE, Rose Valley came under the lens of the Securities Exchange Board of India (SEBI). Debnath now has no association with his previous life, save the bonus that he continues to receive as new members join the chain he had once started. In the state capital, Agartala, business enterprise is spoken of in terms of scale and networking. Accordingly, Alankit Assignments may only be one of the several enrollment agencies that the UIDAI has empanelled across the country, yet its representatives from Delhi, temporarily in Tripura, see themselves as business partners in the project. Some of this is discernible in In the Wake of Aadhaar 277


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the manner in which V. K. Gandotra denounced the state government from a stand point of both implied cultural superiority and frustrations of private enterprise in the grasp of convoluted state machinery. The homogenising vocabulary of private enterprise—productivity, service level agreements, commitment, profit—when applied to a government endeavor to establish resident identity, suggests an abstraction that exemplifies a neoliberal spirit. Gandotra furthers this spirit by learning and speaking fluent Bengali, or by invoking North Indian expletives in conversation with local businessmen in a show of camaraderie. Stray conversations around the city revealed other interests—a rural department employee dreams of starting a ‘profitable’ NGO, a co-customer at a courier centre shoots questions at me on laptop screen cleaners, commenting that dusty screens damage the ‘character’ of the machine and brightens when he learns that Android phones are available for ` 10,000 or less. On my last evening in Agartala, Ratan Saha, until then only a panwalla continuing to postpone his Aadhaar enrollment, hands me his visiting card (a visual narrative of his enterprise featuring, among other things, the Swiss Toblerone) and says—‘I don’t have your number but I expect you to keep in touch’. These responses suggest that there is an unquestioned belief in the state, yet a sort of indifference, not borne out of historical grievances but rather out of necessity and the demands of the present which seem to be better satisfied by the market. Tarun Debnath’s descriptions of the benefits of Aadhaar, in that it is a ‘real’, ‘genuine’, ‘authentic’ means of identification since biometrics, as opposed to photograph-based ID cards, are not susceptible to decay connector and skirts around the question of practical value. All Aadhaar seems to be doing is adding, albeit digitally, to a prior history of identification mechanisms. Aadhaar, however does seem to keep the ‘myth of the state’ (Corbridge et al 2005) alive, as the modern, liberal, techno-centric face of Tripura, directed outwardly in a reciprocal relationship with the centre.



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REFERENCES Ananth, S (2011): ‘An In-Depth Study of Issues and Challenges in the Microfinance Sector in Andhra Pradesh’, Report, The Society For The Elimination of Rural Poverty (SERP). Bhattacharyya, Gayatri (1988): Refugee rehabilitation and its impact on Tripura’s economy (New Delhi: Omsons Publications). Corbridge, S, G Williams, M Srivastava and Rene Veron (2005): Seeing the State: Governance and Governmentality in India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Debbarma, Sukhendu and M Debbarma (2009): ‘Fifth Victory in a row for CPI (M) in Tripura’, Economic and Political Weekly, 26 September, Vol XLIV No 39. ‘Demographic Data Standards and Verification procedure (DDSVP) Committee Report’, UIDAI, 9 December 2009, Viewed on 22 May 2012 http://uidai.gov.in/UID_PDF/ Committees/UID_DDSVP_Committee_Report_v1.0.pdf. ‘Demographic Features’, Tripura State Portal, Viewed on 22 May 2012, http://tripura.nic. in/portal/aboutTripura/Demographic.aspx. Fuller, C J and John Harriss (2000): ‘For an anthropology of the modern Indian State’ in C J Fuller and V Bénéï (ed.) The Everyday and Society in Modern India (New Delhi: Social Science Press). ‘Guidelines For Implementation of the Common Services Centers (CSC) Scheme in States’, Department of Information Technology Government of India, 9 October 2006, Viewed on 22 May 2012, 1 (http://www.mit.gov.in/sites/upload_files/dit/ files/downloads/policiesandguidelines/csc/cscguidelines.pdf). ‘Hepatitis emerges as a major killer disease in Tripura’, oneindia news, 27 May 2008, Viewed on 22 May 2012, (http://news.oneindia.in/2008/05/27/hepatitisemerges-as-a-major-killer-disease-in-tripura-1211868191.html). ‘HH-12 Number of Households Availing Banking Services and Number of Households Having Each of the Specified Assets’, Census, 2011: The Registrar General India, Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India, Viewed on 22 May 2012 (http:// www.censusindia.gov.in/2011census/hlo/District_Tables/Distt_table/16/ HH4012-1600DCRC.pdf). ‘Manikya Dynasty’ Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia, 27 February 2012, Viewed on 22 May 2012 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manikya_Dynasty). Maringanati, Anant (2009): ‘Sovereign State and Mobile Subjects: Politics of the UIDAI’, Economic & Political Weekly, 14 November, Vol X LI V, No 46, 35-40. Miliband, Ralph (1969): The State in Capitalist Society (New York: Basic Books). ‘Minutes of the Meeting of the Empowered Committee for the National rollout of the eDistrict MMP’, Department of Information Technology, 28 December 2011, Viewed on 22 May 2012 (http://mit.gov.in/sites/upload_files/dit/files/Approved_ Minutes_Meeting_e-District_Empowered_Committee_1012012.pdf).



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Sahni, Dr. Ashok (ed.) (2004): ‘Tripura’, Health Administrator: The Official Journal of The Indian Society of Health Administrators, Vols XVI (July), Viewed on 22 May 2012 (http:// medind.nic.in/haa/t04/i1/haat04i1c.shtml). Samaddar, Ranabir and S. K. Sen (2012): ‘Introduction’ in Ranabir Samaddar and S.K. Sen (ed.) New Subjects and New Governance in India (New Delhi: Routledge). Sinha, Dipankar (2012): ‘New Technique of Governance: E-Governance and lndia’s Democratic Experience’ in Ranabir Samaddar and S K Sen (ed.) New Subjects and New Governance in India (New Delhi: Routledge). ‘State of Environment Report in Tripura 2002’, Tripura State Pollution Control Board, 2002, Viewed on 22 May 2012 (http://www.tripura.nic.in/tspcb/health.htm). ‘Tele-Ophthalmology in Tripura’, OneWorld Foundation India, August 2011, Viewed on 22 May 2012, 3 (http://www.ilfsets.com/pdf/CaseStudy/CaseStudy_TeleOphthalmalogy_ Tripura_201108.pdf). The Asian Age (2011): ‘Tripura leads in UID enrollment’, Monday, 26 September, Agartala. ‘Tripura Vision Center’, Directorate of Information Technology Government of Tripura, Viewed on 22 May 2012 (http://ittripura.gov.in/Vision/TVC_About.pdf). ‘Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) celebrates the 1st Anniversary of Aadhaar Launch Honours good performance within UIDAI Ecosystem with ‘Aadhaar Excellence Awards’, Unique Identification Authority of India, 29 September 2011, Viewed on 22 May 2012 (http://uidai.gov.in/images/FrontPageUpdates/final_event_press_note.pdf). ‘Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) organises workshop on Aadhaar Enabled Service Delivery’, UIDAI Press Release, 7 February 2012, Viewed on 22 May 2012 (http://uidai.gov.in/images/FrontPageUpdates/Aadhaar_enabled_service_ delivery.pdf).

NOTES 1

Maringanti 2009: 35–40.

2

Fuller and Harriss 2000: 1–30.

3

Sinha 2012:78.

4

Name undisclosed on request. Personal Interview, Agartala, December 2011.

5

Bhattacharrya 1988:11.

6

ibid: 33.

7

Personal Interview, Agartala, December 2011.

8

This was a recurring phrase used by the Rural Development Department as well as Panchayat secretaries to explain the manner in which demand for Aadhaar was generated

9

Personal Interview, Agartala, December 2011.

10 Samaddar and Sen 2012. 11 Miliband 1969. 12 These are personal observations based on field research on the implementation of Aadhaar in several districts of the country, some of which is documented at http://identityproject.in/.



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13 I speak of Himachal Pradesh for two reasons. Firstly both Tripura and HP have completed similar number of enrollments as of April 2012. Secondly, and more importantly, there is an avowed sense of confusion regarding Aadhaar among the bureaucracy in HP, best exemplified by Dr. Amandeep Garg, the Deputy Commissioner of Mandi questioning if Aadhaar can truly become an inclusionary tool for poor migrants in his state. This nature of questioning seems remote from the enthusiasm with which the bureaucracy of Tripura extols praise for Aadhaar. 14 Derived from personal interview with Tapan Debnath, Agartala, December 2011. 15 Personal Interview, Agartala, December 2011. 16 Personal Interview, Agartala, December 2011. 17 Debbarma and Debbarma 2009. 18 A CSC is a physical location, usually housed in a panchayat office that offers governmental services (like birth and death certificates, information on land holding, collection and information on tax, payment of bills, etc.) to village folk, who would otherwise have to travel several hours to reach a government office. There are approximately 196 such centres in rural areas of Tripura, started by individuals (referred to as village level entrepreneurs) [with financial assistance, in most cases from private enterprises]. 19 Personal Interview, Uttar Majlishpur, Jirenia Block, Tripura, December 2011. 20 Ananth: 2011. 21 Bhattacharyya 1988:28–32. 22 Corbridge et al: 2005. These authors squarely put the ‘production’ of the BPL category, as a new technique of governing the poor, on Mrs. Gandhi’s Garibi Hatao campaign ‘to the extent that it did have an ‘electric and instant’ impact, and positioned her as the ‘savior of the poor’. . . also because the poor had been constructed as a political constituency in the 1960s. And this in turn reflected . . . the production of new technologies of government which defined a Below Poverty Line (BPL) population even as that population was set to grow in size and to announce its voices’. 23 Personal Interview, Uttar Majlishpur, Jirenia Block, Tripura, December 2011. 24 He was referring to the practice of announcing specific details (time, venue, duration, etc.) of a particular government exercise through loud speakers attached to government vehicles. 25 ‘The UIDA’s mandate is to issue every resident a unique identification number linked to the resident’s demographic and biometric information, which they can use to identify themselves anywhere in India, and to access a host of benefits and services.’ - http://uidai.gov.in/Aadhaar.html. 26 Personal Interview, Uttar Majlishpur, Jirenia Block, Tripura, December 2011.



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Delhi An Identity Project field report

The Identity Project at CSCS conducted field work in Delhi for six days in July 2011, and then again for four days in January 2012, and 15 days in March and April 2012, in an attempt to understand the local context of Aadhaar enrollments. Having visited parts of Jharkhand and AP previously we were becoming increasingly aware that a unique ecosystem system specific to each locale was beginning to emerge. Delhi, also an important site for networked governance consisting of the state, private enterprises, and civil society organisations, directed towards a common public good, provided us with a context to begin understanding a very different political landscape. In the words of Ananya Bhattacharjee, from the Society for Labour and Development (SLD), speaking in the context of state aided networks of support for under privileged sections of society, ‘everybody wants to set up base there (in Delhi). . . there is good infrastructure, good transport, the politicians are here, all the head offices are here, it’s a very convenient place for business’. (full video interview with SLD staff, see https://pad.ma/CBB). In Delhi we encountered two very different situations, dealt with in two locations in this report: one, to do with the urban homeless, the role of the Mission Convergence and the Mother NGO, and the Homeless Resource Centres. This part is dealt with later in this report, in the section on homelessness. And the second, dealt with here: the extremely politicised spaces that Aadhaar enrollment centres have become: divided along lines of caste, region and political grouping. 282 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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Mission Convergence: In many ways, the digitisation process in Delhi begins with the Mission Convergence, or the Samajik Suvidha Sangam,1 a UNDP and the Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi (GNCTD) initiative, intended to ‘identify and recommend welfare services’ and to set up ‘consultation and co-ordination (structures) with converging departments’, and thereby to implement welfare schemes in collaboration with the private sector, NGOs, or Public Private Partnership (PPP) or other innovative methods as per the requirements of the specific areas. An effort at replicating Brazil’s Bolsa Familia (Family Stipend) programme, among the project’s ambitions was to conduct a detailed identification of the entire informal sector in the city, including its slum dwellers and its homeless. Specifically with regard to the homeless, the project conducted a major survey between July and December 2010, conceived of ‘as a tool towards securing the rights of homeless citizens’, one where GNCTD would ‘commit itself as a conscious custodian of the homeless at par with other citizens for protection, rights and welfare of its homeless citizens’. Mission Convergence, incidentally, is also a Registrar for the UIDAI and commenced enrollments of ‘homeless residents’ in the National Capital Territory of Delhi in October 2010. The UIDAI has commended what it deemed the Mission’s ‘exemplary’ success in enrolling persons in the target population, most of ‘whom had no address proof’, by working with NGOs that work closely with such persons. These NGOs, or ‘Undertaking Agencies’ in UIDAI-speak, have acted as Introducers and furnished their own office address as address proof for homeless persons having easiest access to them. Mission Convergence issues a unique code to each ‘homeless person enrolled through its Undertaking Agencies, and this unique code is used to map the delivery of the Aadhaar letter bearing the resident’s UID number to the right person.2 Of the total number of ‘homeless’ persons enrolled by Mission Convergence in Delhi, roughly 1500 persons were provided with a UID-linked bank account, in keeping with the UIDAI’s stated ambition of facilitating the participation of ‘poor and underprivileged residents’ in the union government’s scheme for financial inclusion announced in February 2011.3 Towards this end, bank accounts are sought to be furnished via UID enrollments for those In the Wake of Aadhaar 283


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with little or no access to the formal banking sector, to assist in the transfer of government subsidies in the form of cash remittances directly to their beneficiaries and as a security against loss as ‘many homeless regularly lose their money, because they have no safe storage for it’.4

A short sequence of the Mission Convergence’s plan for the homeless in Delhi, the Homeless Resource Centres, and the shelters.

The Indo-Global Society for Social Services (IGSSS) ended its role as a participating NGO in Mission Convergence’s UID enrollment programme when it discovered through an internet search that the programme was hosted under the rubric of a UNDP grant for ‘Innovation Support for Social Protection: Institutionalising Conditional Cash Transfers’,5 Mission Convergence states on its website that ‘since the vulnerability based approach of Mission Convergence in identifying the poor is ultimately aimed to converge service delivery, currently operating through cross-cutting Departmental structures, a road map is being developed for the Mission to institutionalise the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) system in Delhi based upon the learning from the Latin American Region, where the phenomenon of cash transfer to the poor has actually followed considerable efforts towards convergence of social sector schemes, similarly operating through multiple Departments’.6 Conversations with Mother NGO at St. Stephen’s hospital, a Mission Convergence-appointed team for running the operations for the homeless, revealed that following the GNCTD-UNDP survey, homeless residents were 284 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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issued temporary cards carrying their name, gender, approximate age, a photograph and a ‘unique number’ that referred to a geographical pocket on an Eicher map. For instance, a ‘unique number’ such as ‘10HP56B’ would translate to 2010, Homeless Pocket, Column B on Pg. 56 of an Eicher map. Usha Ramanathan, while describing this survey process,7 suggests that a number of persons so surveyed are victims of the periodic slum demolitions carried out by the state government; it is a well-known fact that persons living in slums are often holders of ‘government paper’ of various kinds such as ration cards and voter ID cards, but these temporary cards ignore existing paperwork in favor of linking them directly to an area on a map. The ‘survey frame pocket number’ was later supplemented with the person’s biometric information at the time of UID enrollments. The category ‘Period of Stay in Delhi’ in the UNDP-GNCTD survey report does not state what the antecedents of the person being recorded as ‘homeless’ are; or whether, for instance, prior to being so recorded, the respondent had a shelter of his/her own. All this begs the question: is the category of ‘homeless residents’ one that is only now emerging, in tandem with the UID enrollments of persons so identified? Is it the case that these UID enrollments stand on the far side of a process that has its roots in a chequered legal history, in which ‘key discursive shifts regarding slums and nuisance’8 in the early 2000s leads to statements such as ‘slums are illegal’ and ‘illegal encroachments’, that have paved the way the way for their demolition.9 Ghertner is interested in showing us that ‘the ability to criminalise, punish, and expel populations (of the poor, informal, migrant, etc.) that do not conform to the aesthetic norms of Indian cities—i.e. those that look like nuisances—presents a new, or at least newly significant, arena for urban struggle in the post-colonial Indian city’.10 Another instance of the complexity around homelessness is found in Veronique Dupont’s insistence that ‘two major characteristics of this [homeless] segment of the urban population’ are ‘its heterogeneity and mobility. . . not to mention the invisibility of certain sections of it’.11 Is what is at work then a process of governmentalisation of a category of people created through forced dislocation, eviction, and economic dispossession? Can a juncture be mapped that lends to a new visibility to this category in specific development theory and practice in India and internationally? How does this In the Wake of Aadhaar 285


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category figure in older governmental imaginaries, in the history of colonial and post-colonial post-colonial poverty alleviation programmes? How does the category of the ‘homeless’ figure in state enumeration and identification practices prior to the 2010 Mission Convergence survey? While technology and state practice have for long been mutually co-constitutive, does the sheer variety, intensity and insidious extensiveness of the digital technologies at work here mark an epochal shift in their mutual co-relation, or is it merely an instance of state practice keeping up with the times? It is suggested that UID-linked bank accounts will streamline the process of delivery of government benefits and subsidies directly to beneficiaries, circumventing a range of middlemen and corrupt governmental delivery mechanisms. The government hopes eventually to move to cash transfers of food and fuel subsidies, and to dismantle the existing public distribution system and government monopoly of fuel production, distribution and price controls, in an effort to reduce the burden on the exchequer and to ensure that the full value of the subsidies are realised by their beneficiaries. Jayati Ghosh argues that ‘the UID—whatever other benefits it may provide—is at best a determinant of identity. . . unique identity is only the first step. The determination of targeted beneficiaries—on the basis of poverty or any other indicator—still has to be done and this process still remains subject to all the errors of unfair exclusion and unjustified inclusion. . . Further, even after identification, the actual delivery to the targeted group is an area that is heavily fraught and prone to a diversion of resources’.12 What then are the implications of the proposed scheme of cash transfers? How will the ‘technological fix’ proposed by the UIDAI for the problem of corrupt government practices influence, if at all, the problem of identification of beneficiaries, and what new problems will the process of transfer of subsidies and benefits via UID-linked bank accounts throw up? What will the social life of these cash transfers be? In other words, is it possible that cash transfers will open up new possibilities and limitations, and re-landscape the zone of interaction between ‘beneficiaries’ and the state, even as it re-configures the constitution of both categories? How can cash transfers be plotted against the long history of poverty alleviation programmes of the Indian state? 286 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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Harsh Mander suggests that ‘urban homeless people have little and troubled access to even the most elementary public services’; the IGSSS survey in 2008 deduces from available data that ‘there’s not one scheme worth the name for the homeless as such’; the latest survey conducted by Mission Convergence (2010) states that ration cards are denied to the homeless— ‘Often the argument used for denying the ration cards to the homeless is that the homeless don’t cook for themselves’. How do we then understand the peculiar zeal with which the enrollment of ‘homeless residents’ is being approached? Is it possible to map this zeal in light of the assertion that ‘in politics and business. . . the market potential of the poor in both rural and urban India has become a powerful motif’?13 Contrary to fears that in the age of liberalisation, globalisation and privatisation, state spending on the social sector will diminish, is it possible to find evidence for an increase in state spending on social welfare schemes? Is there any connection among the efforts at financial inclusion, the proposals for cash transfers, government social sector spending and new practices of capital accumulation? What are the connections between the focus on mapping, enumerating, geographically fixing, and identifying the presence of ‘homeless’ persons in cities like Delhi on the one hand, and initiatives like those of SYPM to open ‘Working Men’s hostels’ which will provide cleaner, more hygienic living spaces for ‘homeless’ persons for a fee which is about three times the current NGO rate for shelters per night, or the emergence of ‘micro-home solutions’ or mHS which are defined as being driven by three core principles: affordability, design and community, and who envision developing ‘a portfolio of financially viable housing solutions that offer choices to urban poor to meet their diverse shelter needs’ on the other hand?14 If the UIDAI, the Delhi government, the union government, UNDP, Mission Convergence, and non-governmental organisations, among a whole host of other public and private enterprises and institutions, are invested in surveying and identifying ‘homeless’ populations, what is the experience of persons who Mission Convergence claims ‘self-identify’ themselves as homeless? How do these enrollment camps function, what factors bring enrollees into these camps, what expectations do they have of the process, In the Wake of Aadhaar 287


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and what new possibilities emerge in the zone of enrollment? How do people come to occupy the category of the ‘homeless’ and how do practices of selffashioning both inhibit and enable persons who come to occupy this category? What other categories does the category of ‘homelessness’ leach into, or leach out of, and how do these intersect with governmental practices? How do they co-constitute each other? Corbridge observes that, in many parts of India, the challenge for the poor is one of being seen by the state.15 Similarly, Anant Maringanti suggests ‘that large numbers of the poor whether in peasant societies or in the urban informal economy will depend crucially for their survival on being able to choose tactically when to become visible and be counted by the state and when not to be counted by the state’.16 In the movement between expediency and contingency, force and agency, what new energies, what new possibilities, what new dimensions of experience are emergent, and what stillborn? Enrollments in Delhi: The Delhi NCT is divided into nine revenue districts. Aadhaar enrollments in Delhi are being conducted by several Enrollment Agencies. However, a major chunk of the enrollments are being conducted by Strategic Outsourcing Services (SOS), a Bangalore based online marketing and IT service provider comprising primarily of ex-army officers. According to the Senior Manager Operations for Delhi, SOS won the bid for enrollments for the entire state of Delhi. However the company decided to limit its reach to only two areas: South West Delhi and North West Delhi, which contribute 50% of the entire population of the state. This was planned to be achieved by establishing 20-30 enrollment centers in these areas. In South West Delhi particularly, 12 centers have been established by SOS with the enrollments starting in January 2010. The Sub-districts in South West Delhi that SOS caters to are: Palam, Vasant Vihar, Najafgarh and Delhi Cantt and in North West Delhi to Saraswati Vihar, Narela, and Model Town. Palam Village: We visited five Aadhaar enrollment centers in Delhi, which included two in Palam Village, one in Raj Nagar (which comes within the Palam Colony area), one in Delhi Cant and one in east Delhi. Four out five enrollment centers were under the SOS. Palam in South West Delhi is situated near Janak Puri, Vikas Puri and Indira Gandhi International Airport. 288 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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For purposes of Aadhaar enrollments, Palam Village in South West Delhi is divided into 3 areas: Chhotiyal, Badiyal, and a new proposed undisclosed site. Chhotiyal, Palam Village: According to the supervisor of the enrollment centre in Chhotiyal, a total of 50,000 people are being targeted for Aadhaar enrollments in this village. There seems to be huge demand for enrollment as visible from the crowd both outside and inside the enrollment centre.

Scuffle outside the gates at Chhotiyal.

The supervisor also informed us that managing the crowds was one of the biggest challenges that her team was facing. Interestingly, to curb this problem, support from local residents was being sought as the agency staff was clearly inadequate to manage these huge numbers. On our visit we noticed a number of people who were not part of SOS, but who along with SOS staff were involved in disciplining the crowd, making lines for enrollment, verifying documents, helping in filling up forms, allocating serial numbers for demographic and biometric captures, and in certain cases turning down attempts by what were considered non-residents of Chhotiyal from joining the waiting lines. (See ‘The Social Category of the Introducer’ for videos and more details). In addition to the huge demand for Aadhaar enrollments and the associated problems of management, we found that neither residents nor the enrollment agency were clear on what benefits the Aadhaar card/number will entail. As per the supervisor from SOS, the importance of the card is that it provides a source of identity, an opportunity to hold a ‘proper’ document In the Wake of Aadhaar 289


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that will ascertain one’s identity as a resident. In addition, the supervisor believed that the Aadhaar card will stand in as a single source of identity in lieu of all the other several cards that the Government of India provides (PAN, driving license, etc). The supervisor also alluded to the use of the card for opening bank accounts and even obtaining rental agreements. The focus here is clearly on offline use of the card as a source of identity that will help legalise various ‘transactions’ that a resident enters into. No reference was made to aspects of online authentication for which the UIDAI is presently conducting test pilots in certain parts of Delhi. In our conversations with residents at the enrollment site in Chhotiyal, we were introduced to issues relating to factionalism and what seemed like caste politics. About 16 km from Palam village is a Harijan Colony (locally referred to as just Colony) in Sultanpuri from where certain people may have trickled into the Aadhaar enrollment centers in Palam (Chhotiyal, Badiyal, and Raj Nagar). We spoke to one such possible resident who complained, of having his forms being torn up by either the SOS staff or the local resident’s part of the management.

Unnamed worker trying to get himself enrolled at Badhiyal, Palamgaon. He gets into a scuffle with others in the line, and then with an enrollment representative, because his identity documents give one address and the Introducer letter gives another.

On further questioning, people around him accused him of being from the ‘Colony’ said that he therefore should not have come there for enrollments.



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On viewing his documents, it was determined that he had got a letter of introduction from a local MLA that stated that he belonged to Raj Nagar. In either case, whether he belonged to the Harijan Colony or Raj Nagar he was clearly not welcome in Chhotiyal by both residents and by staff. There seemed to be two issues here. Firstly, as per UIDAI norms, a resident can enroll in any enrollment centre in the country provided he/she fulfills the required criteria for usual residents and has the necessary documents. This incident was clearly an aberration to that norm: but not the only aberration—we saw similar situations elsewhere and documented one comment from Tripura advocating this kind of segmentation in the name of security. Secondly, if the person in question was genuinely from the Harijan Colony in Sultanpuri, as claimed by some Chhotiyal residents, how did he get a letter from an MLA that stated his place of residence as Raj Nagar? This speaks to an issue that a Congress party worker explicitly stated in another enrollment centre we visited; that of rampant fraud in providing proof of residence certificates. This also stands in contradiction to the statement made by the supervisor of Chhotiyal that an MLA will provide a letter of introduction only after verification of proper documents.

Interview with Aadhaar supervisor Prem Singh at the Raj Nagar station, about violence at the centre.

At the Chhotiyal enrollment centre we were briefed by the system administrator from SOS on the manner in which data is captured, stored and exported to the CIDR. Demographic and biographic data captured for each resident is initially stored on the internal hard disc of the laptop, and In the Wake of Aadhaar 291


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at the end of the day, data from each laptop is put into a common folder and copy pasted onto an external hard disk. This external hard disk does not reside at the enrollment site but is brought every day by a person from the central office. The exported data, which is now on an external hard disk, is sent to the SOS’s central office in South Extension. The system admin also appraised us about certain problems faced with the technology on a day-today basis. A recurrent problem is that of break in connectivity between the biometric and image capturing cameras and the laptop. Each enrollment centre has only local connectivity with no access to outside networks, either through WAN or the internet. Internet access is only provided to the district coordinator who is provided with a data card to email the head office, etc. Another problem is that the CIDR follows a Last In First Out (LIFO) process for de-duplication leading to a huge backlog. The Badhiyal enrollment centre in Palam village housed several more enrollment stations than the Chhotiyal centre. Also the level of aggression in the crowd was significantly higher, with residents resorting to pushing and shoving and attempting to rephrase to break down the door to the enrollment centre. The SOS and supporting locals were also similarly aggressive in dealing with this situation. In Badhiyal, one of the lead supervisors was, surprisingly, not an SOS employee but a president of the Resident Welfare Association of that area. A sprightly lady having a lot of clout with local residents as seen from the manner in which village folk were flocking to her to get their questions resolved or register complaints on the huge waiting time, she described herself as someone who was there only for the purpose of social welfare and hence was not motivated by any larger goal which could be ascribed to the state.



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Rashmi, President of the RWA.

The RWA president in Badhiyal had a seemingly more realistic take on why the centre was experiencing so much demand. She was of the opinion that the idea of a free card was attracting people and she ascribed that to the dominant village mentality. Lack of any clear goal or knowledge about what the card/number would entail did not seem to particularly bother her. Here again, as in Chhotiyal, the objective behind the huge demand was for a card that was perceived to guarantee a sort of legality to resident transactions, and no reference was being made to the online authentication aspects of the number. In our conversations with the RWA president and local residents at the enrollment site in Badhiyal, we were privy to an incident that categorically suggests factionalism in the guise of an endeavor for better management. A resident who had been repeatedly seeking clarifications on the nature of documents that she needed to provide for herself and her family, was questioned by the RWA president as to her place of residence. On determining that her place of residence was the Harijan Basti, the RWA president summarily stated that the card was not being made for people from Harijan Basti. The president later told us that another centre would open in that area, and the Badhiyal centre could cater only to people from its own area, but she did not specify anything about it to the resident. On the UIDAI website, it is stated that ‘residents need to go to the nearest Enrollment Camp to register for an Aadhaar’. This does not seem to suggest a restriction on the enrollment centre that a resident approaches for Aadhaar. Both the Chhotiyal and Badhiyal cases of turning down residents seem therefore motivated by a different reason, one that prima facie could be attributed to caste politics. Raj Nagar, Palam Colony: Very little information exists on the demographic and social aspects of Raj Nagar. However it has featured in some media as recently as April 2011 in relation to the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. Sajjan Kumar, a Congress leader was accused of instigating mobs against Sikhs in 1984. In 2011 he and a few others were accused of making efforts to influence key witnesses to not name him in the riot cases. In the Wake of Aadhaar 293


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Given this torrid political landscape, it was not surprising to find extensive political interference in the workings of the Raj Nagar Aadhaar enrollment centre. The centre is housed in a Manav Kalyan Sadan in a congested by lane with houses on either side. When we arrived, there was a power outage (this centre did not have a generator, unlike in Palam village) and so all the stations were idle. There were hoards of people standing outside, some of whom had arrived at the centre as early as 3 A.M. in order to get themselves enrolled. Inside the centre, a Congress Pradesh Vice President and his BJP counterpart, rallied against SOS for the poor infrastructure provided, inadequate machines and resources, poor crowd management techniques, etc. The Congress VP claimed that the population of Raj Nagar was 1.5 lakhs but the area had only 4 enrollment centers with 6 stations in each centre, managing to enroll about 300 residents per day per centre, whereas resident turnout on any given day was close to 5000 people. In addition, residents were being assisted in filling their forms by representatives of political parties, instead of by the SOS staff: another point of contention.



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Conversation with Congress politician Balwant Khokhar and BJP representative Nand Kishore Gautam at the Raj Nagar enrollment centre.

The political interference was being referred to as counselling or monitoring by the SOS staff, however it was quite evident from informal conversations with the staff that counseling was only a guise for larger local political agendas. Going by the manner in which both the Congress and BJP VP’s were calling the shots at the centre, it suggested a clear upper hand of political objectives over corporate practices. Even the district coordinator of SOS, toeing the political line, suggested implicitly that enrollments could not have been possible without help from local politicians and Resident Welfare Association members. The Manav Kalyan Sadan seems to be run by the local political party and hence infrastructure costs (rent, electricity, etc.) continue to be incurred by the state. The Congress VP drew attention to this while pointing out that SOS is receiving ` 25 per successful enrollment from the UIDAI but infrastructure costs continue to be incurred by them. The suggestion made from this, as well as the criticism against low number of centers available for enrollment, points to a framing of SOS as basically motivated by its own profit margins as opposed to the welfare stance of political parties. In the Congress VP’s rant against private agencies, one sees a clear distinction being made between private interests and the general public good. The president went as far as pointing out that letters of introduction from local MLAs and MPs were not verified by the SOS staff, which led to a huge probability of fraud. Further, both the BJP and Congress party members were drumming In the Wake of Aadhaar 295


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down their party affiliations and constantly referring to their roles as welfare workers for the betterment of society. Violence: The level of aggression in Raj Nagar was quite palpable. We were also informed of some recent incidents, one of which involving the supervisor of the centre himself. The Congress VP referred to an incident in which a resident’s hand was cut as a result of a stampede and in another case a resident’s fingers were cut when a fight broke out at the centre. The supervisor related an incident in which a person from the police department in civil dress had come to get himself enrolled. On seeing a huge crowd he got agitated and beat up the supervisor, who had tried to prevent him from breaking the line. This led to the shutting down of the centre for a few days and only after politicians of the area intervened was a compromise reached. Work Culture of SOS: In Raj Nagar we got also got a glimpse into the organisational structure and culture of SOS. Most of the senior level managers that we came across were male ex-army officers. However, there seems to be a higher female-to-male ratio from the designation of supervisor downwards. For instance, most of the supervisors we met were women and we noticed a lot more female operators than male staff. At Raj Nagar, the Senior Manager-Operations conducted a sort of spot appraisal activity by reading out the enrollments completed by each operator in the previous week. The top few were profusely congratulated while the average performers were prodded. This at least was similar to a BPO work floor with its spot rewards and incentive plans.



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NOTES 1

The Mission Convergence website mentions an award in the form of a grant from the World Bank for collaborating with the Government of Brazil in order to understand the ‘technical and implementation aspects’ of the Bolsa Familia Programme and its applicability in Delhi. See http://missionconvergence. org/international-collaboration.html.

2

supra n. 1.

3

http://uidai.gov.in/UID_PDF/Front_Page_Articles/Documents/Strategy_Overveiw-001.pdf.

4

Homeless Survey 2010, Project Management Unit, GNCTD-UNDP Project , Pg. 42.

5

http://www.countercurrents.org/twa221211.htm.

6

http://missionconvergence.org/international-collaboration.html.

7

http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl2824/stories/20111202282402200.htm.

8

Ghertner, D.A. 2008. ‘An analysis of new legal discourse behind Delhi’s slum demolitions’, Economic and Political Weekly, 43(20): 57–66.

9

Ibid. See also Ramanathan, Usha. 2005. ‘Demolition drive’. Economic and Political Weekly 40:3607– 3612 – 2006. ‘Illegality and the urban poor’. Economic and Political Weekly 41:3193–3197.

10 Ibid. 11 Dupont, Veronique (2000): ‘Mobility Patterns and Economic Strategies of Houseless People in Old Delhi’ in Veronique Dupont, E Tarlo and D Vidal (ed.) Delhi: Urban Space and Human Destinies (New Delhi: Manohar Publishers), 101. 12 Ghosh, Jayati (2011): ‘Cash Transfers as the Silver Bullet for Poverty Reduction: A Skeptical Note’, Economic & Political Weekly, 21 May, Vol X LVI, No 21, 71. 13 Report: Workshop on ‘The Poor as an Emerging Market: Strategies, Research, and Implications’. RBI Programme on Interdisciplinary Approaches to Economic Issues, National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore, 6 November 2009, Pg. 1. 14 http://www.microhomesolutions.com/. 15 Corbridge, S, G Williams, M Srivastava and Rene Veron (2005): Seeing the State: Governance and Governmentality in India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). 16 Maringanati, Anant (2009): ‘Sovereign State and Mobile Subjects: Politics of the UIDAI’, Economic & Political Weekly, 14 November , Vol X LI V, No 46, 35–40.



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CHAPTER 8

Himachal Pradesh An Identity Project field report

The CSCS Identity Project team visited several locations in Himachal Pradesh: Mandi, Joginder Nagar, Dharamshala, Tashi Jong, Una and Amb, between July 11th to 19th, 2011. Himachal is, like Tripura in some respects, a border state attempting to aggressively transform itself into an e-state. While the dominant image of Himachal’s Aadhaar enrollment was the iconic moment of the Dalai Lama getting himself an Aadhaar card, thereby sending a major signal to the Tibetan refugees in this state as well as to refugees across the country, there are several other landmarks in the state’s digital ambitions. Two of these are: the extent to which the state has pulled in its panchayat structure to support the digitization initiative, and the CSC mechanism exemplified by its Sugam Integrated Community Service Centres, which offer a staggeringly wide range of services, along with its VLE mechanism. These two aspects have been highlighted in our visit.

Tashi Jong Buddhist monastery, Himachal Pradesh: Aadhaar enrollments.

MoU & Key Stakeholders: An MoU was signed between the Himachal Pradesh (HP) State Government and the UIDAI in May 2010 (though actual enrollment began much only between Jan-March 2011). It was in line with 298 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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the standard roles and responsibilities that the UIDAI has established with other state governments. Here the role of the State Government was to facilitate the enrollment process by identifying Registrars, providing logistics and liaison support to the staff and representatives of the UIDAI, etc. The role of the UIDAI was mainly to conceptualise the process of enrollment including evolving a funding mechanism for enrollment of residents into the UID system. The office of the Principal Secretary, Planning, was designated as nodal agency, and the Food and Civil Supplies Department as Registrar for the state. In addition, however, the state set up a UID Implementation Committee to monitor the project under the chairmanship of the Chief Secretary, and a Joint Working Committee with Director, Food and Civil Supplies as Registrar of the JWG, the Additional Director General (UIDAI), Chandigarh region, the Additional Director, Food and Civil Supplies, the Deputy Director, Information and Public Relations, the Technical Director (NIC), among its members. The Registrar was meant to oversee the enrollment of all residents above the age of 5 years who are going to be issued a micro-ATM-like cards containing a 16-digit numeric code. The HP MoU did not carry a specific clause that allows Registrars to collect ‘any data’, as we see for example in the MoU of AP, but the stress from the beginning was on linking the Aadhaar number with financial institutions for money transactions of any other service provider, along with a range of services: and so there has been a call for details such as mobile numbers, bank accounts, etc. In December 2010, a set of Introducers were appointed by the State Government who could verify the proof of address and proof of identity of all those residents who do not possess any. The list of such Introducers is not known. Enrolling Agencies: In January 2011, the Registrar shortlisted several private companies to act as enrollment agencies—mainly GnG, IL&FS, Wipro and I-Grandee—to cover 12 districts in HP. Further, the Hyderabad In the Wake of Aadhaar 299


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based biometrics solution company Bartronics was employed for capturing biometric data in HP. In March 2011, financial bids from empanelled agencies were solicited for the task of capturing Know Your Resident (KYR) and biometrics information from each resident who turned up for enrollment in Zone 4 (districts Shimla, Kinnaur, Sirmaur and Solan). The target population as per the 2001 census was identified at 17.5 lakh. The plan was to establish enrollment centres, each consisting of one or several enrollment stations, at a panchayat level with prior information to the residents through media sources. Each enrollment station would be equipped with a kit of two laptops, a finger print scanner, an iris scanner and a camera. Enrollment Scale/Process: For the purpose of enrollment, the State has been divided into four zones: District Kangra and Chamba, District Una, Hamirpur and Bilaspur, District Mandi, Kullu and Lahaul-Spiti, and District Shimla, Solan, Sirmaur and Kinnaur. The target population of these would be, as per the 2001 Census, 70.29 lakh. Between Jan - March 2011 enrollments starting from Hamirpur in zone 2 were being carried out in all four zones of the state. The state has targeted completing capturing of biometric data and issuing of UID cards across all zones by May 2012. By the end of May 2011, 7.48 lakh (11% of the population) had been registered. As per the Request for Quotation document, Enrollment Stations would need to be operational at all panchayats in each district. So the UIDAI was looking at setting up ~850 enrollment stations in these districts operational for a period of 20 days. Of these over 100 enrollment centres have been envisaged in Zone 4 of the state. Aadhaar and NPR: HP seems to be one state where the NPR data is being leveraged to generate the Aadhaar number. Two events point to this. HP Chief Minister Prem Kumar Dhumal inaugurated both Census 2011 and the Unique Identity project on the same day, Jan 25th, 2011, and spoke of the two having a common objective—that of formulating developmental plans. One media report went as far as linking the second phase of the Census 2011 that was 300 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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proposed to be carried out in end-February with the Aadhaar enrollments. This may be one reason why the actual Aadhaar enrollment started only towards the beginning of March 2011, after the census enumerators had collected factual data on family members. Further, the TIN number provided by the Registrar General of India (RGI) as part of the Census 2011 exercise is being accepted as a proof of identity by an enrollee. The residents are advised to bring either voter card, Ration Card, PAN card, Driving License, Bank Account Pass book, LPG book, NREGA job card and a copy of the receipt of National Population Register as a proof of identity. Enrolling Residents: On the question of citizenship status of the enrolling resident, it appears as though Aadhaar enrollment is being offered to all residents, including Tibetan refugees in HP. In May 2010, a media source reported that the Dalai Lama would be enrolled for the first phase of the 2011 census. ‘He also assured that all Tibetans in exile would include their names in the census so that they can get their ensuing UID (Unique ID Card) that is at par with any authentic document of an individual’. The report also mentioned that the Tibetan population in exile was being counted in the census of India 2011 for the first time, and that the census of 2011 would be regarded as the gateway for every citizen to obtain the proposed Unique ID card that the Central Government proposed to launch. In April 2011 the Dalai Lama provided his KYR and biometric data for generation Aadhaar number to the enrolling agency in Dharmshala. Enabling demand—UIDAI as authenticating device: The biometric details of Census 2011 are being synchronised with the UIDAI in order to have a common identification standard as the UID has an agreement to synchronise the data feeds of the NPR into its data base. The generic process flow for this has been outlined in a presentation on Aadhaar. Enabling Access to Services: Food and Civil Supplies (FCS): In addition to de-duplicating the NPR database, the UIDAI database is also being planned to de-duplicate the survey data with the FCS department. To this end, information sought out from enrollees includes ‘information about their status on ration cards, PAN cards, LPG connection and bank accounts’. In the Wake of Aadhaar 301


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The objective is to eliminate duplication in delivery of services by the FCS and Consumer Affairs department. Background: Pilferage in the PDS seems to be a serious concern for the government of HP. In an attempt to check huge losses incurred, the government, in March 2009, had planned to introduce e-ration cards and make it mandatory for all fair price shops to issue cash memos. It was further envisaged that an online system would enable a day-to-day monitoring of stocks of all essential commodities being distributed through PDS. At the time of mooting this idea, the chief minister also said that ‘a global positioning system (GPS) could also be adopted for the supplies being made from wholesale depots to the retail outlets all over the State besides ensuring timely delivery of the supplies at different destinations’. On the other hand, this system would facilitate easy transfer of cards from one station to another without the possibility of duplication or of drawing benefits from two stations by the same person at any time. This would also help in checking bogus ration cards. Further, the government also planned to make the e-ration card multipurpose, not restricting it to just the PDS but also providing through it a range of governmental services. This scheme seems to be part of a larger initiative of the Central government of checking pilferage through the PDS, that it had originally mooted in mid-2007. This had involved the disbursal of ‘food coupons’ to ration card holders, who could then redeem these coupons at kirana stores instead of only at fair price ration shops. The Government would directly reimburse the kirana store the extent of subsidy that was available under PDS. Further, the Center had also initiated a pilot project in MP for providing e-ration cards to streamline PDS delivery. A computer-based automated ration card and public distribution management system would be set up under a pilot project which would connect the shopkeeper, the warehouse and the consumer through computers. The functions attributed to the e-ration card (de-duplication and prevention of bogus cards, etc) seem to be similar to what the UID envisages to achieve. Hence it



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would be important to understand what were the failures of the e-card system that made the FCA department search for another de-duplication mechanism? The role of Panchayats: A key area of inquiry was the state’s panchayat system, and the extent to which it had been mobilised for digitisation. More specifically, if the panchayats were aware of what was happening, and how they were coping with the new demands. The Panchayat Raj Act, 1994, had been amended to make reservation of 50% for women, and we spoke to several women panchayats as well. A summary:

Pramila Devi, Panch Pradhan, Tandu.

Pramila Devi was looking after her infant child even as she spoke to us. She has been in the Pradhan for the past eight months. She says her role is mainly to ‘guide’ people: given ward members have been given the duty to especially help people who are illiterate. When we said we had just visited the office and found nobody there, she was surprised: but said that this could happen, since they depended on voluntary labour as well. The state panchayat system works with the gram sabhas and upa-gram sabhas (a gram sabha comprising all those registered or qualified to be registered in the electoral roll of legislative assembly relating to a village) and she says gram sabha meetings happen twice a month. She has little idea as to what Aadhaar will do to make her work easier, but speculates that this could help people whose ration cards are lost or who don’t have photo IDs. Interestingly, she says—as do almost all the other Panchayats we spoke to—that the Introducer role is virtually non-existent in her locality. In the Wake of Aadhaar 303


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Interview with Promila Thakur, Panchayat, Amb village.

Promila Thakur, Panchayat at Amb village, is in the thick of things at the enrollment. The crowd is huge, and they are, she says, trying to manage the crowd in lines, two for males, two for females. Today there has been a power outage so they are trying to get a generator, amid serving the enrollment staff with water and tea. She has nine wards in her Panchayat, and implements the NREGA programme in these wards. She also holds the election polling list. Her office has made no effort to link the electoral roll with the Aadhaar registration. An official explains: The ward Panch. . . have a good idea of number of people in their wards and they are able to tell us the number of people who have registered and number of them pending. As per our analysis, this panchayat has 2400 votes so the population will be more than 3000. Then we calculate our daily coverage. With these statistics we make our schedule E.g. If we can cover 300 applicants daily in a population of 3000, we have to station there for 10 days. We adjust the last one or two days according to the people left or in excess. While many people have their ration cards, they tend, she says, to be ‘careless about their voter identity card’. In case they have lost their ration cards, the panchyat issues them a duplicate, but if duplicate cards are not available, she gives a letter under her seal and their ration card number, and that is then enough.



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The verification for duplicates takes place when a family registers with the panchayat secretary, which has their names, house numbers and their ration card numbers. An official there says that 190 Panchyats of the 235 have been covered under the Common Services Scheme. The CSC there provides only the electricity bill and the revenue land records. The records are computerised. She too has only a scant idea of what the Aadhaar card is, or what it will do, and hazards the guess that, ‘like ration cards serve as an identification along with providing them ration, the card too will serve as an identification document’.

Narendra Singh, Panchayat Pradhan, Chari village.

Narendra Singh is a little more circumspect about what data he has. He has at present 207 people under BPL, 42 under Antyodaya, and the rest under the Annapurna, of a total population of 2600 voters as per Election register, but he guesses that these could have gone up to 3000. Unlike the other two, he works as Introducer either for people who are very poor and have no identity card, or those who are newly married and do not have their new identity documents. He does this by first checking their names in the family register. Most of the people are born and brought up in the village so we know them, he says. What of outsiders? He checks their ration cards, and they have to have a No Objection Certificate from their corporation and have their previous ration card cancelled. The need to handle fake cards is again his primary concern: the ration card can only be issued by a Pradhan or the secretary. His panchayat demands a No Objection Certificate or an affidavit In the Wake of Aadhaar 305


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from outstation candidates: all non-residents have been asked to verify their NOCs and affidavits once again, since he has heard that ‘in Himachal we have 2.5 Lakh Ration cards issued but the rations worth 3.5 Lakh is being distributed’. The Sugam Integrated Community Service Centre

Operators at the Sugam CSC at Una.

On paper at least the Sugam Centre offers a staggeringly wide range of services: a High Court Cause List, HRTC bus tickets and HPTDC hotel reservations, welfare pension information and a government pensioner helpline, essential commodities rates, grievance filing procedures, online police complaints, etc (see http://hp.gov.in/sugam/). When we made a to the Sugam Centre at Una, however, the results were considerably more modest. This Centre is so far the only one in the city, and it only started operating earlier that year. They supply land records of the Tehsil. They don’t yet take electricity bills, but you can get yourself a driving license. All data is entered online, and thereafter transferred via the National Information Center to the State register and the National register. They retain only a manual offline record. They are accepting Aadhaar cards as proof of address/identity, but online verification of Aadhaar has yet to start. The Village-Level Entrepreneur: The HP CSC mechanism, locally known as the Lokmitra Kendra project, plans to set up 3366 e-Governance centres at the panchayat level, as the front-end delivery points for Government, 306 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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private and social sector services to rural citizens of India, in an integrated manner. We had some long interviews with VLEs and feature one such: with a VLE named Balbir Guleria at Drang. Guleria runs the CTMS Study Centre along with his brother. He presently offers Government-to-Consumer and Consumer-to-Consumer services: he can receive electricity bills, and payment for mobile recharge. He doesn’t yet do birth certificates, nor land records. His electricity bill payment structure is not yet online: so he takes the money as a cheque or cash, but as a first step, the money is deducted from his working capital-deposit. After the MIS report is generated and submitted at the electricity office, he receives his refund. This means that if a stranger pays a bill by cheque, and the cheque bounces, he has to bear the loss. It also requires him to have a working capital. We do not have much revenue at all. We only have mobile charge and electricity bill facility, and electricity bill also has a drawback since its offline and we have to make a payment in advance which requires initial investment. In this circle we do billing for more than 12 lakh. Even if I were to invest ` 5 lakh as working capital there is no guarantee of how many people will submit their bills here and if I will be able to recover the money. He doesn’t have much revenue: but he hopes that when the services are enlarged the revenue might increase. Connectivity is a major issue: he says: ‘We are trying to use Nakal Jamabandi but at times it says that it is unable to consult the Tehsil. Also, if a service doesn’t work once, then the people don’t prefer coming back since they don’t trust us. Once it is fully implemented it will be a viable project. Especially for the unemployed and a source of income. The centre can be open for longer and therefore is much more convenient for customers’. When a new customer comes, the CSC generates an ID, which will be used henceforth to get data online. Guleria also runs an independent computer centre, as many VLEs do. He mainly goes for mobile recharge as hyis key service, and is not ‘pushing for electricity bill payment’ because the ‘broadband isn’t fast enough so there are a lot of issues’.



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CHAPTER 8

Karnataka An Identity Project field report

The Identity project team conducted field visits in several polling booths in Bangalore (Koramangala), and Mysore in October 2011. The team also interacted extensively with senior staff at COMAT, a major IT institution that has had a long history of involvement with the State government’s e-initiatives. COMAT, crucially, had handled the famous Nemmadi project, which has been dealt with separately in this book (see Raman and Bawa, Chapter 7). The state’s e-governance project effectively began with the controversial Bhoomi project, assembling all land records into one e-resource. Nemmadi, which effectively replaced Bhoomi, constituted the State’s outreach mechanism through its network of around 800 rural telecentres at the village hobli level and back-offices at the taluk level. The state has a SWAN mechanism in place, and there appears to be, by national standards anyway, good connectivity enabling e-transactions to happen online including treasury, stamps and registration, transport, and the state government’s much-touted HRMS (Human Resource Management System) started in March 2005 and claimed by the state as ‘unique in the entire country’. HRMS generates the salary bills of more 500,000 employees and also maintains their employee service history. Pre-Enrollment Pilot Tests: Karnataka has been on the UIDAI radar since the beginning of 2010 as proof-of-concept studies were conducted with over 2.5 lakh people in Mysore and Tumkur between March 2010 and June 2010. As per the UIDAI report the PoC was conducted ‘to evaluate, technical, operational, and behavioral hypotheses related to both the use



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of biometric devices and the overall enrollment process itself’. PoC studies were administered by the Food and Civil Supplies department along with Department of eGovernance. According to the UIDAI report, the villages of Chellur and Bukkapatna in Tumkur and Mysore were selected based on their suitable proximity to Bangalore, a sizeable adult rural population, and a population with diverse occupational practices. Another aspect of the PoC was to create known duplicates by having each enrollee come back after three weeks to get re-enrolled. This was to verify the de-duplicating function of the CIDR. Karnataka saw an 84% re-enrollment rate, suggesting high demand for the Aadhaar number. Local panchayat groups were also roped in to carry out field studies. MoU & Key Stakeholders: The Memorandum of Understanding signed between the Centre for e-Governance, Government of Karnataka and the UIDAI in March 2010 (at the time when PoC studies were beginning in the state) is in line with the standard roles and responsibilities that the UIDAI has established with other state governments. The Centre for e-Governance is the State Registrar for the UIDAI: an unusual development, and one probably floated at an early stage based on the plan to collate all the MMPs in the NeGP under new eGovernance departments. Aadhaar in Karnataka was therefore an additional kind of pilot: one of setting such eGovernance Centres in the country. This imagination of Aadhaar appeared to us to have influenced the manner in which enrollments are happening in Karnataka. The Centre for e-Governance, it must be mentioned, is a society established by the Government: its purpose is to implement the Karnataka State Wide Area Networks (KSWAN) and several Government-to-citizen, Governmentto-Government, and Government-to-Business projects, such as State Data Centres, Nemmadi, and the Bangalore-wide and state-wide CSCs (Bangalore One and Karnataka One). In addition to the state Registrar, central Registrars like NSDL and India post also conduct Aadhaar enrollments but very minimally.



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Civil Representation: Certain districts like Mysore have also elected representatives from civic bodies to administer the Aadhaar enrollments. These representatives, totaling more than 700, include presidents, vicepresidents, secretaries and development officers of gram panchayats. In addition, in Bangalore, staff members from the BBMP and Urban Development Authority have been assisting in opening up Aadhaar centres in the city. Another media report talks about the introduction of a financial incentive of Re. 1 to be given to a ‘verifier’ for getting a person into an enrollment centre. The verifier is a new category: whereas enrollers are independent bodies, verifiers are direct state representatives, and form an additional clearing house at the time of enrollments. There was in our minds considerable doubt as to whether the government’s keeping of verification in its own hands, as against permitting enrollers to process the documents, was not an additional level of bureaucracy and contrary to the original spirit of the project. Enrolling Agencies: There are three major EA’s in Karnataka; COMAT Technologies in Mysore, Wipro in Tumkur and more recently Integra Micro Systems in Bangalore. For Aadhaar enrollments, both COMAT and Wipro receive ` 34.35 per successful enrollment. COMAT’s core work is in rural areas, providing access to citizen records for a small fee as well as information on services that can be availed by rural residents. As per COMAT’s website, 7 million farmers in Karnataka have been given access to their respective land records electronically. Though not mentioned on their website, COMAT had been reportedly running close to 2000 Common Service Centres in 8 states across the country. However, due to the reluctance of most state governments to digitise citizen data and provide Government to Citizen e-services, COMAT withdrew from all locations in 2009. What seems to come after the CSCs are the Rural Business Centres (RBC) spread across 5 states. Integra Micro Systems enrolls for Aadhaar in Bangalore. Integra is primarily a technology and software service provider specialising in the financial sector. Its flagship product, iMFAST, is designed to handle financial applications specially targeted at rural communities. According to the company website, ‘a commercial bank can link this device to its banking 310 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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system using a variety of communication channels. . . and extend all banking facilities to populations in rural areas without disbursing huge amounts of funds on opening remote branches or installing expensive ATMs’. iMFAST is in effect meant to be the front end device for use in Financial Inclusion programs like direct cash transfers under MGNREGA. In fact, in December 2010, Mastercard, in partnership with Integra, began developing an Aadhaarbased payments platform for rural areas. Interestingly, Integra’s website does not mention anything about the Aadhaar enrollments that the firm is currently carrying out in Bangalore.

ENROLLMENT SCALE/PROCESS: TUMKUR AND MYSORE

Four sisters being enrolled in Mysore.

As per real-time data on the UIDAI portal, Karnataka is the 3rd highest state in enrollments. The ubiquity of Aadhaar enrollment centres can be gleaned from the fact that the State Government planned to take an inventory of IP sets in the state by making the registration of IP set-numbers compulsory while enrolling for Aadhaar. It is said that two lakh IP sets in the state are unauthorised, and do not belong to any of the 5 electricity supply companies in the state. Aadhaar enrollments in Tumkur and Mysore, where the most number of enrollments have taken place, began in October 2010 In the Wake of Aadhaar 311


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and by August 2011, 1.5 million residents had been enrolled in Tumkur and 1.4 million in Mysore, close to 90% of the district population. About 100 enrollment centres have been established across 35 wards in Tumkur. In April 2011, the enrollments in both Tumkur and Mysore seem to have slowed down due to, by one newspaper report, ‘power cuts, technical snags, and the unfriendly attitude of the staff at the Aadhaar centres’. In addition, complaints were received from residents on names being misspelt by the Google transliteration software deployed at these centres.

COMAT’s General Manager Shailendra Rao Nalige speaking on translation issues and misspellings.

Other reasons given for the slowdown include heightened agricultural work in the pre-monsoon months of April-May. In addition, some complaints were received from residents on the appearance of brokers on the Aadhaar scene, both during enrollments as while as during delivery of the Aadhaar card. Tumkur, being largely rural faced connectivity and power problems, so much so that WIPRO, the enrollment agency for the region was asked by the Registrar to make its own arrangements for power back-up. A series of measures to improve this situation were then taken up by the Centre for e-Governance: including making the ration card mandatory for identification, in the absence of which residents could be introduced only by gram panchayat secretaries who were designated as official introducers. Another measure introduced in Mysore was to send enrollment forms by post to residents. It is not clear how addresses of residents were determined. 312 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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Also, in November 2010, the Principal Secretary Centre for E-Governance announced an increase in enrollment centres in Mysore from 75 to 450, to be remained open 24 hrs. Further, and more interestingly, a permanent training centre was planned to be established ‘to supply a steady stream of enrollment personnel’. These measures seem interesting as both Tumkur and Mysore are purported as model districts for Aadhaar enrollments by UIDAI authorities. Bangalore and other districts: Enrollments in the remaining 28 districts of the state, including Bangalore, were planned to be conducted in two phases. In Bangalore, phase 1 enrollments began in February 2011 with the Postal Departments acting as central registrars. However, the exercise soon ran out of steam with the postal staff unable to handle the demand. The second phase of the exercise began in July 2011 with a plan to complete 100% enrollments by July 2013, by establishing enrollment centres in all 198 wards of the city. The delay in beginning enrollments in Bangalore has been attributed to ‘a vast floating population’. As far as the enrollment process is concerned in Bangalore, it has been reported that the nature of information being sought out, possibly under KYR+ (called ‘Data Collection for State Government’) is not just limited to bank account numbers and LPG gas connection numbers but includes a long list, starting from ‘availing any social security pension’ to ‘Sandhya Suraksha’, ‘physically handicapped person’, ‘destitute/widow pension’, ‘old age pension’, ‘ration card’, ‘NREGA job card’, ‘member of milk cooperative society’, and so on, which has caused a furore among residents. Further, the form available in Bangalore does not make any aspect of the information being sought out optional. For completing enrollments all districts of the state, the Registrar also planned to establish permanent Aadhaar centres in Hubli and at Panchayat levels as well as deploy mobile units in nine corporation areas of the state. Enabling Demand: From a preliminary survey of reports available, one begins to understand that the state government of Karnataka foresees several authentication uses for the Aadhaar number. For one, there is detailed information being sought out in the KYR+ section of the Aadhaar enrollment form which possibly can be used by several state departments. Specifically, In the Wake of Aadhaar 313


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Aadhaar in the state is increasingly being associated with LPG delivery. This development has its bearings in the MoU signed between the UIDAI and the petroleum ministry in June 2010, purportedly to curb pilferage of PDS kerosene and domestic LPG. According to this MoU, oil marketing companies IOCL, BPCL and HPCL will act as registrars for the UIDAI and receive a financial incentive of ` 50 per successful enrollment. In this manner biometric authentication will become part of LPG delivery. A pilot to test this out was planned in Hyderabad, Mysore and Tumkur. As of June 2011, the Ministry of Petroleum was in the process of passing a control order to make the Aadhaar number mandatory for procuring LPG. The purported plan was to equip the delivery boy with a handheld machine while delivering the LPG cylinder, and to ask for authentication by one family member before delivery. This has not yet been implemented. Full video interview with Shailendra Rao Nalige, General Manager, COMAT: see https://pad.ma/CKN/.



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A report of the E-governance movement in Palakkad, Kerala Arun Menon Doctoral Student, CSCS

Kerala has a long history of e-governance, known mainly for its well-established CSC network (FRIENDS and Akshaya), and for a number of its policies including, famously its commitment to the FOSS Open-Source movement. The essay explores what a particular kind of digital locality—a set of social linkages that are, so to say, not yet networks—has come to mean in the State, and the impact that major pannational initiatives such as both Aadhaar and the National Population register could have on that legacy.

INTRODUCTION

Kerala possesses an unusual, and richly diverse history of a

digital infrastructure, one that long precedes both the NeGP plan and the UID project. The arrival of mega-projects such as both Aadhaar and the National Population Register (NPR) both threaten and transform Kerala’s digital locality. The following dossier explores some of the social origins of the disparate e-governance ecosystems in Kerala, and attempts to bring out the possible consequences of Aadhaar’s entry into those ecosystems. This dossier examines the e-district of Palakkad, along with all that has come to comprise a local e-governance system in that district. I hope to show that such a digital ecosystem developed in a curiously organic manner, and brought together, in its development, a clutch of autonomous digitisation projects to make for some kind of organic whole.



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Further, I explore the consequences of the NeGP structure in the state, and the wide skepticism that was displayed by agency coordinators, managers and developers: a skepticism that, I propose, emerges from a specific view of technology, and what it is expected to mean for both the state and the citizen. I will, in this context, explore how initiatives such as entegramam in Calicut, or the FRIENDS community drive in Palakkad, could hold significance for the way the citizen is increasingly being thought about and defined as a digital subject. The study was undertaken during the period between March 2011 and August 2012. It began with preliminary field visits, including meetings with the district information bureau at Palakkad and the Additional Tehsildar of the Taluk, who spoke to me about specific projects such as the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), the Ration Card Digitisation project, and the NPR enrollment drive, and also introduced me to operational officers of each of the projects specific to that Taluk. Over 12 sustained, open-ended, and unstructured interviews were conducted, of which two were on record, and only four permitted me to list their real names. All interviews were conducted on fixed appointments directly with the relevant offices and project managers and not through official or state channels such as the KSITM, the SCRB etc. Both the CCTNS and police networks interviews at the District Crime Records Bureau were granted informal permissions to list real names but needed clearance from the DDSY Admin at the District Police Office Headquarters located in Palakkad. Other interviews have therefore been suppressed from this report largely due to limitations placed by the bureaucracy.

WHY KERALA?

As mentioned, Kerala holds a unique position in the area of

digitised delivery of welfare and services across the state: it is, for example, the only State government to make the FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) movement mandatory as per the 2007 amendment to the State IT Act. The FOSS 316 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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advocacy was such that even UID’s enrollment machines were forced to comply both on software and hardware, leading both to delays in UID’s entry in Kerala and dependence on enrollment providers that do not fall within State Government constraints, such as banks, the post office, the census/RGI etc. Among other unique factors for the state, the Citizen Service Centre (CSC) model has been in place for more than a decade, and has a well-functioning system of services, including both Government welfare as well as private services. Also, in 2010, Kerala passed a State bill on the Electronic Delivery of Services, whereas the Central Government had yet to pass one. Kerala had demonstrated a willingness to develop information and communication technologies as a core part of welfare services, from Health, Police and Judicial systems, Telecommunications, Education, and recently the PDS, through single-window contact centers for the government. The ambition was for these contact centres to be so distributed that they exist no more than 2 kilometers away for anyone living anywhere in the state.

WHY PALAKKAD?

The field work here has been to attempt to get what we may describe

as sufficiently thick descriptions of the local experience: which has included the intricacies of not just how data is gathered, but accessed, used, and indeed has come to be known as a ‘data double’ or a digital approximate of a person. This process, I argue, is of a very local nature, and is significant because it tends, in its very locality, to counter the hyper-centralised imagination of the UIDAI. On the other hand, it also provides a local infrastructure that initiatives such as the UIDAI have often found lacking in different parts of the country forcing the UIDAI to build these from the ground up. Palakkad district, earlier known as Palghat, is located near the Tamil Nadu border and a short distance from Coimbatore. It is at present one of only two earmarked pilot e-district projects in Kerala. It is also the headquarters of the former telecom giant ITI Limited-reinvented as both a facility for In the Wake of Aadhaar 317


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manufacturing smart cards and listed as the key National Population Register (NPR) agency for the State. Also, the Akshaya project, showpiece of the State Government with Service Centres in many parts of the state, has an active presence here: Akshaya, in turn, is an enroller for the UIDAI.

Framing Contexts The State’s e-district project brings together multiple and diverse information silos, each accessible over the Kerala State Wide Area Network (KSWAN). KSWAN itself is the infrastructure over which police and judicial networks, the secretariat networks located at the NIC data centers at each district and at the State-level, and other records such as electricity, land records and water, are connected. The KSWAN also provides backbone infrastructure for all CSCs which connect to it using the FREES client developed by the NIC for welfare delivery, state benefits, and other connected services. The UID therefore, unlike in other States, here provides no more than real-time authentication identities to an existing structure.

The UID Question At the time of this field work (2011–2012), UID enrollments had yet to see any large scale activities in the state (these were, at the time of the visits, limited to the post offices, banks, and a very few other locations), but considerable NPR enrollments had taken place. According to the Census, 1.5 crore of the (eligible) population in Kerala have been enrolled into the NPR by end-2012, and through the NPR into the UID. However, it was also apparent that this process has been rife with complications: for instance, those enrolled into the UID had to still present themselves for enrollment into the NPR. And UID enrollments processed through the NPR took considerably longer than those proceeding directly for an Aadhaar number. Akshaya CSCs were authorised UID enrollers, although, in 2011, enrollment was still at a demonstration phase. Since Akshaya operates through the private entrepreneur model, at the time that UID was just beginning enrollment into the database, its operators were worried about 318 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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both investment and recouping losses. An enrollment device at the time cost ` 1.5 Lacs and the total additional investment required by an operator (at the time) to become an Aadhaar enroller reached anywhere between ` 5-10 Lacs. This put individual operators in a disadvantaged position compared to large organisations such as, for instance, Keltron. My focus here on the issues raised by the UID are different from those elsewhere: this dossier is less concerned with the number of individuals enrolled, the agencies involved etc., and more with the complex, often socially interlinked (though not yet properly networked) services of the government that are made available to a diverse population. The dossier therefore suggests a focus not on any one project in Kerala but on the digital ecosystem itself, and on the components that enable it to exist, the history of its development, and most importantly, the role that comparatively new giants, including both the UID, the NPR and the CCTNS, could now play in this ecosystem as they bring together isolated network silos for what is widely expected to be better governance.

THE NeGP AND DIGITISATION EFFORTS AT PALAKKAD KERALA: THE PREHISTORY OF THE DIGITAL ECOSYSTEM

Palakkad district has witnessed the digitisation movement

across multiple segments of government from the welfare mechanisms including health, labour, public distribution/ration card, education, and others to the police and judicial network systems encompassing local police networks, administrative secretariats, and court complexes. The CCTNS itself upgrades the CIPA and CCIS. As such, Palakkad already possessed the criteria listed by the 2009 NeGP roundtable as the essential components of benefit delivery, namely ‘a three tiered structure. . . comprising of the CSCs as the front end delivery infrastructure. . . State Wide Area Networks and State Data Centers as the support infrastructure that enables the convergence backbone. . . and Mission Mode Projects forming In the Wake of Aadhaar 319


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the third tier which will specifically target citizen centric services to convert them from manual services to e-services’. The Department of Information Technology manages and provides for the various IT related activities within the state. The IT Department functions with 7 main goals: 1. Interfacing between the Government and the industry from a business perspective; 2. Interacting with potential investors; 3. Enhancing the IT industry base; 4. ICT dissemination among the state citizenry to bridge the digital divide; 5. E-Governance; 6. Developing Human Resources for IT & ITES; and 7. Advising the Government on policy matters (2011). The Kerala State Information Technology Mission is a part of the DoIT. The MoU between the UIDAI and the Government of Kerala has been executed between the Regional offices of the UIDAI in Bangalore and the DoIT in the Kerala Secretariat. The department manages all the digitisation portfolios in the State: most of these overlap as they fall within systems of management and conceptualisation and delivery of services. The Free and Open Source Software Policy - catfoss is part of the Government of Kerala’s IT policy. Specifically with regard to the present situation, given that UIDAI’s enrollment devices and software are proprietary, a stalemate has taken place: one that affects IT@School, Akshaya Centers, and Keltron, but does not affect the State Bank of Travancore which has recently floated tenders to begin enrollments in Kerala. Overall, the CATFOSS policy along with IT-FOSS are organised and managed by the Government of Kerala to support and develop open source initiatives and software for governance at the state level as well as lower levels of administration. This effectively means that all departments of government, even local providers connected to the state government, are supported to develop FOSS initiatives, a movement that is not seen in any other state in the Indian Union. The Kerala State IT Mission (KSITM), located, as mentioned above, within the Department of IT, manages the Kerala State Data Centres in consultation with Wipro. KSITM is also involved in local e-governance projects under which Aadhaar is mandated, along with projects such as ICT for women, Department WAN, Kerala Statewide Area Networks or 320 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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KSWAN. On its side, SecWAN attempts this kind of networking within large campuses of the secretariat and defines its mandate as one that ‘facilitates the information-system services in the offices of the ministers and the heads of all the administrative departments of the Government of Kerala located within the Secretariat’. Among its many tasks is the digitisation of all government records and systems. The National Informatics Centre has a strong regional presence, with regional offices and centers in Thiruvananthapuram and district offices and data centers in Palakkad and other districts in Kerala. Unlike the IT Mission and other projects such as Akshaya, the NIC operates under the Ministry of Communications and IT, Department of Information Technology, Government of India. The E-District Projects—of which Palakkad and Kannur form the 2 pilot E-Districts in Kerala—are managed by the NIC. The NIC also collaborates with FRIENDS, particularly in the development of the FRIENDS Janasevanam Kendram software, among other projects. The Akshaya Project is housed within the KSITM and the DoIT, with over 2000 eKendras across Kerala. Akshaya Centers operate on the one hand as centers intended to bridge the digital divide and to create an e-literate population that can access governance initiatives as well as serve as a point of contact for government services, much like FRIENDS. The directives of Akshaya has been mandated by KSITM can be accessed here. Some objectives overlap with the entegramam system, where local ICT communities are created online.1 Friends (or Fast Reliable Instant Efficient Network for Disbursement of Services) also operates, like Akshaya, as a G2C contact point: as a ‘Single Window Contact Point’ for the citizenry to access an extraordinary range of government services and systems: particularly KSEB (Power) Bill; KWA (Water) Bill; Land Phone Bills and Post paid Mobile Phone Bills; Motor Vehicles Department etc. and additionally another 75 services that also include property tax, Professional Tax, Traders License; Building Tax, Basic Tax, Revenue Recovery; Land Tax; about 35 services in Civil Supplies, Electrical Inspectorate services; and University Fee collections. In the Wake of Aadhaar 321


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Insight: This is a relatively recent program which seeks to use new media technologies to support differently-abled individuals. Insight is a joint venture between KSITM and the Society for Promotion of Alternative Computing and Employment (SPACE). Insight had very little presence in Palakkad District except for workshops conducted every 6-8 months. Entegramam: funded by the UNESCO and supported and developed by Akshaya and SPACE, some of its larger mandates are to build portals for panchayats with locally relevant information in local languages through local community participation, to convert portals into fora for community interaction, to empower local communities, to contribute to the portal, and to create web based services of commercial or social interest. The project has been successful in regions near Kozhikode. Additionally, it also fosters development of local knowledge, including community theater, local language development, Malayalam computing, and local service management. This project is unique to Kerala, and is successful in only a few regions: the ones that have received support from local governments. Malayalam Computing: a project under the Kerala State IT Mission and developed by Akshaya. It feeds into other projects of the government across the board by enabling local language computing and development. Sameeksha – Village Documentation Center: village documentation and community computation centers (VDCCs). E-Krishi: implemented by the KSITM through the Department of Agriculture and the Local Self-Government, a market-driven agricultural initiative that brings together traders, buyers, sellers, and farmers, and effectively reduces middle-men in agriculture, making direct access to the market possible. It also provides access to resources, planting material, research on crop plantation, worker information, prices in different locations and the commodity exchange price among other services with an active support center. Digitisation of Government Records: under KSITM and is made available here through the secretariat intranet essentially covered by the 322 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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SWAN network. Although this is an e-governance project applicable to the entire government and every department under it, records can only be accessed while logged in to the intranet at district, panchayat or local government networks. Integrated Govt. Service Gateway (IGSG): essentially a FOSS based geographical information portal, which serves as a ready reckoner of all the Government offices, tourist destinations, and other places of historical significance in Kerala, that puts the entire government and associated services on a Web GIS to enable public access. This is deployed in kiosk models across the state and currently introduced only in the State capital. It provides details of location, how to get there and the services offered, etc. to the citizens. e-Pay: similar to the E-Kendra and managed by Akshaya CSCs, to enable ‘online payments so that the citizen need not even come out of their doorstep’, as the FRIENDS project manager Palakkad Office said. File Tracking System – IDEAS: This is a special project that allows for digitised files access through the intranet system. It is mainly available for Government centres that do not yet have WAN access to the state and need to access it over the general/public Internet. This is closely connected to the Digitisation project and is applicable not to the general public but to specific departments and agencies of the Government. Kerala Innovation Foundation (KIF): works through the Akshaya chain and is applicable largely for funding local language development, supporting local cultures, and practices, and other intellectual property management services that support minority communities and their practices. e-Inventory Management System – AASTHI: developed as an inventory management service for organisations. It is a FOSS based application that provides an interface to manage an organisations IT infrastructure and assets. Payroll and Personnel Management System – SPARK: This is the Service Payroll and Administrative Repository for Kerala. This is applicable In the Wake of Aadhaar 323


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for all employees of the State of Kerala and provides an interface to manage payroll systems and payroll processing that is accurate and reliable. Other Projects and Agencies RSBY-CHIS Smartcards – The Rashtriya Swastiya Bima Yojna (RSBY)— Comprehensive Health Insurance Scheme (CHIS) operates by covering all families of the BPL lists defined by the centre, and BPL families defined by the state as well as APL families not covered in either lists (see below for a more detailed outline of the RSBY). The CHIS Scheme covers 3 categories: BPL families of the RSBY Scheme who pay ` 30 Premium per family p.a, the non-RSBY population of BPL categorised by the state lists who pay ` 100 per family per annum and, finally, APL families who are in neither list who pay the full costs of enrollment, premium and smart-cards. The total outlay for the CHIS Project is ` 4300 Lakh. CHIS Enrollment and renewal is managed at over 2000 Akshaya e-Kendras across Kerala. IT@School is an initiative under the Department of General Education, the Government of Kerala. Set up in 2001, it aims to inculcate ICT practices in schools across Kerala by enabling IT education. The Project covers about 8000 schools across Kerala from the 5th to the 12th Standards, and is the nodal agency for implementing the EDUSAT network, in addition to administering an exclusive channel termed ViCTERS (Virtual Classroom Technology) for EDUSAT for Rural Schools. The project is associated with BSNL to provide Internet infrastructure to all High Schools across Kerala. The project is based on, supports, and propagates FOSS practices: indeed, it claims the single largest transmission of FOSS based education in the world. Importantly, IT@ Schools conducts enrollments for the UID specifically of school children. Keltron: Kerala State Electronic Development Corporation, enrolls for the UIDAI along with IT@Schools and Akshaya. It was already involved in electoral voter identity card enrollment and therefore possessed the infrastructure for enrolling for the UID. Keltron has been roped in by the UIDAI to conduct pilot enrollments in Thiruvananthapuram.



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The Civil Supplies Department is modernising and digitising their current systems, particularly the PDS (the TETRA-PDS—Targeted Efficient Transparent Rationing and Allocation Public Distribution System), a project managed under the Kerala IT Mission by NIC, and the ration card system. Applications for ration cards are being accepted at Akshaya e-Kendras and online through a citizen registry managed at the Civil Supplies Department portal. At the time of the interviews, the UIDAI was conducting proof-of-concept enrollment tests at Thiruvananthapuram, managed exclusively by Keltron, and at Allapuzha, managed by Akshaya entrepreneurs. The UIDAI authority had also brought in IT@Schools specifically to begin enrollments in schools: a new and somewhat unique development for the initiative as a whole. Field Interviews I conducted field Interviews over 3 phases in April, July, and September of 2011. Each phase began with structured introductory interviews specific to the agency in the region and their reach, quality of service, and integration into the KSWAN network and the relation to the UID and UIDAI existing deduplication infrastructure duplication, and Authentication. The interviews were mainly to outline existing de-duplication infrastructures, how they grew, and what the impact of the UID could now be to these established structures. The final meetings were to gather details on the actual working and demonstration of the technologies currently used, and the technologies being proposed. The impetus in all this was to locate three specific movements: a) The possibility of a pre-digital ecosystem and its definition of citizen functions; b) The inheriting of this legacy with digitisation, and how people familiar with earlier definitions of public rights were interacting with new technologies, and finally; c) Whether there were ways in which this interaction could provide a language of rights, duties and services, in the era of the right to information, a right to data, and emerging from this, the right of the data subject as defining a new social right.



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FRIENDS In Palakkad, at the time of the field interviews, the UIDAI was on the verge of setting up enrollment procedures: and it was relevant to conduct studies at the time the structures were being set up. I spoke to the project manager at the Palakkad District offices of FRIENDS in unstructured interviews over 3 hours, and then to the operators with whom I spent the rest of the evening. This was one of the most open and friendly government offices: I am told this service is core to the founding principle of this organisation. Currently FRIENDS has 14 centers across the State, one to each district, and in anticipation of expansion have already deployed the FREES Client for micropayments, e-payments, and connectivity to the KSWAN networks that will enable them to access other databases for entering payment queries. The FRIENDS system, insisted the project manager, is unique: it does not hire new workforce: volunteers are deputed from different departments and a FRIENDS center ideally has a representative from each department of the government from where they are paid their respective salaries. Although their salaries vary, all do the same work at the center. The two operators I spoke to were from the water authority and the electrical board respectively. The project manager asked me: ‘do you think they joined here to just sit behind counters? They could have gone over to Akshaya and as entrepreneurs made a much higher income than what they are getting paid here’. I was curious to see why such a diverse workforce, from different government departments, different salary brackets, entirely varied professional expertise and experience, worked in a center that seemed, at the outside, to just process bills and payments. The project manager went into a detailed discussion of, not on the FRIENDS’ creed: how society could change through small efforts such as this: how to make government more efficient, more reliable, more accessible and friendly, which is not the reality in other departments. Exposure to a FRIENDS center encourages other departments to emulate this model, to approach a citizen not as a burden, not as an intrusion, but in a manner that is friendly, approachable, and pleasant. This, he insisted, was not a world326 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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ending or world-changing (in Malayalam the phrase could signify either) paradigm, but rather a small development and, as such, one that could slowly influence not just those interacting with it as common citizens but also change the way governance could be thought about. There was, in his opinion, a massive difference to standing in a queue in the sunlight for hours to pay utility bills, as against being seated in an AC environment in plush and comfortable seats being served by 15 workstations. This change was, of course, minuscule, he said, and there was no way to say whether it was sufficient to change a person’s worldview, but it could be relevant. That society can change because of this experience might be a large and unrealistic claim but surely, he insisted, the life of that person interacting with us is easier, more relaxed. At this point I asked him if there was any significance to technology measures that are being used currently and if the new measure, such as the UID and the NPR, and the KSWAN integration through the FREES Client would impact this core value system that this center was trying to inculcate. We spoke about automation, of machine capability and incapability, and the value of human contact in relation to technology. Automation basically meant that the crowds at the center were streamlined to the help desks in a clear manner. There was no rush, there were ample seats and the air conditioned environment made it a calm and reasonably quiet environment with non-obtrusive background music—nothing similar in comparison to other offices. It was open from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. whereas BSNL and KSEB and the Water Authority were open for bill payments only between 11-1. Indeed, he said, the FRIENDS impact could be measured by its emulation in other offices. But automation could only go so far: human contact, human values, and some amount of consideration and (pleasantness?) were essential to a good life, and a State could not ignore that requirement. The discussion then took a more practical turn. Akshaya was viewed as targeted towards rural areas. Although it had a wider mandate, including computer education, it was limited to providing these services through government managed district offices, which put together private entrepreneurs with a clear profit motive. Additionally, Akshaya was only 40% In the Wake of Aadhaar 327


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effective compared to the FRIENDS district centers, which ranked higher. The NIC’s FREES client, enabling a direct access to the KSWAN network, was to be used by both FRIENDS and Akshaya. It was at the time of the interview only fully active in FRIENDS’ Trivandrum District Office, and had been partially enabled in the Kollam and Mallapuram offices. Palakkad at the time was still in the demonstration and training stage, and had as yet not received the infrastructure requirements to enable the FREES client. In a specific response to the UID, the only concern was automation. The UID and other newer and emerging digital ecosystems seemed to eliminate human contact. This was troubling for all the work of FRIENDS, which would be, as a small movement as it were, dispersed with this new ecosystem. Akshaya The Akshaya interviews were much shorter. The District Office of Akshaya, essentially a coordination center, was located in Mettupalyam Street. I spoke to the assistant district coordinator who gave an account of the UID enrollment and the different active projects under the district office. Although Akshaya is a CSC similar to FRIENDS in most respects, unlike FRIENDS the agency has been set up under the PPP model: each center is privately managed and run by private operators for profit. District offices are agency facilitators who interact between the government and the agencies, as can be specifically seen in the case of the UID enrollment. In the specific case of UID enrollment, the cost split per enrollment was explained to me: it goes something like this: Akshaya gets a total of ` 35 out of which ` 16 goes to the machine, ` 6 to the operator, ` 11 for typing and printing, ` 1 for the supervisor, ` 1 for overheads. Akshaya had been mandated to cover all rural areas where they have coverage, and Keltron to cover city and town zones. In the case of BPL enrollees, Akshaya gives them a day’s wages and a BPL family ` 150 for coming in to enroll. At the time of the interviews, Akshaya had purchased 16 machines, 6 operators were finishing UID training, and new operators were being hired. All quality checks were centralised in Bangalore. In the specific instance of Akshaya, KYR data was 328 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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mandated for the UIDAI whereas KYR+ was for the state’s purposes and involved Bank Account, PAN and gas account. Interestingly, Akshaya was also accepting enrollments for the RSBY-CHIS parallelly with UID enrollments as a part of the same overall process. DCRB @ District Police HQ The DCRB interviews were directly on the topic of CCTNS (Crime and Criminal Tracking Network Systems), which has been deployed by the NCRB and managed by the SCRB in each state. The CCTNS is connected to police, judicial and intelligence networks, and I was in Kerala to find out the origins of this entire process of digitisation: one that had started with the CCIS (Crime and Criminal Investigation System) operating at the District HQ level stations and CIPA (Common Integrated Police Application) which operates at local stations. I was assigned to the DDSY who directed me to Ajeesh, one of the operators of the DCRB Computer Cell and later to the Cyber Cell. I was directed by the DDSY Admin not to list or publish any details on personally identifiable information of anyone pertaining to FIRs or any other documents of the state, which I will, if needed, access through other and more appropriate channels. In all other respects, I was free to check the working of the software, how departments are being integrated, the digitisation process, the history, and the potential of these developments. Unlike the District Collector’s office, I was allowed to take pictures under supervision and interviews without any limitations. I spoke to Ajeesh at length on the different digitisation systems in place, and the mechanisms for document movement; how FIRs were filed, from Court developments to closing reports. At the time of the interview, CCTNS was being tested and run on a limited basis in Chennai, and the infrastructure was still being developed by the SCRB. The CCTNS was, he said, a pure networking initiative that tied together the digitisation efforts of earlier systems as well as removed paper trails from most offices. Whereas FIRs at present still had to be printed on hard copy and filed, and emails remained In the Wake of Aadhaar 329


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just one of the formal means of communication, CCTNS would radically change the way a police network was run: including not just the station but also the judiciary and intelligence networks. While both the CCIS and CIPA were digitisation efforts which could handle everything from the FIR to the closing report and judicial process, documented and digitised, they were not yet effectively connected except for an email facility that sent specific FIRs and details on request by other departments. On the other hand, the CCTNS was an online system that logged into the KSWAN network, through which the secretariat and local self government networks also had access. The development of these networks for the police was being assigned to private partners and agencies. Whereas the CCIS was only focused on digitisation of key documentation, the CIPA was a stationwide digitisation effort: that is to say, all processes of a station could be potentially digitised and internally managed at the station at the district level. However, there was clearly an entire set of practices beyond digitisation: including hard copy FIRs that carried notes, annotations and often secondary details filed in hard copy, that did not find place in the system. These notes were made by investigators and often made sense only to other investigators who looked up these notes for reference. These notes were therefore part of the investigative process: but one that digitisation process was as yet unable to clearly capture. Data entered included the station code, district code, circle code, and state code. Each process document after the FIR, other reports etc. had their own code structure that followed this. The CIPA system integrated the data into a database which was exported on CDs and sent to the DCRB, which was then verified and exported onto CDs and sent to the SCRB. Although the system could do this online, the amount of data being generated and connection problems required that the SCRB receive storage discs and drives with the digitised data, rather than these being sent over the Internet. The Cyber Cell on the other hand, which formed an additional investigative branch set up at each district level headquarters of the Police, was only an investigative support department and did not carry out its own investigations: 330 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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it came into the picture only if an FIR filed elsewhere required Cybercell support. Evidence seized by the Cyber Cell was not examined in the Cell itself but sent to forensic labs. At the time of this interview, the Cyber Cell had no role, other than filing report systems in the standard software, in integrating processes or making any efforts at collaborating with the CCTNS. Civil Station and District Administration Offices in Palakkad The Civil Station is the central administrative and bureaucratic center of Palakkad district in Kerala. Of importance to the fieldwork It houses the offices of the district collector and the magistrate, the district level offices of the NIC and the State Level Data Centers which are connected to the secretariat networks through KSWAN. The District Information and Public Relations office was the nodal department. The Civil Station also forms the part of the court as well as the police and intelligence wing complexes, and the excise department of the police. The offices of the Census, and the land records bureau, are located near each other in the same complex. Theoretically, it is possible for anyone with access within the complex to get individual records, since it is also here that district level servers interact with the State and with other district servers for projects running within the same district. The RSBY database also runs within the same server and the Labor and employment offices are located in the same complex. NPR at ITI, Kanjikode, Palakkad The NPR related interviews at ITI took place with Mr. Shashidharan Nair, the operational and logistics manager of the NPR at ITI office in Kanjikode outside of Palakkad. Formerly, ITI had also produced smart-card with 64kb chips which were to be used by the NPR to issue cards—the smartcard facility for the NPR is as on date still at a proposal stage. Now, ITI enrollments for the NPR registry sent to the UID the same data they collected, for de-duplication and issuing of Aadhaar numbers. The NPR enrollment was community based: and enrolled only individuals who could be verified as the usual resident. This means that enrollment lists were put up near enrollment camps that could ask people to verify if the person was indeed a usual resident. There have In the Wake of Aadhaar 331


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been frequent cases of enrollment failing for some individuals as they are not present in the census data. Nair was asked a series of questions on the mandate of the NPR, what the NPR actually did, and the seemingly pertinent issue with the UIDAI. At the time of the interview, not much was known about the activities of the NPR and its connection to the UID was still largely speculative. How does the NPR enroll citizens? Nair pointed out that the NPR is a more secure system (in terms of a process that was more credible) unlike the UIDAI which enrolls ‘any person who walks into the centre’. The NPR closely follows census enumeration data and therefore enrolls only those individuals who can be established as usual residents. Nair insisted that the credibility of this database was higher, since there was also a process of verification: a compilation of the local register that went alongside the UIDAI’s deduplication data. Nair outlined the specific details on enrollment which at the time appeared unique to the NPR process as, first, a data entry procedure in which NPR fields were filled by using census data received on TIFF image files that contained data that the enumerator had first filled out. Therefore, he said, the NPR had a twofold task: first, to digitise the census data in appropriate fields, and second, to collate this data for an entire region, before enrollment could take place. Nair explained that the process, when complete, would generate pre-enrollment IDs, which would then be used as the basis for further enrollments. This was unique, he said: pre-enrollment IDs are nowhere else generated even before the person had reached the enrollment center. Asked if there were additional processes similar to the KYR and KYR+ data being collected, or if more biometric procedures were involved—and also at what point the UID came into the picture as far as enrollment was concerned—Nair suggested that the process was essentially the same, except that here the KYR+ would be retained with the Registrar General of India. The Kottayam municipality had just finished one enrollment camp during the time of the interviews and about 50 devices were used at taluk 332 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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and municipal levels. During the enrollment, a TIN (Temporary Identity Number) would be generated that was unique only to the village and to the household: a group from the same village and the same household would have similar TIN. Enrollment happened within enumeration blocks, each with a miminum of 50,000 population or 100 households. As soon as an enrollment was complete, the software generated two packages, one of which was approx 7mb and sent to the UIDAI from the field office. Often the direct internet connection to the UIDAI CIDR server did not function, and so either hard disks were sent with the data by post or uploaded via FTP. Nair somewhat contentiously claimed that the purpose of the NPR was not to register UID enrollments, but rather to create a registry of all citizens: and the UID only received a copy of the package to de-duplicate and to issue an Aadhaar number. The NPR has, he said, to date enrolled almost half of the population of Kerala under the supervision of the ITI and its agencies. Enrollment functioned in two phases, he said: the second phase dedicated primarily to covering those rejected by NPR or not enrolled because they could not be established as usual residents. Issues with the UIDAI The problems with the UIDAI and the NPR overlapping their work portfolios and the resultant confusion both at policy levels and at the grassroots level were discussed. Nair suggested that the actual problem was a lack of awareness from both institutions, each of which had their own respective mandates. Whereas the NPR was entirely focused on citizen verification (which included confusion on whether the NPR concerned itself only with citizens in its citizen registry, and how it would enroll residents) the UID claimed to provide an identification service to all residents. There was a crucial difference here that Nair pointed out and it is expanded into points below: 1. Firstly, the NPR documents all citizens and usual residents for a registry held by the Registrar General of India.



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2. Unlike the UIDAI this process is mandatory for every individual who is a usual resident under the Citizenship Act of 1955. 3. A card (A SCOSTA compliant smartcard—produced at the smartcard facility in Palakkad Kerala) is issued (after a very long process) to all citizens and usual residents. 4. The Smartcard will contain identification details established by the NPR as well as the UIDAI number and 7 other connected citizen services. 5. The data is de-duplicated by the UIDAI which if unavailable in the UIDAI database then proceeds to issue a UID number. 6. NPR can be thought of as an enroller for the UIDAI as all NPR enrollee’s undergo the UIDAI check whereas UIDAI enrollee’s do not have by default an NPR registration.

REFERENCES Unique Identification Authority of India. (n.d.). Aadhaar Automated Biometric Identification Subsystem Interface. Retrieved from http://eprints.cscsarchive.org/187/1/ Aadhaar_ABIS_API.pdf and Vatsa, M., Singh, R., Bharadwaj, S., Bhatt, H., & Mashruwala, R. (2010). Analysing Fingerprints of Indian Population Using Image Quality: A UIDAI Case Study. 2010 International Workshop on Emerging Techniques and Challenges for Hand-Based Biometrics, (1), 1–5. doi:10.1109/ETCHB.2010.5559279.



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Ration Card Digitisation and the PDS in Kerala: A brief history Arun Menon Doctoral Student, CSCS

Kerala’s public distribution system has a remarkable history, but it could well face unprecedented challenges. ‘Anyone can fill in a form, have it signed [by the Taluktahsildar or an assistant tahsildar] and get a ration card—Do you think it is only for the poor? Do you think it is even remotely reliable’—asks the assistant Tehsildar of the Palakkad Taluk Office (On April 23rd, 2011) in the comfort of his home. I met him right before the elections. At the time of our meeting, the digitisation projects for ration cards were just out of the conceptualisation stage. He speaks with a certain dissonance, of hopes dashed, of a stark reality, of a looming food crisis that has had no relevance to either policy measures or indeed to any of the development-oriented discourses that the state proposed towards food security. He speaks of that experience which is now common to Kerala, the visceral and emotional experience of the people of the state and those he deals with every day as the assistant Tehsildar. There is something seriously wrong with this picture—food security has been a major debate in the state for the past half-century, but now it finds no policy or development initiative supporting it. The Targeted PDS aims to support the poor through a list of BPL citizens identified by the state. He continues, ‘the list is worthless—it (meaning the Ration Card) cannot give an account either of the poor or be reliably used as any proof of identity’. The card has come to stand in for both proof of identity as well as proof of residence, but with the massive amount of fraud that is now a part of the ration system, it is no longer possible to use it, insists the tehsildar.



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‘The ration card is essentially useless and many of the ration shops (Fair Price Shops) have closed down or become unsustainable for local entrepreneurs —some years back there were news reports of suicides by FPS owners’. M. Suchitra from http://Indiatogether.in reports that up to 10 suicides were recorded in the Kozhikode district alone.2 Clearly a central TPDS policy was putting at risk the food security of an entire state, given a PDS system appeared to some as unsustainable and reduced in coverage. This was not, many have shown, always the case—Kerala had one of the best functioning Universal PDS systems in the country, a requirement of efficiency caused by food production being lower than demand. This was a unique problem for Kerala, and indeed both the Fair Price Shops and public distribution in Kerala have unique histories. Krishnakumar3 charts out a history of Kerala’s PDS, which goes a little like this. Historically, Kerala has always had problems sustaining food production for its populace, but it became a point for political movements during the famine of the early 1940s, when Kerala was still a part of the Madras Presidency. The Bengal famine, one tends to forget, was not limited to Bengal. While British modernisation and the railways network made it possible for food to be moved quickly and the famine itself was contained, other issues of the time—the second World War, the dwindling of rice imports from Japan and other East and South East Asian nations—led to a situation where Kerala found itself in a major famine of its own. The mass actions and people’s movements forced compulsory procurement of food grains from landlords, essentially supporters of the British Rule, and distributed these through a network of Fair Price units across the state making this one of the first instances of rural public distribution in the country. E.M.S. Nambooripad4 argues that the people’s movements really took on this problem, and through effective organisation tackled it at multiple levels ensuring that food equity was more or less a certainty. This legacy is worth remembering, as we think of the PDS today in the state: it was one of the better functioning systems in the entire country, a virtue that emerged more through necessity considering that food production in Kerala was far lower than the requirements for supporting 336 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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its population. This rather unique requirement made it almost mandatory for a functioning PDS systems; indeed one of the best in the country in its heyday. The crisis of the present, many think, emerged when Universal PDS was replaced by Targeted PDS: scholars such as R. Ramakumar et al5 would agree that the problem emerges with policy-changes, and in the instances of both Tamil Nadu and Kerala the failure of the Universal PDS system is largely a policy problem. Could this food crisis be a replay of the man-made famine of the early 1940s? The link to digitisation and delivery, here, are two separate problems: one, policy-induced rather than a failure of the PDS system itself, and a second, which seeks to make food security viable for a state that cannot produce sufficient food to support its population. The history of the state’s people’s movement would throw more light on this rather unique development. The independence of India saw the Central Government establishing the south trade zone which had caps on both exports and internal free trade for the provinces of Travancore, Mysore, and Andhra Pradesh which was the largest surplus producers in the south. Additionally, the Government also imposed a price limit on the purchase of grain, leading to situations where The Government of Andhra Pradesh priced its rice higher than what the legal procurement limit was in Kerala. This essentially meant that private traders could buy rice from Andhra Pradesh and sell it at an even higher rate in Kerala, and the state procurement of rice came to a standstill. Krishnakumar further points out that this failure had political ramifications, but sustained pressure from food committees and other groups on food procurement managed to contain some of the political fallout through acts such as the 1966 Kerala Rationing Order, executed under the Essential Commodities Act of 1955 (Parliament of India & Government of India, 1955). The statutory right of people to have access to food and to a ration card provided, in turn, a crucial backdrop to the emergence of the Universal PDS system in Kerala. During the late 1990s, Kerala had a requirement of an approximate amount of 50 lakh tons of food grain out of which 24 lakh tons were sourced from other states by the Civil Supplies Department and In the Wake of Aadhaar 337


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disbursed through the Fair Price mechanisms (1998 figures). By the early 2000s, the price of rice and other essential commodities was almost entirely at the mercy of the open market.6 By the 2010s, the PDS in Kerala had more or less collapsed, and TPDS was further limiting what had once been a thriving and self-sustaining system of public distribution. The Assistant Tehsildar to whom I had spoken remained extremely skeptical of the digitisation process which was being managed and supported by the Akshaya centers. Indeed, he held the same position that has now become part of common experience in Kerala, the failure of the PDS system that did not just affect the poor but the entire population. What this essentially meant, for both the overall food security of an underproducing state as well as for the PDS system, was dire. Singlehandedly, the Centre was eliminating a peoples’ movement that had lasted well over half-a-century, and which had ensured some kind of right to food for its people. The entire process of digitising the ration card is today located within this very complex history of a formerly functional Universal PDS system. Some proponents of the Food Security Bill argue that Kerala’s history played a role in defining the very terms of universality as enshrined in its mandate.7 It has opened up a plethora of issues in terms of the PDS system in India in relation to central policies, as against state requirements, and state policies on the one hand and discussions on the design of public distribution and digitisation efforts that have remained effectively ignorant of earlier histories. The Tehsildar ends our conversation by suggesting that digitisation will not have new offers for the failing PDS, perhaps the UID can fix it through de-duplication but you see that’s never been the real problem, how much deduplication will solve is an entirely unrelated problem to me, targeting and leakage is a real problem and that’s affecting delivery to the really poor, but that alone is not it. This is why digitisation cannot solve this. This is the concern and the problem that we must now consider: can digitisation and effective targeting solve what is essentially an independent problem for Kerala? Can it stand in for food security, and further, will the draft 338 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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food security bill proposed by the Government which relies on a universal delivery become a possibility in Kerala in the light of these developments?

REFERENCES Centre for Legislative Research and Advocacy. (2012). Solution worse than the problem: Targeting and the Food Security Bill (pp. 1–6). Ghosh, Jayathi. (n.d.). Report of the Commission on Farmers’ Welfare, Government of Andhra Pradesh. Retrieved from http://eprints.cscsarchive.org/143/1/Full_ Report_Commission_Farmer_AP.pdf. Ghosh, Jayati. (2010). The political economy of hunger in 21st century India. Economic & Political Weekly, XLV(44), 33–38. Retrieved from http://www.indiaenvironmentportal. org.in/files/The Political Economy of hunger.pdf. Government of India The Draft National Food Security Bill, 2011 (2011). Himanshu, A. S. A. (2011). Why Not a Universal Food Security Legislation? Economic and Political Weekly, XLVI(12), 38–47. Retrieved from http://re.indiaenvironmentportal. org.in/files/Food Security_1.pdf Janbee, S. K. (2011). Debates on Universal vs Targeted Transfers and Policies on Food Security-(1996 & 2000) (pp. 1–20). Parliament of India, & Government of India. (1955). The Essential Commodities Act, 1955.

NOTES 1

http://india.gov.in/citizen/health/viewscheme.php?schemeid=1437.

2

Refer M. Suchitra, ‘Undermining a Fine System’ in http://www.indiatogether.org/2004/jan/povkeralapds.htm, January 2004 (accessed February 19th 2013).

3

Refer R. Krishnakumar, ‘A successful system under threat’ in Frontline 1998 http://www. frontlineonnet.com/fl1421/14210250.htm (accessed February 20th 2013).

4

Refer Namboodiripad, EMS. 1994. The Communist Party in Kerala: Six Decades of Struggle and Advance. New Delhi. http://www.getcited.org/pub/100099040.

5

Refer R. Ramakumar Isaac, T.M. Thomas, and R. Ramakumar. 2010. ‘Expanding Welfare Entitlements in the Neo-Liberal Era: The Case of Food Security in Kerala’. Indian Journal of Human Development 4 (1): 1–22. http://eprints.cscsarchive.org/230/1/55713742%2DIsaac%2DRamakumar%2DPDS %2DKerala.pdf.

6

Refer Shahina KK ‘Empty Bowl’ in Tehelka http://archive.tehelka.com/story_main45. asp?filename=Ws050610keralafood.asp (accessed February 22nd 2013).

7

Centre for Legislative Research and Advocacy, 2012; Jayathi Ghosh, n.d.; Jayati Ghosh, 2010; Government of India, 2011; Himanshu, 2011; Janbee, 2011.



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The Public Distribution System in India Dossier Prepared by Swagato Sarkar Assistant Professor, Jindal School of Government and Public Policy, O.P. Jindal Global University and former Fellow, CSCS and Nandini Chami Doctoral student, CSCS

Debates on universal versus targeted public distribution affect both the principle of food security and the pragmatics of policing. What impact could Aadhaar have on the public distribution system?

INTRODUCTION

The British Government introduced the public

distribution of cereals (i.e. a fixed quantity of rice or wheat) in India through a rationing system. The Government of British India created the Department of Food in 1942 towards this end. The rationing system was abolished in 1943 when the War ended. A newly independent India had to reintroduce rationing in 1950 in ‘the face of renewed inflationary pressures in the economy’.1 The public distribution of foodgrains was retained as ‘a deliberate social policy, when it embarked on the path of planned economic development in 1951’. In the First Plan, the-then urban system was extended to rural areas which suffered chronic food shortages. But by the end of the First Plan (1956), foodgrain availability in the market had improved, and the rationing system had started losing its relevance.



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However, food production ‘dropped in 1958 when the Second Plan had just commenced. This forced the Government to re-start the procurement of foodgrain and cereals and impose control on trading of foodgrains. It also decided to reintroduce PDS’. The Food Corporation of India and the Agricultural Prices Commission were created in 1965 which helped to consolidate PDS. ‘The Government was now committed to announce a minimum support price for wheat and paddy and procure quantities that could not fetch even such minimum prices in the market. Foodgrains thus procured were to be used to maintain distribution through the PDS, with a portion used to create and maintain buffer stocks’. Through these measures, the PDS was poised to emerge from being a mere rationing system to becoming a fully-fledged National Food Security System. In 1970, the system was expanded to rural and tribal areas, and it remained a general entitlement system for all, without any specific target, until 1992. There are three broad debates which frame the PDS question in India: (i) identification of the poor and BPL families; (ii) universal vs. targeted coverage of PDS; and (iii) the institutional design, including the choice of technology, in resolving the problems within the PDS.

THE DEBATE ON IDENTIFYING THE POOR AND THE DETERMINATION OF BPL FAMILIES

The PDS is part of the poverty alleviation programmes in India. Poverty alleviation programmes can be categorised into universal programmes (or programmes whose beneficiaries are self-selected), and targeted programmes (or programmes that are exclusively for predetermined target groups).2 The Public Distribution System (PDS) for the provision of fair-priced/subsidised food is a targeted programme.

The entitlement to fair-priced/subsidised food depends on being identified as poor. The poverty line which demarcates the boundary between the poor and not-poor is based on a calorie norm. The ‘Task Force on Projection of In the Wake of Aadhaar 341


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Minimum Needs and Effective Consumption Demand’ constituted by the Planning Commission in 1979 defined the poverty line as that per capita expenditure [1973-74 is the base year, when a survey of consumer behaviour was conducted] level at which the average per capita per day calorie intake was 2400 kcal for rural population and 2100 kcal for urban population. This calorie intake was considered to be an ‘acceptable minimum needs’ and excluded expenditure on health and education, both of which were expected to be provided by the state. Corresponding to this calorie norm, it suggested a fixed commodity consumption basket, which was ` 49.09 per person per month at 1973-74 prices for rural areas and ` 56.64 for urban areas. ‘The consumption basket identified separately for rural and urban areas is evaluated at state-specific prices to arrive at state specific poverty lines in the base year, 1973-74. . . The state-wise poverty lines computed for the base year 1973-74 are adjusted for prices for the subsequent years. . . For any year, poverty levels are estimated for each state using the state level consumer expenditure distribution. Aggregating state-wise poverty ratios, the all-India poverty ratio is estimated. Given the all India poverty ratio, a poverty line is estimated using the consumer expenditure distribution for that year’. . .3 While the poverty line is determined by the Planning Commission of Government of India, the actual identification of poor people or families below the poverty line [BPL] is done through the BPL Survey, undertaken by the Ministry of Rural Development. In 1992, the BPL Survey ‘used an income criterion to determine poverty, and the annual income cut-off was fixed at ` 11,000 per household. The BPL Census of 1997 was conducted in two stages. First, some families were excluded on the basis of certain criteria. In the second stage, each remaining household was interviewed to determine its total consumer expenditure, and was identified as a BPL household if its per capita consumer expenditure was below the poverty line set by the Planning Commission’.4 However, the BPL Census 2002 used a ‘score-based ranking’. Each household questionnaire had two parts. Section A recorded some introductory characteristics of households. These were the ‘non-scoring 342 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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parameters’, which did not figure in the final assessment of the household’s poverty status. Section B, which recorded 13 ‘scoring parameters’, was intended to evaluate the quality of life of the households. . . The aggregate score of the thirteen parameters for each household was calculated and the absolute and relative position of each household in a village in respect of its poverty status was set’.5 The Expert Group to Review the Methodology for Estimation of Poverty, which submitted its report to the Planning Commission, recommended that the poverty line be based on a single calorie norm of 1800 Kcal per day, citing the FAO recommended norm of minimum dietary energy requirements (MDER). On the basis of the use of new price indices, it estimated the percentage of BPL families to be 41.8% of the rural households in 2004-45, as compared to the current estimate of 28.3%. Scholars like Saith (2005) have criticised the original poverty line based on 2100 calories per person per day in urban areas and 2400 calories per person day in rural areas to be low, and also for focusing on calorie intake leaving out other household expenditures like health, education, and other basic needs. Madhura Swaminathan (2010) criticised the Expert Group’s methodology as it proposed to consider ‘reduced calorie consumption (i.e. universal 1800 Kcal per day), and fails to provide for reasonable household expenditure’ in its poverty estimation. She points out that FAO recommends 1800 Kcal as ‘minimum dietary energy requirement’ as an amount of energy needed for light or sedentary activity.6

THE DEBATE ON THE TARGETED PDS

In June 1992, PDS was revamped for the first time, and this ‘Revamped Public Distribution System Approach’ was centred on the effective reach, doorstep delivery of commodities to the Fair Price Shops and the inclusion of additional commodities in PDS. In 1997, the Government of India decided to further refine PDS, with the second revamping of the system in the form of the In the Wake of Aadhaar 343


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‘Targeted Public Distribution System’. The prime reason for switching to the Targeted PDS was to curb the rising food subsidy bill borne by the Government of India. Under this scheme, the Below Poverty Line (BPL) families would get basic commodities at a subsidised rate, whereas the Above Poverty Line (APL) families would get them only at their economic cost. Today, there are more than 4.9 lakh Fair Price Shops (FPS) in the country which distribute commodities worth ` 15,000 crores to about 16 crores houses annually (IIMA, 2010). The effectiveness of TPDS to address food insecurity has been a contentious issue. The 2005-56 National Family Health Survey showed that 46% of children below three years were underweight; 33% of women and 28% of men had a Body Mass Index (BMI) below normal; 79% of children aged 6-65 months had anaemia, as did 56% of married women aged 15-59 years and 24% of married men; and 58% of pregnant women. The national averages mask locational differences: all these indicators were much worse in rural India and they had not changed since 1998–89.7 The TPDS has been criticised for collapsing the food-needy households with the BPL households. To make this point clearer, a recent study by Deaton and Dreze reveals that over 76% of the total population of the country had nutrition consumption below the norm of 2400 calories per day in 2004-45, though TPDS is targeted to only 36.1% of the population, based on the Planning Commission’s poverty estimate of 1993-3.8 So, debate on the appropriateness of using the poverty line as a basis for identifying food insecure households has brought the question of the standard of measurement to the fore, i.e. what poverty is, and how ‘poverty’ should be conceptualised and measured.9 The criterion guiding TPDS remains an open-ended debate. The second problem arises in the operationalisation of this criterion: at the level of the actual selection of ‘beneficiaries’, where it has often been noted that the officials in charge of this exercise, at the local level, deliberately ignore this criterion while drawing up the list of eligible households (which in this case is the same as the identification of BPL households).10



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The other problems that have plagued TPDS are: (i) the ‘last mile’ monitoring of the distribution of food grains; (ii) the viability of fair price shops; and (iii) the unequal distribution of ration cards between fair-price shops. These problems are well-recognised; for example, the Report of the Wadhwa Committee on TPDS acknowledges these problems,11 as well as uses existing studies, to present these problems, without any contestation. The viability question has been brought up by the Performance Evaluation Organisation of the Planning Commission. The governance of fair-price shops is an issue that has been raised by civil society actors time and again—in fact, for this section, the Committee chooses to make use of an NGO study (the research study of the Centre for Media Studies on Corruption) to present the problems involved. In addition to the pre-existing recommendations on rationalised licensing of fair-price shops, rationalising commission and allowing trade in nonFSA commodities at the Fair-Price Shops (from the PEO study), and the recommendations on timely delivery and vigilance audit of TPDS (from the Centre for Media Studies study), the Wadhwa Committee offers further recommendations, of which two are very important in the context of the current debates over TPDS. The Wadhwa Committee makes a choice of continuing with TPDS as against the universal entitlement to PDS and allows for further monitoring and vigilance in the selection of beneficiaries. The rationale guiding this recommendation is that, at present, much of the subsidy is appropriated by APL and incorrectly identified BPL households. Here it is important to note that the critics of TPDS argue for a Universal PDS precisely because of the difficulty in correctly identifying beneficiaries. In fact, some studies suggest that the impact of universalisation of the PDS may require an increased outlay of 0.64% of the GDP and therefore raises questions about the subsidy burden argument made for the continuance of TPDS (Kumar & Dixit, 2010). The Wadhwa Committee recommends an automated system of monitoring of food grain transportation till the point it reaches the Fair Price shops as well as the time of identification of beneficiaries, for effective In the Wake of Aadhaar 345


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delivery. The Wadhwa Committee has done an analysis of ‘Pros’ and ‘Cons’ of various technologies that can be deployed in the PDS, but leaves the question of the choice of technology open.

INSTITUTIONAL DESIGN OF PDS: A SUMMARY OF ISSUES THAT FACE THE PDS TODAY (FROM DIFFERENT ACCOUNTS) 1. Inadequate quantity and quality allocation of PDS. The 20 kg per family provision is insufficient food for families of 6 or more; this should be better examined and larger families should be able to buy more from the PDS. 2. An inability of the poorest to access and pay the 2 rupee subsidised price of food. 3. Caste discrimination. 4. Frequent smuggling of large quantities of PDS food grains and other PDS commodities. 5. Difficulty in obtaining ration cards. Newly married persons, migrant workers, and inter-state migrant workers who are living in migrated areas don’t have ration cards. 6. Irregular shop hours. 7. Food grains being imported for PDS due to the state’s failure to maintain buffer stock and its systematic attempt to weaken procurement from our farmers. 8. Lack of community monitoring and rampant corruption at various levels of the implementing agencies. 9. People are often forced to purchase other commodities form the fairprice shop so as to avail their allocated quota. 346 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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10. Cardholders are often sent back home empty-handed with officials claiming that commodity stock has been exhausted. 11. PDS rice is often smuggled to rice mills and converted to cattle feed by grinding and mixing it with paddy husk. 12. The light blue coloured PDS Kerosene is openly sold in local markets. 13. Each ration shop has more ration cards than the stipulated 1000 cards per FPS.

TECHNOLOGISATION OF PDS: THE CASE OF TAMIL NADU

The monitoring system to ensure the ‘Last Mile’ reach

of food articles is very much a part of current discussions—Food Coupons, Food Stamps, SMS announcements of grain delivery (as in the case of Tamil Nadu and Chhattisgarh), community monitoring of grain trucks and Fair Price Shops (Chhattisgarh) have all been tried or tested in part, or been put across as part of policy recommendations.12 The introduction of new technologies for monitoring is an emerging issue. The success of PDS in Tamil Nadu is attributed to the massive administrative and technological interventions. The focus of such interventions is obviously to check the diversion of food supplies, to create ‘innovative fool-proof delivery mechanisms’. At the ground level, it involves ‘old-fashioned policing, surprise checks and constant reviews, and fixing responsibility at each level’.13 By the 5th of every month, the whole quota of PDS supplies is sent to each ration/fair price shop in the state. The supplies are carried by trucks from the warehouses to the shops, and their movements are tightly controlled by route charts. The charts display the route the truck has to adhere to, details of commodities it carries, and the shop to which the goods are to be delivered. Any In the Wake of Aadhaar 347


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elected representative or government official who notices any deviation from the route is authorised to check the vehicle and report to the nearest police station. The district level control rooms receive information on diversion of PDS commodities and initiate necessary actions. In Thiruvallur and Krishnagiri districts, the vehicle movements have been experimentally monitored via the GPS system. Additionally, to prevent mass diversion of goods by lorry drivers, every vehicle is accompanied by a department assistant who is provided with a special SIM card attached to a BSNL tower and through this the movement of the vehicle can be tracked from the control room in the Civil Supplies Corporation. An online monitoring system is being introduced to oversee all the transactions in the warehouses. The shop-level stocks are monitored through a SMS-based system, and if any shortage is noticed, then immediately the stocks are replenished. ‘When there is an abnormal increase in the offtake, [the] vigilance teams swing into action to find out whether the increased off take is genuine or bogus’. In Chennai, all the fair price shops have handheld billing machines with a GPRS connection which allow the government departments to monitor sales and stocks in real-time. Electronic weighing machines have been provided to each shop so that the cardholders/customers can get the exact amount of the supplies. The cardholders can register complaints against a shopkeeper through an online service.

AADHAAR (THE UID PROJECT) AND THE ARTICULATION OF A NEW PDS

Within this larger context of the issues around the Targeted Public Distribution System, we can examine what would be the implications of Aadhaar and UID for PDS. Aadhaar envisions a major role in the reform of the Public Distribution System, of course, within the Targeted PDS model that it accepts unquestioningly.



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The following section from the Working Paper of the Unique Identification Authority of India on ‘Envisioning a role for Aadhaar in the Public Distribution System’ (UIDAI, 2010) gives us an idea of the kind of ‘benefits’ that Aadhaar is expected to bring for the reform of PDS. 1. One Aadhaar = one beneficiary: Aadhaar is a unique number, and no resident can have a duplicate number since it is linked to their individual biometrics. Using Aadhaar to identify beneficiaries in PDS databases will eliminate duplicate and fake beneficiaries from the rolls, and make identification for entitlements far more effective. 2. Portability in identification: Aadhaar is a universal number, and agencies and services can contact the central Unique Identification database from anywhere in the country to confirm a beneficiary’s identity. The number thus gives individuals a universal, portable form of identification. 3. Aadhaar-based authentication to confirm entitlement delivered to the beneficiary: Aadhaar enables remote, online biometric and demographic authentication of identity. Such Aadhaar-based authentication can take place in real-time, and can even be performed through a mobile phone. Using Aadhaar for real-time identity verification at the FPS, when beneficiaries collect their entitlements, will help governments verify that the benefits reached the person they were meant for. 4. Aadhaar-based authentication to track foodgrain movement: Aadhaar-based authentication can be implemented across the supply chain, which will enable governments to track foodgrain as it is exchanged between PDS intermediaries. This would curb diversions, and help identify bottlenecks in delivery. 5. Aadhaar-enabled cloud-computing infrastructure: The use of Aadhaar-based authentication across the supply chain gives governments the opportunity to link such authentication to a cloud-based management information system (MIS) within the PDS. 6. Electronic benefit transfers: Aadhaar authentication at the delivery point—the FPS—would enable governments to transfer entitlements to In the Wake of Aadhaar 349


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residents through an electronic system. Beneficiaries could have an online food account on the PDS system, which would enable governments to directly communicate details of food entitlements to residents. The questions can be raised here are: 1. 2. 3.

Has UIDAI correctly identified the problems of PDS and is it offering ‘solutions’ to those? Is UID the only solution for ‘improving’ PDS, or are there alternatives? What are the limitations of UID vis-à-vis PDS?

Aadhaar seems to identify duplication of beneficiary cards and misidentification as the main problem hampering the PDS.

Reddy Subramanyam, Principal Secretary, Department of Rural Affairs, Government of Andhra Pradesh.

QR Code

S.K. Satapathy - Secretary, Rural Development Department, Government of Jharkhand. 350 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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However, field studies indicate that this may not be the sole major problem, but ends up being that mainly in the way the effectiveness of Aadhaar makes sense to local bureaucracy. Secondly, Aadhaar brings in the aspect of portable identification as a way for beneficiaries to seek their entitlements from any Fair Price Shop in the state. This seems a good move but the real problem would be resolving supply side issues, for instance, predicting the demand for food supply articles for a floating beneficiary base. It should also be mentioned here that community monitoring and other vigilance measures have been successful in the monitoring of Fair Price Shops at various parts of the country. Moreover, biometric measures can be adopted without the UID format (Smart Cards for instance). Aadhaar, at best, can only offer one alternative of community based monitoring among many. Reetika Khera points out that the Working Paper on PDS prepared by Aadhaar collapses the issue of direct cash transfers with strengthening PDS. Direct cash transfers have to be examined independently for their potential or lack thereof, and cannot be dragged into an analysis of PDS workings, as an unquestioned proposal.

REFERENCES M. G. Devasahayam (2001), ‘PDS and India’s food security’,The Hindu,August 13,2001,http:// www.hinduonnet.com/businessline/2001/08/13/stories/041303mg.htm. Deaton, A., & Dreze, J. (2009), ‘Food and Nutrition in India: Facts and Interpretations’. Economic and Political Weekly, pp. 42–65. Kumar, A., & Dixit, A. (2010). ‘Is a Universal pDS Financially Feasible in India’. Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai: April 28, 2010. Ghosh, Jayati (2010) ‘The Political Economy of Hunger in 21st Century India’, Economic & Political Weekly, October 30, vol xlv no. 44. Government of India (GoI) (2009). Report of the Expert Group to Review the Methodology for Estimation of Poverty, Planning Commission, New Delhi, November, www. planningcommission.nic.in/rep_pov.pdf, Accessed on 29 April, 2011.



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Indian Institute of Management (2010), ISSUE PAPER on ‘Public Distribution System in India’, 24th August, 2010. Khera, Reetika (2011), ‘The UID Project and Welfare Schemes’ Economic & Political Weekly, February 2011. Ramachandran, V. K., Y. Usami and Biplab Sarkar (2010), ‘Lessonsfrom BPL Censuses’ The Hindu, 20 April 2010.http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/ article406431.ece. Saith, A. (2005). ‘Of Calories and Things: Reflections on Nutritional Norms, Poverty Lines and Consumption Behaviour in India’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 40, No. 43, October 22–28, pp. 4611–18. Swaminathan, Madhura (2010) ‘The New Poverty Line: A Methodology Deeply Flawed’, Indian Journal of Human Development, Vol. 4, No. 1. Unique Identification Authority of India (2010), Envisioning a role for Aadhaar in the Public Distribution System, Working Paper, Oct 2010. Wadhwa committee (2007) Report of on Targeted Public Distribution System 2007. Vydhianathan S. and R. K. Radhakrishnan (2010) ‘Behind the success story of universal PDS in Tamil Nadu’ in The Hindu, Aug 11, www.hindu.com/2010/08/11/ stories/2010081154251100.htm

NOTES 1

Devasahayam, 2001 and passim.

2

Ramachandran et al, 2010.

3

Report of the XI Plan Working Group on Poverty Elimination Programmes; henceforth, XI Plan WGR.

4

ibid. XI Plan WGR.

5

ibid. XI Plan WGR.

6

Swaminathan, 2010.

7

Ghosh, 2010.

8

Deaton and Dreze, 2009.

9

The issue of using the Poverty Line as an appropriate standard of measurement is at the heart of theYaswantSinhaReport tabled before the LokSabha in March 2011.

10 Khera, 2011. 11 The Wadhwa Committee was set up by the Supreme Court through its order dated 12.07.2006 in WP 196/2001, the People's Union of Civil Liberties vs. Union of India and others, as a Central Vigilance Committee to look into the functioning of TPDS and to suggest recommendations for its effective functioning. 12 See IIMA, 2010, Khera, 2011. 13 Vydhianathan and Radhakrishnan, 2010 and passim.



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RSBY: Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana: A Field Visit in Bangalore Arun Menon Doctoral student, CSCS

The author explores one instance of an enroller of both RSBY and Aadhaar in Bangalore, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The interviewee and Menon’s field work in the city in August 2011 reveals a small instance of fake RSBY cards, and the generally unremunerative conditions for small-time enrollers. ‘RSBY promises ` 80 per enrollment, but we could not make a profit— we enrolled less than 10 people a day most days. We tried doing UIDAI enrollments but the money was tied up for so long with CIDR authentication that we were operating at a complete loss’.—Anand, a member of the consortia managing enrollment centers for both the UIDAI and the RSBY. Anand has stopped enrollments and pulled out of the consortia with massive losses. He now runs a computer service center in Banaswadi in Bangalore. About the RSBY: The RSBY is a program under the Ministry of Labour and Employment, which seeks to provide health insurance to those falling within the BPL criteria, to enable cashless hospitalisation. The UIDAI has proposed that by using its authentication scheme, RSBY can be made applicable across the country, thus enabling cashless hospitalisation and insurance available to all citizens. The website of RSBY lists 34 million smartcards issued, and more than 4.5 million hospitalisation cases until January 2013. RSBY was implemented at the national level in its current form in April 2008, and provides cashless hospitalisation for its card holders across the nation In the Wake of Aadhaar 353


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through Empanelled Hospitals. Insurance selection happens through an RFP process, and although many insurers are empanelled, and contracts may vary from district to district, only one insurer operates in a particular district. Enrollment is managed by the insurer often through a process of hiring enrollment centers or groups that run enrollment centers. This review is based on interviews with a member of one such consortium managing enrollments in Karnataka, Kerala, and Andhra Pradesh. The Centres have the necessary hardware to capture biometric details as well as to print the cards. Ideally these cards should be printed simultaneously and issued within a few minutes. In the field, however, a delay of a few days (ranging from 4-12) was evident. Each enrollment was verified and authenticated by a Field Key Officer of the government who monitored the enrollment center, and in this manner each enrollment was tied back to a government individual who has enrolled the person into the database. An enroller needed to make about 80 enrollments a day to remain profitable—a near-impossibility for a small entrepreneur. The empanelment of hospitals within a district was done by the insurance provider who has been allotted that particular district. The empanelment process generates a unique hospital ID that allows for all transitions to be monitored and tracked at each hospital. Each smart card provides a maximum coverage of ` 30,000. A patient visiting the hospital first checks in with the RSBY helpdesk which follows the patient’s diagnostic procedure and lists the costs and the pre-prepared insurance package. Upon treatment and discharge, the patient’s costs are covered by the insurer, which includes ` 100 towards transportation. Claims by the hospital are electronically managed and the insurer dispenses funds to the hospital after claims are entered. However, RSBY enrollment has been a victim of fraud. The extent of fraud is unknown but it is on a scale that Wikipedia even has an entry on RSBY and fraud. This is where the narrative of Mr. Anand is relevant: where he maps out the nature of fraud and how that becomes the only means to profit in a system that is otherwise unprofitable for a small entrepreneur.



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Circuits of Corruption: The UID Enrollers: Below is the image of RSBY smart cards procured from a recent field interview/visit in Bangalore (between the 11th and 18th August, 2011) with subcontractors who run both RSBY enrollments and have expanded to UID enrollments from September 2011 in three Southern states in three southern states: Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, and Kerala.

These contractors are independent entrepreneurs who got together to form a small consortium that established enrollment centres across 3 states in the southern region. Each contractor used to manage the specific enrollment centres for which he took charge. The Centres took on the responsibility of enrolling BPL criteria members for RSBY, and then sought to expand the support UID enrollment: given that it required similar hardware, manpower, and skill to begin sets. The following fieldwork documents actual enrollment centers and their functioning. The field work does not focus on the enrollments per se but is based mainly on how the Centres locate themselves at the grassroots level. These meetings and interviews were always informal, never on record, and the mere mention of a digital recorder would make the interviewee either too busy to schedule a meeting or have him cut the interview short. During one such conversation, I was directed to a group of enrollment contractors who were subcontracting for RSBY, and beginning September 2011, for the UIDAI. I started asking about possibilities of fraud and the manner in which certain structures could be compromised, particularly of the UIDs enrollment systems. I was directed to a group member Mr. Anand, who In the Wake of Aadhaar 355


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had exited the group with enormous losses both from the RSBY and UIDAI’s enrollments. It was during one of these attempts that I learned about Mr. R, a subcontractor with a small group of entrepreneurs who was expanding into Kerala and AP. Mr. A had been part of the group that had successfully bid for and won RFEs for running enrollment stations for the RSBY and later the UID during the early part of this year (2011). Most of the conversations were with him and the meetings intermittently strewn over a period of a week. During the interviews, some questions on corruption became prominent. One of the questions posed was if there was a possibility of corruption owing to any vulnerability within the complex technological structures that were supposed to ensure, often through the complexity, that corruption and leakages were curtailed. Indeed, given that we usually view such complex technologies as secure, the specific question posed was whether corruption could take on new forms enabled by the very technologies that were trying to stop it. Could, say, a PoS machine be vulnerable to any kind of misuse? Could a database of cards be misused? Are there systems in place for auditing the transactions across the internet? Anand had 3 major claims that were disturbing (here, I represent the interview under the broad themes of discussion, this is not the format of the interview). 1. Costs and Losses: As one of the members of the consortia, Anand was managing an enrollment center on the outskirts of Bangalore. He was largely enrolling for the RSBY during early 2011 until the time the UIDAI began enrollments in Karnataka. He is otherwise a computer spare parts dealer and maintains two outlets near Bangalore, which service and stock computer spares. He was a direct enroller with the RSBY and later for the UID in the first half of 2011, and was then a part of a consortium of small entrepreneurs who together bid for, and successfully won, direct contracts on enrollment services to both the RSBY and UIDAI. His expertise in this period was to manage personnel, offices and equipment, and to manage the specific centers he set up.



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As a small entrepreneur it was difficult for him to simply establish an enrollment center in competition with the larger groups who were also entering, and who could push through with resources as well as manpower when immediate profits were not on the horizon. He could not match their salaries, their training or their benefits, and frequently lost manpower to the competition. Moreover, his centre had to double up as an UID/RSBY centre in the hope of making enough profit given large and unsustainable overheads. He also indicated that the first 3 months of enrollment were a period with zero returns, because payment resolutions took so long (60 days) that enrollment did not make sense for a small entrepreneur. This was also taking into account the kind of overheads required to manage a small enrollment centre, as well as the stipulations of the UID that specifically directed a certain amount of support for operators as well as enrollees within a certain social criterion. Additionally, considering that biometric machines and enrollment kits were priced at ` 1.5 lacs at the time, the investment amount considerably exceeded the meager profits that were beginning to come in. This was a problem in many ways similar to the one that that the Akshaya entrepreneurs faced in Palakkad, Kerala, where they were concerned about the rate of returns for their investments, and their ability to sustain a center for long periods without any returns. Further, some part of the enrolled numbers always led to failures, and it was then up to the operator to cover the costs and losses to perform compensatory re-enrollment. Mr. Anand made available a set of blank smart cards, misprinted and rejected smart cards with PII (personally identifiable information) of enrollees to demonstrate the process of production of the smartcards, their use and abuse, as well as the system within which it works. He indicated massive fraud within the group as well as with some of the processes of enrollment with the RSBY, and systemic failures with the UIDAI such that there was loss and fraud in the first case and no immediate profits due to systemic blockages in the second case that caused losses for a period of two months. He specifically indicated that the case with the UID enrollments were not fraud on the part of the authority: rather, heavy bureaucratic systems that made it nearly In the Wake of Aadhaar 357


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impossible for small entrepreneurs to make profits and the rise of fraud as a consequence of bureaucratic structures. 2. Corruption: During the first half of 2011, Mr. Anand was in charge of managing and sustaining the enrollment centres and recruitments, and resources were shared with a partner, whereas other partners were investors. It was his mandate to procure equipment for the enrollment center, train the operators or hire new ones as required, and to coordinate enrollments and delivery of the RSBY Smart Card to both the enrollee as well as the database. The RSBY required a minimum of 80 enrollments a day for it to be feasible to run and manage an enrollment center. The location however was such that competition and a rural area without sufficient awareness meant that enrollments were in the region of 25-60 in a day. Additionally, the costs of making the RSBY smart chip cards, printing them, and discarding misprinted cards and replacing damaged cards were a part of the enrollment agencies’requirement. Losses were higher at this point because 30% of printed cards had mismatched data or misprints, and required to be replaced where the cost was borne by the agency. It was at this point that the partners involved started producing fake cards and selling them at a price ranging from ` 8000 to ` 30,000, where RSBY blank cards were used with fake data and then used by a network. The operator got anywhere between ` 3000 and ` 5000 per card for providing the data required. It was at this point that Anand exited from the partnership but was unable to reclaim either his equipment or investment costs from his partners, who he says were now minting money printing fake cards. To show how this was made possible, Anand allowed us to take 5 blank cards (worth a total cost of ` 30000 if used as a fake card) and misprinted cards to show the losses sustained. At the point of the final interview, he insisted that the matter was in court and discretion be used in any writing. 3. The UID enrollment: Anand had at the time of UID enrollment not noted any discrepancy or corruption in the production of either fake cards or fake identities, but he had noticed that the system was fraught with glitches and problems so that a small entrepreneur could simply not achieve any form of 358 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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short term profits. Indeed in the case of the UID, for him to be sustainable he required 120 enrollments a day in an area that was highly competitive, and even then he could only use 2 operators and two machines. Furthermore, he had to train operators who had to pass the UIDAI’s testing, and additionally he had to take care of their health insurance etc., which was part of the UIDAI’s mandate. He insists that the expenditure required to manage this was simply impossible considering the fact that the UIDAI disbursed payments for enrollments often after 3 months (this was the case at the end of 2011). Mr. Anand has now withdrawn from the consortium, opting instead to manage his store selling computer supplies and providing services. As you enter the store you can find boxes containing UPS systems, extra machines, RSBY printed cards, misprints of RSBY cards, an enrollment machine sits in a corner next to a display model. The small entrepreneur cannot survive in the enrollment or authentication market, a market that is designed, supposedly for enabling small entrepreneurs like him.



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Issues in Financial Inclusion S. Ananth Independent researcher, Hyderabad

This essay explores the scenario that has emerged in Andhra Pradesh (the focus on the Identity Project’s study on financial inclusion): a situation that primarily sees new and extreme forms of financial indebtness amid widespread availability of credit. It speculates on whether or not the new initiatives of Banking Correspondents will have an impact on these phenomena.

INTRODUCTION

It is well known that throughout India there is a large latent demand for

credit. Since Independence at least, the country has seen policymakers work at putting together an elaborate credit delivery network mechanism. A primary objective of the banking sector and its rural spread after nationalisation was the provision of timely, low cost credit to agriculture, while facilitating availability of capital in capital-deficient regions. The number of branches of scheduled commercial banks has grown from 8262 in 1969 to 90,263 at the end of March 2011. Similarly, cash advances of the banking sector have grown from ` 35.99 billion to ` 39,420.82 billion at the end of March 2011.1 However, despite such expansion, the availability of credit to the lowest quartile has been low, thereby forcing them to seek credit from the nonformal sector, which is invariably high-cost. Attempts to expand credit through the formal banking sector are not new to India. In the 1970s, an attempt was made to provide concessional credit to the poor, especially SC/STs through the Differential Rate of Interest scheme introduced by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). This credit was provided only for income-generation activities, with the hope that it would have a multiplier



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effect on individuals and thus on the economy. Additionally, the RBI has made major efforts to sensitise financial sector participants, including but not only limited to banks, to their concerns. However, measures aimed at improving the credit access by various sections have achieved only limited success, due, some have argued, to the complexity of the nature of India’s economy. For example, a Reserve Bank of India report in 2005, the Report of the Internal Group to Examine Issues Relating to Rural Credit and Microfinance,2 pointed out the demand side as well as the supply side perspectives and the causes for the constraints in the rural supply of credit.3 The relevance and importance of financial inclusion, within the 2005 Report’s argument, is to do with the exponential increase in credit needs of the populace at all levels coupled with the bottlenecks faced in making credit available. Growth in access to credit includes growth in income-generation activities as well as for consumption. An important reason for increased demand for credit includes increased expenditures on housing, education and health. Critiques of financial inclusion claim that the measures will not alter fundamental socioeconomic contradictions/deficiencies. Two major developments in recent years have led to foundational changes in the very understanding, we now have, of inclusion means. The first was the rise of new and innovative schemes for economic transformation through poverty alleviation, which have focussed on providing credit as a vehicle to facilitate improvement in the economic health of poorer households. The second, related to the first perhaps, has been the growing access to debt at almost all levels and thus to a new culture of economic indebtedness.

Interview with Vijaya Bharati, Orvakkal, Kurnool. In the Wake of Aadhaar 361


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Interview with Reddy Subramanyam, Principal Secretary, Department of Rural Affairs, Government of Andhra Pradesh.

In the state of Andhra Pradesh (the focus of this section of the Identity Project), the expansion of the Self-Help Groups (SHG) movement and the successful SHG-Bank Linkage programme, has foundationally altered the credit dynamics in the State. To many, access to the SHG-Bank Linkage programme is the only access that the poor have to the formal banking sector. The interest subvention to the SHGs in the form of budgetary support has added to their importance within the larger programme of financial inclusion. Increased incomes, following rising wages, are accompanied by an increased proclivity to recycle ever-expanding quantities of debt assumed —a model that was actively encouraged by the microfinance companies in the State. Since it is impossible to borrow one’s way into prosperity, the consequences of increased indebtedness in the State have been one of the major sources of the problems facing the microfinance sector.

FINANCIAL INCLUSION

There are a number of definitions for financial inclusion. We lay primacy on the most commonly accepted definition, by the Report of the Committee on Financial Inclusion (2008) known as the Rangarajan Committtee, and the one provided by Usha Thorat in a recent presentation.4 The Rangarajan Committee 362 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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defines financial inclusion as: ‘the process of ensuring access to financial services and timely and adequate credit where needed by vulnerable groups such as weaker sections and low income groups at an affordable cost’ (p. 1)5 while Usha Thorat points out that financial inclusion is more than either microfinance or access to payment systems, and there are several other dimensions to this, including the facilitation of real sector parameters. On its part, the UNDP has suggested that ‘inclusion’ has to go beyond financial inclusion and should encompass livelihoods, economic and social inclusion. The Centre for Financial Inclusion (Accion International) has defined it as a ‘state in which all people who can use them have access to a full suite of quality financial services provided affordable prices, in a convenient manner and with dignity for the clients. Financial services are delivered by a range of providers, most of them private, and reach everyone who can use them, including disabled, poor, rural, and other excluded populations’.6 As the above definitions suggest, financial inclusion is today widely recognised as considerably wider in its ambit than merely the expansion of micro-credit. This in itself constitutes a major shift away from a dominant view that has seen micro-credit dominate financial inclusion strategies. Today, the recognition of new ground realities has drawn attention to new issues and challenges that need to be first surmounted if financial inclusion is to have desired effects. Policy makers have struggled to expand financial inclusion in the country, even as the issue has come to occupy centre stage in national planning. The former President of India Pratibha Patil recently pointed out that only about 45% of the Indian population has access to bank accounts; that the ratio of one bank branch for 16,000 people means that ‘banking coverage of the large population living in six lakh villages in the country was particularly low’, while at the same time calling for a holistic approach to meet the financial needs of target consumers,7 while the Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission has asserted that inclusion would be an important part of the Twelfth Five Year Plan.8 An important initiative of the Government of India to expand financial inclusion was the Swabhiman programme, where the government set a target of providing banking facilities in all habitations with a population of more In the Wake of Aadhaar 363


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than 2000 (as per 2001 census) by March 2012. This constitutes coverage of an additional 73,000 unbanked villages, where banks would use the banking correspondents model to provide five major products that have been deemed essential: namely, savings, micro-credit, remittances micro-pension, and micro-insurance. The following table highlights the results of RBI’s attempt to expand inclusion: Particulars

March 2010

March 2011

March 2012

No. of BC/BC Agents

33,042

57,329

95,767

No. of banking outlets in villages with population above 2000

27,353

54,246

82,300

No. of banking outlets in villages with population less than 2000

26,905

45,937

65,234

Total number of villages with banking outlets

54,258

100,183

147,534

No. frills accounts (number in Millions)

50.3

75.4

105.5

No. Frills accounts – Amount

42/6

57

93.3

(in ` Billions)

In general, it would appear that the RBI has been successful in getting banks, especially PSBs, to expand their inclusionary policies. PSBs had already exceeded their targets in financial year 2010-11, reaching 26,630 villages against the targeted number of 23,629. It needs to be seen if over the next few years, they are independently able to expand the range of services to these villages, or if their measures have been solely as a result of government directives. A second area of expansion of financial inclusion has been the emphasis on branchless banks and Ultra Small Branches, where banks establish a presence in select villages once or more a week. A travelling bank employee is expected in this way to cover 5–6 villages a week and to operate an ultra-small branch for a few hours in each village each week. Each branch contains, in a small hired space, a computer, printer, and internet connection that allows the branch to be connected to the bank’s servers, and for all transactions to be 364 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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online. This attempt runs concurrent to the business correspondent model that the RBI introduced in 2005–06.

ISSUES IN EXPANDING FINANCIAL INCLUSION

The nuances of implementing financial inclusion are complex, with

various different dynamics at work. Without the participation of the banking sector, financial inclusion is difficult to achieve, and convincing formal institutions to be involved has proved difficult. Secondly, despite years of growth in the formal banking sector, banks have not been able to expand either their services or their product portfolios. Any field study indicates that there is a clear urge to borrow from banks and a hope that at least in the future, banks will lend to the poorer sections. This is not to claim that only the poor access non-formal sources of credit. It is common for Small and Medium Enterprises to survive mostly on accessing non-formal sources of credit.

Interview with Nazir and B. Vishwanatha Reddy, Banking Correspondents, at a street corner in Gonegundla, Kurnool district, Andhra Pradesh.

Any attempt at expanding financial inclusion will have to acknowledge several factors that inhibit the development of a more inclusive financial system, which can only be overcome with the active participation of the banking system. However, since the reforms of 1991, the banking system is oriented to the stock markets with their emphasis on short-term profits. In the Wake of Aadhaar 365


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This often forces banks to look at various opportunities through a short-term cost-benefit analysis. Such practices have over the past two decades been detrimental to the health of the banking sector and importantly will serve as a major obstacle to the growth of a more inclusive financial system. Four important factors that banks will have to deal with: 1.

The viability gap that arises due to the fact that the cost of providing these services (or ‘social’ or ‘holding’ costs). In an era when the banking sector is concerned as much as profitability and growth, it is unlikely that banks will be willing to make a substantial departure from their current practices, without an implicit or explicit subsidy from the government.

2.

Recovery, especially in rural areas, will be an issue and unless the institutional framework is transformed, it may not be an attractive business proposition. The social dynamics of a village furthers the risks for a large institution such as a bank.

3.

Financial inclusion for banks is a miniscule part of their portfolio at the present juncture, especially compared to growth rates possible in other sectors. Therefore, the financial inclusion segment is unlikely to be a focus area in the near future. Credit to the excluded sectors, or even deposits mobilised from the poor, invariably consists of only a small part of the overall portfolio of the banks. For growth-obsessed banks it is difficult to contemplate a substantial shift from current policy that would accommodate financially inclusive policies beyond a point. Banks, like most formal institutions, are not willing to spend inordinate amounts of time and resources to create a market. Historically, large formal financial institutions have found it more convenient to move into a market when it has been built and nurtured either by smaller companies or by informal players.

4.

Banks have so far viewed financial inclusion through the prism of existing business opportunities and often in comparison to other business segments. Banks need to view FI as being akin to creating and



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nurturing new, rather than existing market segments. FI is invariably a long-drawn out process requiring large-scale investments over the years to bear fruit to the banking sector in terms of profitability. The above obstacles to financial inclusion may mean that the banks will be looking to the government to subsidise their activities in the sphere of financial inclusion. This subsidy is often expected to be in the form of costs that need to be incurred, especially those related to the technology infrastructure. Bankers often complain that lending to the poor is a high-cost proposition and the ‘viability gap’ is difficult to bridge. On the other hand, the formal banking sector has often overlooked the latent demand for its financial services, one major reason for the visibility of the non-formal finance sector. The ‘viability gap’ issue reinforces a stereotype that the poor have no savings, whereas the truth is that they do have savings but not in forms or instruments that would be considered acceptable to the formal banking sector. As incomes and debts have increased, a portion of their incomes have been invested in houses, education as well as other non-formal instruments that are unregulated and often unsafe. FI requires banks to customise their products and services in order to suit the requirements of the poor. As Thorat points out, ‘financial inclusion should be led by understanding the needs of the customer rather than achieving targets. In rural areas banks should reach out rather than expect to play a numbers game. A well planned strategy should focus on customising products for transactions, remittances, savings, loans and insurance. Improving financial literacy and credit counselling in fact should precede delivery of financial products. In fact a localised approach would require banks to rethink their policy on having uniform products for the entire country’. . .9 The unwillingness of banks to expand their financial inclusion portfolio has provided a business opportunity that has been quickly filled by microfinance companies. MFIs provide ‘filler loans’ (as a senior banker called it) with few questions about the end-use of funds. In contrast, the banking In the Wake of Aadhaar 367


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sector operates with more stringent conditions. The existence of a clearly discernible formal structure in the MF organisation has helped banks to lend, since it is convenient (and a more credible business proposition) to deal with a few companies rather than with millions of customers dispersed in remote areas. Unless these complex issues are solved, a paradigm shift in financial inclusion may remain elusive. It is in the above context that one needs to approach the financial inclusion and the role of Aadhaar. Financial Inclusion requires large investments in the form of the need to establish a wide network of agents/branches in order to serve a large number of small volume transactions. The costs for the financial service providers include the cost of opening the accounts (KYC norms, etc.), infrastructure costs, staffing costs and importantly, the cost of funds. Aadhaar has the benefit of reducing the costs related to KYC norms as the RBI has now accepted the Aadhaar number as the equivalent of KYC. This eliminates the need for banks to undertake the need for verification in order to meet the KYC obligations. Aadhaar has the additional advantage of portability in case customers move to different places, apart from being the number to which they can flag various transactions.

REFERENCES 1

Basic Statistical Returns of Scheduled Commercial Banks In India, Reserve Bank of India, 2012, p.19 http://rbidocs.rbi.org.in/rdocs/PublicationReport/Pdfs/65111.pdf.

2

Report of the Internal Group to Examine Issues Relating to Rural Credit and Microfinance (H.R. Khan, Chairman), Reserve Bank of India, July 2005 http://rbidocs.rbi.org.in/rdocs/PublicationReport/ Pdfs/65111.pdf (Website last visited 20 June 2011).

3

The supply side perspectives include: (a) the perception of ‘unbankability’ of borrowers, (b) the very small average size of the loan, (c) problems of distance in servicing customers of banks, (d) high transaction costs particularly when dealing with innumerable small accounts, (e) lack of collateral security, (f) problems related to evaluation and monitoring of cash flows cycles and repayment capacities due to information asymmetry, lack of data base and absence of credit profile of borrowers, (g) constraints in availability of qualified human resources, (h) lack of banking habits and credit culture, (j) information-shadow areas, and (k) inadequacy of extension services crucial to improve the production efficiency of farmers leading to better loan repayments (p.6). Causes for exclusion on demand side included (a) high transaction costs at the client side, (b) documentation issues, (c) lack of awareness, (d) lack of social capital, (e) non-availability of ideal products, (f)



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low volumes, (g) problems related to documentation procedures in the formal system, (h) easy availability of timely doorstep services from moneylenders/informal sources and (i) prior experience of rejection/indifference of the formal banking system (p. 7). 4

‘Micro Finance to Financial Inclusion and Responsible Finance-A Paradigm Shift’, Speech Delivered at Financial Inclusion Policymakers Forum, Malaysia.

5

Report of the Committee on Financial Inclusion, NABARD, January 2008, NABARD (http://www. nabard.org/pdf/report_financial/Full%20Report.pdf).

6

(http://www.bnm.gov.my/index.php?ch=263&pg=848&ac=878 – Website Accessed on 18 May 2011).

7

‘Inclusive Economy needs strong banking sector: PratibhaPatil’, The Hindu, 24 December 2010, p. 19. http://www.inclusion.in/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=536...

8

‘Public Sector Banks reach out to more villages in 2010-11’, Businessline, Hyderabad Edition, 21 May 2011, p. 6

9

‘Micro Finance to Financial Inclusion and Responsible Finance-A Paradigm Shift’, Speech Delivered at Financial Inclusion Policymakers Forum, Malaysia (http://www.bnm.gov.my/index. php?ch=263&pg=848&ac=878 – Website Accessed on 18 May 2011).



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CHAPTER 11



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3


– Technology Issues



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Technologies in Aadhaar : A sociotechnical view Ravi Shukla Centre for Studies in Science Policy, New Delhi

The author, himself a software programmer now working on how technologies can be better comprehended as sociotechnical processes, inquires into the scaling-up process that a project as large as Aadhaar needed to have done. He also looks at the various RTI applications filed to ask questions on whether or not standard checks and balances have been followed on the technology deployed.

IDENTITY SYSTEMS IN CONTEXT Before getting specific, let me make a few general points: on identity systems in general and on Aadhaar in particular. A commonly cited study on the implementation of biometrics-based national identity systems has been the independent study undertaken by the London School of Economics in 2005 to study the feasibility of a project in the UK. Famously, that project found the proposal ‘too complex, technically unsafe, overly prescriptive, and [having] a lack of foundation of public trust and confidence’.1 Other countries in the European Union that have a successful electronic Identity Management Systems (eIDMS) include Germany, Spain, Austria, Belgium, Estonia, Finland, Italy, and Portugal. A study in 2007 made a comparison of these seven systems with Germany as the reference point. It is summarised below:



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Table 1: European Union eIDMS comparison.

Kubicek Herbert, ‘Introduction: conceptual framework and research design for a comparative analysis of national eId Management Systems in Selected European Countries’, in Identity in the Information Society, Springer, Vol 3, 2010, page 23. Apart from Austria and Italy, the other six countries have an ELD card which is mandatory in all but two countries—Germany and Spain. Biometric data is stored on the card only in Germany and Spain. At the time of publication (2010), the inclusion of biometrics on the card has been contested, and in the view of the author, ‘biometrics has not yet become relevant for authentication in online services’ (ibid, pg. 11). In India, the first initiative towards a unique nationalised digital identity was the approval of a Multipurpose National Identity Card (MNIC) in 2003 by the NDA government. Focussing on national security and ways by which to deter illegal immigration, the project had proposed different coloured cards for citizens and non-citizens. The pilot project, taken up in April 2003, and covering 29 Lakh people in 13 states2 appeared to have undergone some change during the course of its implementation, notably in the addition of biometrics for all adults and in the doing away of different coloured cards. Several organisations led by the NIC helped to set up an infrastructure that included 20 centres to handle the citizen database. Unlike the current scheme that involves private enterprise, the card was designed by the National Institute of Design (NID) with back-end management being done by Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL).3 The period was also marked by efforts at bringing both ‘computerisation’ and In the Wake of Aadhaar 373


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eGovernance under a common umbrella.4 With the change in the governing party to UPA, an empowered group of ministers (EGOM) headed by Shri Pranab Mukherjee was formed. The proposal to set up the UIDAI was mooted in August 2008; and soon after, the decision to notify the UIDAI as an executive authority under the planning commission was taken (Ibid, pp. 6-8). The current avatar of the UID scheme or Aadhaar, as it has been called, as a centralised, biometrics based database took shape under the guidance of Nandan Nilekani, erstwhile head of the IT major Infosys, who took over as the first Chairperson of the UIDAI.5 The scale and scope of the UID project has been compared to earlier ‘development’ initiatives of the government. However, while the outcomes and fallouts of most industrial projects in the past have been there for all to see, the artefacts and outcomes of projects involving the storage and processing of information such as the Aadhaar project have tended to be more intangible and less visible. According to the ‘Communicating to a Billion’ document (May 2010), the Aadhaar team sees the scheme as the ‘programme to make a difference to other programmes’. The basic mandate outlined in the document is one of providing each resident of the country an Aadhaar number linked to their demographic and biometric information. The ‘developmental mandate’ of the scheme is aimed at increasing the reach and efficiency of services like PDS and other banking and financial services.6 From a social standpoint, given the concerns from European countries that have preceded this project, the question of interest is this: is the present scheme fundamentally different from previous developmental projects, and if so, how? Secondly, what would such a shift in emphasis mean for the statecitizen relationship and the country as a whole? Are we, as one essay (elsewhere in this Reader) suggested, at the cusp of a ‘new bureaucratic moment’? This essay approaches the above two problems from a slightly different perspective, that of software processes, and will attempt to infer what conclusions drawn from such a perspective may mean to larger social processes.



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OVERVIEW OF SOCIOTECHNICAL SYSTEMS

Let us start with a conventional setting: how are technological systems in

general understood? The commonly held understanding of technology suggests that it is the application of science to industrial or commercial objectives.7 Its general outcome is to produce manufactured articles or artefacts. This normative view of technology sees it as a tool that may be used to achieve different objectives, or in other words, as a means to an end.8 More engaged perspectives tend to be broadly aligned along two divergent vantage points: those arguing from a technologically determinist view, who see technologies as actively shaping, if not actually determining, society.9 The opposing vantage point suggests that technologies may be shaped by forces within society. Originating roughly in the 1980s, possibly as an attempt to contest the autonomy of technology argument, the Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) perspective broadly suggests that social, cultural, political, and economic situations influence the meaning given to artefacts, and shape the direction of technologies.10 In general, most technological systems are placed somewhere in between these two extreme positions. Further, their definitions are not static but change at different stages of the process. It is evident that few systems can be either completely autonomous or completely socially determined at any stage in the process. More recently, it has been proposed that ‘the distinction between what was “social” and “technical” and what was “human” and “nonhuman” was itself disrupted through the process of technical change’. It was not therefore possible to give a ‘purely social’ explanation of technical change because technical objects (facts, artefacts, devices) themselves formed a critical part of the social.11 It may best therefore to describe these processes as sociotechnical so that while there may be similarities between such processes and the technologies themselves, the specific forces at play may be different at different places in the overall process, making any ‘sociotechnical’ analysis of each system a unique one.



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AADHAAR AS A SYSTEM

When attempting to review a large technological system such as Aadhaar,

we begin with the salutary fact: it is a centralised database of biometric and demographic information that will extend to ‘each and every resident’ of the country.12 Given the scale and scope of the project, it follows that the technological choices and processes that have been made in the project will affect people, institutions and society as a whole in various complicated ways. One theorist suggests that ‘technology is not a thing in the ordinary sense of the term, but an ambivalent process of development’. Inherent in technology, he says, is ‘the role it attributes to social values in technological design, and not merely in the use, of technical systems’.13 This somewhat philosophical contention, of a non-instrumental technology extending beyond physical objects and systems of technology to the social realm, seems to be nevertheless directly reflected in the more practical thumb-rules and guidelines offered by The Software Engineering Institute (SEI), at Carnegie Mellon University. One of the pioneering institutions for research in the field, the SEI was initially setup to optimise procurement processes for Defence projects in the United States. While the focus of SEI has historically been on large organisations, as its success has shown, its suggestions and guidelines are scalable and may be relevant to a diversity of software systems. The SEI has traditionally seen processes, people and technologies, as the key elements in what has been called the ‘process triangle’ of process improvement initiatives. In recent times, there have been efforts to add another element, ‘culture’, to the triad. Here, culture has been described as the environment in which process, technology and people interact. Researchers at SEI have also suggested that viewing process improvement activities in the larger context may provide insights into the meanings of activities, artefacts and behaviour in these systems.14 In SEI literature, ‘culture’ and ‘context’ generally refers to the organisation under consideration. Thus, when applying SEI-type criteria to understanding the Aadhaar project, it may be necessary, while looking at 376 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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information technologies from a social standpoint, to also and parallelly look at other social processes at play. Some theorists have made the suggestion that the analytical approach required to understand the issues, practices, and outcomes of informationcentric technologies may be somewhat different from those of other technologies. According to Sandra Braman of the University of Minnesota, whose primary work has been on the social implications of digital technologies, any past learning from what she calls ‘industrial technologies’ may not suffice in grappling with the diversity of possible inputs and the virtually infinite range of possible outcomes that meta-technologies such as these open up.15 In Braman’s opinion, the adage ‘knowledge is power’ seems to have acquired a new meaning in today’s information-intensive society; information, in effect, she says, has become a form of power in its own right, overshadowing other forms of power and changing how these forms come into being and are exercised. This is extended by Karen Litfin’s view that new technologies have two kinds of political and social implications: first, they empower or dis-empower social actors—states, groups, classes, and institutions; and second, perhaps more fundamentally, they can influence the self-understandings and identities of social actors, perhaps even the nature of power itself.16 Both positions lead us to ask this question: from a social perspective, how may we understand and assess a system that possesses less visible artefacts but has subtler and more direct associations with power and identity? Among the almost infinite range of outcomes to which Braman alludes, there is the specific one of privileging some technological systems and networks over others, and thereby certain possibilities over others: in effect, closing certain possibilities and leaving others open. Technologies often mask the historicity of both interest and politics, given that each technological system embodies particular people’s decisions and is a reflection of relations of power. Both the engineering design and the choice of technologies used may end up enabling certain social paths and directions over others, and these choices may not be either innocent or independent of power structures or In the Wake of Aadhaar 377


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social hierarchies. A more sociotechnical process of technology may therefore usefully seek the involvement of lay users and other non-technical inputs at important stages in the development and evolution of the technology. Such an involvement necessarily entails an active engagement with questions of who determines choices, at what cost, to what end, and by what institutional or social process.17 Such a larger social involvement is hardly unknown in software engineering, and has already been reflected in Joint Application and Design (JAD) sessions and other similar efforts.18 It therefore becomes especially relevant in the case of systems such as Aadhaar that attempt to address issues of social inequality. Specifically, this essay attempts to review the Aadhaar scheme along the three axes of the ‘process triangle’ as specified by SEI, namely in terms of the processes, technologies, and people involved in the scheme.

MODELLING AND DESIGN IN INFORMATION SYSTEMS

In more traditional forms of engineering or architecture, modelling

involves the making of physical ‘scale’ models in the design of buildings and machinery. The main advantage of doing this is that it helps in understanding the requirements and complexities of a system without having to go through the cost and effort of implementation. Models enable the gradual, incremental move, from a simplified, abstract model to a fully functional one without the burden of reworking. They also help in communicating design ideas to diverse groups of people. Perhaps due to its non-physical nature, software modelling has had its share of sceptics, especially during the early days of software engineering. Historically, the making of physical ‘scale’ models has formed an important element of engineering design, and has proven to be especially useful in the design of buildings and machinery. Today, however, it is considered an important way to approach software development, largely because it may not be physically possible to retain all elements of even 378 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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moderately complex systems without some degree of abstraction. To quote a pioneer in the developing of programming languages, ‘I have a very small head and I had better learn to live with it and respect my limitations’. In addition, modelling allows for relatively easier ways of exploring system behaviour and constraints without the actual implementation of the system.19 Most contemporary software systems follow the object-oriented (OO) paradigm of development. While details of such an approach may be outside the scope of this essay, it may be relevant to note that ‘objects’ in the OO paradigm are software abstractions of real-world entities, described by a set of attributes and behaviours relevant in the problem space. Conceptually, OO techniques has been described as a shift from ‘computer programming to software engineering’, with the design metaphor changing from ‘Software is a sequence of steps to software is a collection of objects’.20 Perhaps the most popular tool for Object-oriented design and documentation has been the Unified Modelling Language (UML). A working definition of UML describes it as a family of graphical notations backed by a single meta-model, which collectively help in both describing and designing software systems. UML may be used for to create a blueprint of the design or even just an informal sketch; while there are no mandated requirements or hard and fast rules in the use of UML, some diagrams such as use-case diagrams for recording use cases, and class diagrams and sequence diagrams for describing the main entities and relationships and the sequence of operations, are generally seen as fitting in with the SDLC phases.21 A brief description of some of these diagrams that could have been the interim deliverables of to the Aadhaar system is described below. Reviewing Aadhaar Since the software-based Aadhaar system may be expected to go through the typical stages of software development, let us begin by outlining the main phases of the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). Phases of Development The general understanding behind the phased approach is to have a set of intermediate deliverables that act as mileposts along the way to the end In the Wake of Aadhaar 379


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product. A review to check that the choices and decisions made are in tune with the expected outcome and to take corrective action if required, are generally seen as an inherent part of the process.

Figure 1: Phases and Deliverables of the typical SDLC.22

The deliverables for each phase are also shown in the figure. While the precise list of deliverables mentioned as the outcome of the different phases may depend on the specific nature of the projects and the methodologies followed, those mentioned in the figure are general enough to be applicable to most software projects. The Systems Planning phase for instance may include activities such as project initiation, resource planning, and risk analysis with deliverables such as project statement, draft or preliminary project plan, list of deliverables, and others that may be included in the Preliminary Investigation Report. There seems to be general agreement on the need for requirements specifications, though some projects see it as an outcome of a separate requirements phase and combine the analysis and design phases together. Requirements documentation come in different forms—from textual descriptions and diagrams to prototype displays representing the various screens and reports of the developed system; however, they are notorious more for their inadequacy than for their clarity. Inadequately documented requirements and a lack of communication, continues to be the fly in the 380 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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ointment for most software projects.23 Apart from JAD sessions mentioned earlier, various frameworks such as I have cited, have attempted to address this gap. The design documents that are the outcome of the design phase also depend on the nature of the project and the methodology followed. While most software projects are expected to provide a rationale of the list of design documents they expect to produce, depending on the methodology, there are some generally accepted documents, and diagrams that one may expect to see. In addition to the deliverables listed in the figure, other deliverables that also act as tools for keeping the project on course may include a requirements traceability matrix, to ‘trace’ the requirements through the development and testing process to ensure that are adequately addressed; it may also include test cases and test plans apart from pre-defined acceptance criteria.

INTERMEDIATE DELIVERABLES IN AADHAAR

Some

software development approaches tend to view requirement specifications for products as different from that of software services or projects. In these cases, the product functionality and features are decided by a group of experts who are familiar with the domain area. These experts are either directly involved in the development process or else are readily available, and they work closely with the development team. While this approach may provide some degree of flexibility, the thumb-rule of having reasonably ‘frozen’ or unchanging requirements has generally been accepted as a good practice. For instance, the Institution of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), seen as being a key influence in deciding Engineering standards, does not recognise the need for a difference in approach for software products and services.24 While there may be a wide diversity of valid use case documents, one typical UML usage scenario for a project like Aadhaar is shown below.



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Figure 2: Typical UML Use Case.

UML use cases may also be typically accompanied by a textual description such as the one below: Use Case: Resident Enrollment Primary Actor: Any Resident of the Country. Stakeholder and Interests: 1.

User: Wants to be enrolled into the CIDR.

2.

Enrollment Agency: Educates and brings the resident to the registrar.

3.

Registrar: Validates and enrolls the resident.

4.

Introducer or Undertaking Registrar: Endorses the identity and address of the resident.

Precondition: 1.

The resident should not already have an Aadhaar card or number.

Success Condition (Post conditions): 2.

The residents’ biometric data is successfully recorded and the Aadhaar card is delivered to them.



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Main Success Scenario (Basic Flow): 1.

The resident’s identity is verified or endorsed.

2.

The resident’s biometric data is recorded.

3.

The resident’s data is de-duplicated.

4.

A unique Aadhaar number is generated and delivered to the user.

Extensions (Alternative Flow): 1.

The user’s biometrics cannot be recorded—in this case a manual check is performed.

2.

The user’s Aadhaar number cannot be delivered—in this case it may be held by the registrar for a duration of six months.

The diagram and the text together describe one usage scenario. Depending on the size of the system, the number of use cases could range from a dozen to hundreds for a system of medium complexity. Recording of use cases after interaction is generally considered a useful exercise, even if not absolutely necessary. This is of course not intended to be an accurate representation as much as indicative of the kind of documentation that can be expected from a phased software delivery. Apart from usage, other specifications such as performance or conditions of use may also form a part of the requirement. What is worth noting is that the use case described above is not a part of documented Aadhaar requirements specifications. It would appear therefore that such a comprehensive set of requirements have not been released by the UIDAI in the public domain. It is not clear if they do in fact exist.

DESIGN DELIVERABLES

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are usually free to add their own diagrams. However it is certainly unusual if no part of the standard UML is used. The list of diagrams that constitute valid UML diagrams is shown below:

Figure 3: UML Diagrams. From Fowler, Martin, UML Distilled: A brief guide to the Standard Object Modelling Language, Addison-Wesley, Boston, New York, San Francisco, 2004. Page 12.

An overview of a class diagram for a project such as Aadhaar is shown below.

Figure 4: Sample Class Diagram.



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Class designs are generally considered among the key diagrams in software design. The figure above outlines some hypothetical object-types and their relationships that may be used to represent the current system. As with the requirements, it is only a sample subset of what a class diagram looks like and is not reflective of the class hierarchies and relationships in the actual Aadhaar implementation. The readily available documentation at the UIDAI website does not seem to include either any documented use cases or any design documents.

VALUES IN INFORMATION SYSTEMS

The lack of any mechanism to seek the views of the intended beneficiaries

of the Aadhaar scheme, supposedly each and every resident of the country, or to understand their requirements, seems to be in contrast to established software engineering practices. In other words, society at large appears to have no role but to come across as a passive receptor of the government’s development agenda. This tendency seems to be reflected in the ‘Concept paper on Social inclusion’ published by the UIDAI in April 2012, two years after the first ‘strategy overview document’ was released in April 2010. The paper describes some of the ‘fundamentals to be adhered to’ as a result of field experience with Mission Convergence an NGO in Delhi that undertook the task of enrollment for the UIDAI. Of the lessons learnt from that experience, one suggestion is that ‘it is the choice of the institutional partner that determines the success of such camps’; another that a ‘focus (be) on the needs and concerns of the enrollee’.25 The notion that the ‘needs and concerns’ of the ‘enrollee’ can and may have a role in deciding the system requirements and design seems at best to be a passing insight gained late in the implementation process with little attempt to translate it to practice. In this situation, one can only question whether a system that fails to include the voices of the intended beneficiaries in deciding requirements or design can lead to ‘social inclusion’ upon implementation. Or perhaps the more relevant question would be, who decided what ‘social inclusion’ is? Clearly, the views of technologists and decision makers may be quite different from those of other residents or intended beneficiaries. In the Wake of Aadhaar 385


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Similar questions may be asked about transparency, and empowerment. Is it possible, for instance for a system that is itself opaque in its functioning to provide transparency as an outcome? In an attempt to see how abstract questions of means and ends manifest themselves in practice, let us consider a typical software project that generally goes through the stages of development, maintenance and support. The result of an ethnographic study of software engineers suggests that the majority of them see these processes as either overlapping or else as part of the same process. The responses of people who had been involved at some level with software development to the question ‘Do you think the software development, maintenance and support are distinct processes needing different mechanisms for handling?’ are summarised below. It should be noted that while the number of respondents may not be statistically significant, the general trend seems to be borne out by the literature on the subject.26 Option

Votes

% of Total

There is commonality such as knowing the basics of the platform and the application, but they are basically different processes

7

19

Development work is more challenging and demanding, followed by maintenance and support

4

11

There are overlaps, a maintenance activity could lead to development, similarly, support could lead to maintenance or development

7

19

They are part of the same continuum, a good process development/maintenance or support would take the others into consideration

17

46

Unable to comment

2

5

37

100

Total

Table 2: Software Development, Maintenance and Support Processes. 386 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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The significance of this notion is that the values and mechanisms at the development stage tend to gradually extend to the maintenance and then the support phase. Often, the development team also does the maintenance and support at least during the initial stages. Information systems, depending on their level of accountability, may also store information about their internal processes, evaluation and audit trails for example, as part of the system. This must, therefore, also form a part of the development process, showing that such systems also tend to be reflexive making it anomalous for outcomes to be in contradiction to the system’s own ways of functioning.

FROM PROCESS OPTIMISATION TO SOCIAL RE-ENGINEERING

Software processes in general necessarily attempt to understand and

automate real-world workflows and processes in order to arrive at a functional model. However, there may also be systems that create altogether new processes or affect changes for existing ones. These new initiatives or changes are generally the outcome of deliberations and consultations with domain experts. The SEI at CMU, created for the purpose of process improvement, from its earliest reports in the 1980s, has suggested that these optimisations entail a combination of processes, people, technologies, and culture. This seems to have manifested in the 1990s as Business Process Reengineering (BPR) efforts suggesting that apart from introducing faster and more efficient technologies, organisations could also be more competitive and efficient by streamlining their internal processes. In the recent past (2004), there seems to have been some resurgence in BPR efforts that focus largely on reducing waste, integrating with legacy system and across organisational boundaries. Effective BPR, however may only be built on an understanding of the larger environment within which the organisation functions; it has also been suggested that there exist some consistency between the process design and implementation.27 The fallout of extending this largely organisational restructuring to the broader social level could lead to a change in social relationships, structures and ways of interaction. In the Wake of Aadhaar 387


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Consider some of excerpts from the UIDAI’s ‘introduction and concept paper on social inclusion’ brought out in April 2012, after two full two years of implementation. The concept paper seems to acknowledge the need for a rethinking of its strategy, suggesting that the ‘heart and soul of the project’ needs to be examined ‘both from the point of its capacity and its limitation in effectively delivering to the marginalised’.28 Proposing that the ‘Introducer concept’ has only rarely been used, it cites the efforts of Mission Convergence, a UNDP and Delhi government initiative, as one of its successful endeavours, and suggests that one of the learning experiences from the exercise was that Undertaking Agencies may need to let potential enrollees use their official address in the ‘resident address’ field (Ibid, pp. 6-15). However, it is of the view that Undertaking Agencies should not be an additional ‘technology object’ in the UIDAI model of enrollments, since ‘it will put a load on UIDAI technology infrastructure’—without clarifying either the nature or extent of the load on the infrastructure. What does seem to be clear is that excluding the real-world object from the technology model not only brings about a gap in the software abstraction, but also precludes any possibility of keeping track of which undertaking agency is responsible for which enrollment (ibid, pg . 8). What the paper also fails to mention is that another participating NGO, the Indo-German Society for Social Services (IGSSS) chose to withdraw from the project after their officials pointed out that the scheme was being used to clandestinely initiate cash transfers without informing the other partners. It also pointed out serious gaps in the enrollment procedure.29 Jean Dreze, one of the architects of the MNREGS and others have suggested that the setting up of new social entities such as ‘introducers’, ‘undertaking agencies’ and ‘business correspondents’—agents who provide doorstep banking services to people using a micro-ATM30—are likely to have far reaching social consequences. While the nature and implication of these changes may be debated, it appears that changes in the social structure, interactions and patterns of behaviour are impacting residents of the country to the extent that what we may be seeing may be veritably a virtual social re-engineering. It is suggested that this fundamental restructuring of this nature, affected by



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a small group of technologists however brilliant they may be, might well be cause for concern.

AADHAAR IN PRACTICE: RESPONSES ON THE RIGHT TO INFORMATION

The concern and interest of the public at large in the objectives and

planning of the scheme are reflected in the nature of the Right to Information (RTI) requests that the UIDAI has received, and from their responses to key requests. A list of these, as mandated by the RTI act of 2005, is available at the UIDAI website. While a detailed study of the requests and the responses is beyond the scope of this essay, a few examples may be worth considering.

General public apprehensions are reflected an early request in December 2009. One Farid Khan from Jogeshwari, Mumbai sends a three-page questionnaire comprising 40 questions that covers several aspects ranging from the role of the UIDAI, its budgets, and structures, the need for a centralised database, security and privacy issues, and so on. The less than one-page response of the UIDAI clubs the questions into 5 groups, and its answers broadly fall into two categories—those saying that answers may be found on one of the documents on the UIDAI website, and those saying that a Detailed Project Report (DPR) is yet to be finalised and all answers ‘will be known once the DPR will be finalised’.31 Apart from the assumption that a person taking the trouble to file an RTI request, no easy affair, would not be aware of the other documents on the site, there are other noteworthy aspects about the response. First, that the generally accepted norm of doing a detailed study before initiating the project does not seem to be a consideration for the UIDAI; secondly, that there is no effort to communicate to the person making the request that the DPR would be communicated to them, once it is available, and finally, the list of documents in the ‘Publication and Reports’ section of the website does seem to list any document that may be seen as a Detailed Project Report even today. In the Wake of Aadhaar 389


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The response to another query by one Shri B.N. Murthy initiated around the same time (Nov. 2009) seems to have several discrepancies that are difficult to interpret, the ‘receipt date’ has been listed as 01 April 2010 on the site, whereas the first response from the UIDAI office is dated 13 Nov. 2009; in a subsequent letter dated 01 April 2010, Shri Murthy thanks the UIDAI official for the response given, points out several gaps in it and also points out that ‘quite a lot information is yet to be supplied’. The subsequent response from the UIDAI is of the opinion that the information requested is not specific enough and cannot be furnished. A copy of the actual information requested by Shri Murthy is not available in the document making it difficult to interpret the UIDAI’s response.32 As an example of the interest of civil rights groups across the country, let us take the request of Mohd Asif Ayaz of the Association for Protection of Civil Rights (APCR), Bangalore, in Jul 2011. Perhaps as a reminder of the rejection of the similar efforts in other countries, Ayaz asks whether the UIDAI has reviewed the Identity Card efforts in the UK, US, and Australia, to which the reply is ‘This information is not available’. Although the response claims that the ‘motivation and rationality for identity system in different countries are specific to the country and cannot be generalised’, it does not then go on to outline the specifics in India that prompted the creation of a centralised, biometric database on an unprecedented scale, using technologies not being used anywhere else in the world. In response to a question on re-enrollment of biometric data, the UIDAI suggests that updation facility will be available by Oct 2011. The RTI request also suggests that iris and fingerprints may be spoofed and asks how the UIDAI proposes to withdraw and re-assign a compromised biometric. The response to this is that RTI act does not envisage providing information for ‘hypothetical instances’ and hence ‘no information is available’.33 However, the fact that fingerprint spoofing was less than hypothetical at the time of the RTI is well known; people in the field have indeed been involved in finding techniques for detecting spoofing.34 The publishing of this and other academic papers suggests, firstly, that it was well known that spoofing was or could be done, and secondly, that there could be active ways to detect and avoid 390 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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it. By treating them as ‘hypothetical’, or at least communicating so in RTI responses, the UIDAI also seems to suggest a lack of any attempt to detect and avoid it. The response to another RTI, filed by one Inderjeet Singh Sehzra in March 2011, suggests that this information is ‘not available for public information, as it exposes the UID system to unnecessary risk’.35 Regarding the cost of implementation of the project, the response suggests that the cost of fingerprint readers in PDS outlets need not be included since the responsibility of purchasing the readers ‘are to be considered by the registrars appointed by the UIDAI’. This seems to suggest that the UIDAI’s cost estimation is only taking its own expenses into account, with little regard to either the costs of person-hours of effort, technology, and infrastructure cost of other participating institutions: all of which could lead to a substantially revised net cost of the project as a whole. There also seems to be some confusion about the nature of Aadhaar. Early statements suggested that it is not a card, but a number. While it may not be a card, in actual practice, Aadhaar is a letter sent to the enrollment addresses through the post and telegraph office. The letter contains the Aadhaar number, Name, Date of Birth, Gender, and address along with facial photograph;36 suggesting that it may not be too different from a smaller, more robust card. On the ground, there have been reported instances of lost Aadhaar letters, sometimes in bulk.37 Newspapers have also reported discrepancies in the enrollment and disbursement process, in Hyderabad for instance, the total number of enrollments has been substantially higher than the recorded population and the actual number of cards generated, higher still.38 This seems to suggest some more institutional form of error or corruption than that of individuals seeking multiple benefits. Issuing duplicate Aadhaar for letters that may have been lost in the mail or otherwise misplaced also does not seems to be possible, at least at till May 2012, nor are there any guidelines of how this will be possible, as indicated by the response to the RTI request of Ms Kusum Giri.39 Additionally, there seems to be no procedure for correction of errors during recording as the response to Mark Quadros’ query shows.40



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CHANGING BIOMETRICS

The strategy overview document (2010) of the UIDAI outlines some ‘updation

points’ at which the centralised database may need to be updated by residents. It suggests that ‘the resident will have to submit their new information at these updation points with the required documentary evidence. This may also include a biometric authentication prior to processing the request’.41 The reference to documentary evidence, non-existent for biometric updations, as well as the inclusion of biometric authentication prior to update reveals an underlying assumption that biometrics do not change over time. The release of version 1.0 of the data updation policy, released on 29 June 2011, going by the date included in the document name and the release of the next version of the document, accepts that ‘biometric information alters and needs to be regularly updated’, but the cause for the change seems to be either age or unusual circumstances. This seems to be indicated by the list of reasons that require biometric updation which include age, events like accidents or disease, facial change due to age, as well as updation of biometrics due to false authentication failures. Changes due to age seem to be along two lines, those that occur during ages 5 to 15, during which time the document suggests an update every 5 years, or for those older than 15 years for whom an update every ten years is recommended.42 The next release of the update document—version 1.1 released on 29 March 2012, does not talk about facial change due to ageing, but it does talk about the use of biometrics as authentication for other changes.43 Regarding changes and updates of the biometric data itself, it suggests that the existing biometrics be used for authentication before updating with the new biometric (ibid). Described in this way, it seems to be similar to the familiar ‘change password’ transaction available with most authenticated software; however, the difference in the two is that the need for biometric updation, unless it is part of the regular 5 or 10 yearly update, would arise only if there was a false rejection of an authentication transaction. That this is likely to happen at least for some cases is indicated by the changing fingerprints of pensioners that do not match the recorded biometrics in as short a time span as a few months.44 Recent research has shown that iris scans, generally considered more robust and reliable than fingerprints, may also be subject to change. Image comparisons of 64 392 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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irises (32 persons) over a three year period 2008–2011 show an increase in False Non Match Rate (FNMR) of 153%, with a confidence interval of 95% for a percent increase of 85% to 307%. A summary of the results is shown below. Time Period

% change in FNMR (95% CI)

2008-2009

27% (5%, 61%)

2008-2010

82% (38%, 150%)

2008-2011

153% (85%, 307%)

Table 3: FNMR Change with time elapsed.45

Given the magnitude of false non-matches for iris scans and the rapid nature of the changes in fingerprints (especially for older people), perhaps an easy way out of the authentication catch-22 would be to use iris scans to authenticate fingerprint updations and fingerprints to authenticate iris updations. However, the questionable underlying assumption here would be that both do not change at the same time.

OPEN SOURCE AND STANDARDS IN SOFTWARE

The response to an RTI request by Neeraj Gaur and Vikram Gaur

regarding the standards and tools used for software development suggests the use of open source tools, these included the Linux as the operating system, Java as the programming language, the Eclipse GUI as the Integrated Development Environment (IDE), Bugzilla for bug tracking, Subversion as the configuration management tool, Maven as the build tool in the IDE and JUnit for unit testing.46 Keeping aside the relative merits and demerits of open source, the commitment to open source seems to be called into question by a document of the UIDAI. The Aadhaar Enrollment Client Installation and Setup Manual unequivocally requires the Windows operating as a pre-requisite for the installation.47 In itself, this may simply be a result of oversight,



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or there may possibly be some other explanation for it; however, on the face of it, it does seem to point to a certain inconsistency in documentation if not in functioning. The Technical shaping of social possibilities Langdon Winner, one of the pioneers in the field of technology studies, writing in the 1970s, has suggested that an increased dependence on technologies that marks contemporary society may have led to a tendency to seek technical solutions for human, social, or political problems.48 In effect, the reciprocal relationship that technologies have with human activity suggests that they may be acting as ‘mediators’ between the individual, and the external world.49 Thus, what is humanly possible is extended or restricted by the technological tools available. In other words, each technology opens up certain social possibilities and closes others. The Aadhaar scheme is seen as being instrumental in enabling an entire ‘digital ecosystem’ that includes state and market initiatives such as direct transfers of state subsidies, employment guarantee schemes, banking, insurance, and financial sectors. The Panopticon goes virtual The Aadhaar scheme has been seen as the first, enabling step in the governmental agenda to implement national eGovernance. Unlike earlier such initiatives that were based exclusively on information and communication technologies, the use of biotechnology-based metrics point to a convergence of technologies that may open up altogether new possibilities. Biotechnology and information are two of a group of four technologies, the others being nanotechnology and cognitive technologies, together called NBIC, that have together been identified as ‘converging technologies’ having the potential to transform human life as we know it. A report (2002) by the National Science Foundation (NSF) titled Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance, outlines the goal of this convergence as that of ‘improving human performance’ towards ‘a golden age that would be a turning point for human productivity and quality of life’.50 The combination of nano, bio, and information technology in effect 394 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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offer the human body as one of the sites for assessing performance, making a case for different forms of observation and surveillance. Together with an enhanced information processing capability, the new forms of convergence suggest the capabilities for data mining, new cross correlations for example between genetics and social categories, or internal interventions.51 In addition to the other three, it has been widely argued that a deeper understanding of cognitive processes may help in treating brain and related disorders and also in the development of a range of technological devices to supplement human efforts.52 While the implications of these convergences for eGovernance initiatives may not be too clear, the deployment of a scheme like Aadhaar opens up the possibility of enhancing the disciplinary power of the state.

REFERENCES Akshaya, Mukul, Parliamentary Panel Discusses multi-purpose I-card, Times of India, 21 Aug. 2003. Antonelli A, Cappelli R, Maio D, and Maltoni D, ‘Fake Finger Detection by Skin Distortion Analysis’, IEEE Trans. Information Forensics and Security, vol. 1, no. 3, pp. 360–373, Sept. 2006. Attaran Mohsen, Exploring the relationship between information technology and business process reengineering, Information and Management, Vol. 41, 2004. Barry, Andrew and Don Slater, ‘Introduction: The technological economy’, Economy and Society, Routledge, London, Volume 31 Number 2, May 2002. Basili Victor R, Viewing Maintenance as Reuse-Oriented Software Development, IEEE Software, January 1990. Bhatti, Bharat, Dreze Jean, Khera Reetika, Experiments with Aadhaar, The Hindu, Opinion, 27 June 2012. Booch, Grady, James Rumbaugh and Ivor Jakobson, ‘Why Requirements Capture is Difficult’, The Unified Software Development Process, Addison-Wesley Longman Inc., First Indian Reprint, New Delhi 1999, Original Edition, 1999, USA. Braman, Sandra, ‘Informational Meta-technologies, International relations, And Genetic Power: The case of biotechnologies’ in Rosenau James N, Singh J. P. Ed, Information Technologies and Global Politics: The Changing Scope of Power and Governance, State University of New York Press, Albany, New York, 2002. Buttles-Valdez Palma, Svolu Agapi, Valdez Fred, A Holistic Approach to Process Improvement Using the People CMM and the CMMI-DEV: Technology, Process,



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People, & Culture, The Holistic Quadripartite, Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, 2006. Ellul, Jacques, ‘On the Aims of a Philosophy of Technology’, in Robert C Scharff and Val Dusek Ed, Philosophy of Technology. The technological condition. An anthology, Blackwell Publishing, Malden, Ma, USA, 2003, pp. 182–185. Feenberg, Andrew Critical Theory of Technology, Oxford University Press, New York, Oxford, 1991. Fenker Samuel P , Bowyer Kevin W, Analysis of Template Aging in Iris Biometrics, Presented at IEEE Computer Society Biometrics Workshop, 17 June 2012. Fowler, Martin, UML Distilled: A brief guide to the Standard Object Modeling Language, Addison-Wesley, Boston, New York, San Francisco, 2004. Gerald Doppelt, ‘Democracy and Technology’, in Tyler Veak Ed, Democratising Technology: Andrew Feenberg’s Critical Theory of Technology, State University of Albany Press, Albany, New York 2006. Gupta Geeta, ‘Aadhaar Letters lost: Phase I was tough says India Post’, Indian Express, New Delhi, 25 Aug. 2012. Haag Stephen, Cummings Maeve, Management Information Systems for the Information Age, Mc-Graw Hill, 2010. Heidegger, Martin ‘The Question Concerning Technology’, in Robert C Scharff and Val Dusek Ed, Philosophy of Technology. The technological condition. An anthology, Blackwell Publishing, Malden, Ma, USA, 2003, pp. 252–64. J Bonadio et al, ‘Improving Human Health and Physical Capabilties’, in Mikhail C Rocoand William Sims Bainbridge, National Science Foundation, Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance: Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Information Technology and Cognitive Science, National Science Foundation, Arlington, Virginia, June 2002. Kachi Anil, Social Inclusion and Aadhaar: Introduction and Concept Paper, UIDAI, Connaught Circus, Delhi, 30th April 2012. Kaptelinin Victor, Nardi Bonnie A, Acting with Technology: Activity Theory and Interaction Design, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass, London, England. 2006. Kaur Sukhdeep, Smart cards for pension hits hurdle: ‘Changing’ fingerprints, Indian Express, 03 Aug. 2012. Khalap, Kiran, AADHAAR—Communicating to a Billion: An awareness and communication report, Awareness and Communication Strategy Advisory Council (ACSAC), Unique Identification Authority of India, Planning Commission, Government of India, New Delhi, May 2010. Kline, Ronald and Trevor Pinch, ‘The Social Construction of Technology’, in Donald Mackensie and Judy Wajcman Ed, the Social Shaping of Technology, Open University Press, Buckingham, Philadelphia, Second Edition 1999, First Edition 1985. Light Ann, The Panopticon reaches within: how digital technology turns us inside out, Identity in the Information Society, Springer, June 2010. London School of Economics and Political Science, The Identity Project: An Assessment of the UK Identity Card Project and Its Implications, The Department of Information Systems, London, June 2005.



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Manuel, Imaz, Benyon David, Designing with Blends: Conceptual Foundations of HumanComputer Interaction and Software Engineering, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass, London, England, 2007. Roco, M.C. and W.S. Bainbridge, ‘Executive Summary’, in Mikhail C Roco and William Sims Bainbridge, National Science Foundation, Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance: Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Information Technology and Cognitive Science, National Science Foundation, Arlington, Virginia, June 2002. Seetharaman M S, UIDAI Data Update Policy Ver 1.1, UIDAI, Planning Commission, Govt of India, 29 March 2012. Selic B, ‘Models, Software models and UML’, in Lavagno Luciano, Martin Grant, Selic Brian Edited, UML for Real: Design of Embedded Real-time systems, Kulwer Academic Publishers, New York, Boston, Dordrecht, London, Moscow, 2003. page 1–4. Sethi Nitin, NGO shelters shut after it pointed out flaws, The Times of India, 04 July 2011. Software Engineering Standards Committee of the IEEE Computer Society, IEEE Recommended Practice for Software Requirement Specifications, IEEE—SA, Standards Body, Approved 25 June 1998, Reaffirmed 9 Dec. 2009. Special Correspondent, ‘Discrepancies in issue of Aadhaar Cards’, The Hindu, 2 October, 2012. UIDAI, Aadhaar Enrollment Client Installation and Setup Manual, Planning Commission, Govt of India, 2010. UIDAI, Strategy Overview: Creating a Unique Identity Number for Every Resident in India, UIDAI, Planning Commission, Govt of India, Apr. 2010. UIDAI, UIDAI Data Updation Ver 1.0, UIDAI, Planning Commission, Govt of India, 29 June 2011. UIDAI, UIDAI Strategy Overview: Creating a Unique Identity Number for Every Resident in India, UIDAI, Planning Commission, Govt of India, Apr. 2010. Winner Langdon, Autonomous Technology, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England, 1977, pp. 10–17.

NOTES 1

London School of Economics and Political Science, The Identity Project: An Assessment of the UK Identity Card Project and Its Implications, June 2005, page 6.

2

Mukul Akshaya, Parliamentary Panel Discusses multi-purpose I-card, Times of India, 21 Aug. 2003.

3

Press Release, First tranche of multipurpose national identity cards handed over to the citizens, Press Information Bureau, Govt of India, Ministry of Home Affairs, 26 May 2007.

4

Moily Veerappa M, Chairman, Second Administrative Reforms Commission, Promoting e-Governance: The SMART way forward, Government of India, New Delhi, Dec. 2008. pp. 106–11.

5

UIDAI, Strategy Overview: Creating a Unique Identity Number for Every Resident in



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India, Apr. 2010, pp. 1–5. 6

Khalap, Kiran, AADHAAR—Communicating to a Billion: An awareness and communication report, Awareness and Communication Strategy Advisory Council (ACSAC), May 2010. pp 1–6.

7

Technology, The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company—1) The application of science, especially to industrial or commercial objectives. 2) The scientific method and material used to achieve a commercial or industrial objective.

8

Feenberg, 1991, pp. 5–6.

9

See Heidegger, ‘The Question Concerning Technology’, in Scharff and Val Dusek Ed, Philosophy of Technology. The technological condition. An anthology, 2003, pp. 252–64. Jacques Ellul, ‘On the Aims of a Philosophy of Technology’, in ibid. pp. 182–185. Heidegger sees human beings as being ‘delivered to it (technology) in the worst possible way’; in the effort to be free of the ‘chains of technology’, he suggests, one needs to see beyond the obvious to the how the specific technology is ‘revealing’ nature as a resource for human use. He gives the example of a dam on a river revealing the river as a source of electrical power to illustrate the point. Ellul sees contemporary social life as a ‘technological society’, where technology is like autonomous force, ‘an end in itself’, to be ‘regarded as an ‘organism’ tending towards closure and self-determination’. He describes a technological society as the ‘summation of all the techniques in a society’ taken together which is ‘related to every factor in the life of modern man’.

10 Kline and Pinch, ‘The Social Construction of Technology’, in Mackenzie and Wajcman Ed, 1985/1999, pp. 113–14. 11 Andrew and Slater, ‘Introduction: The technological economy’, Economy and Society, 2002, pp 177. 12 UIDAI Strategy Overview: Creating a Unique Identity Number for Every Resident in India, Apr. 2010. pp 1. 13 Feenberg, 1991, pp. 14–20. 14 Buttles-Valdez, Svolu, Valdez, 2006, pp. 1–10. 15 Braman, Sandra, , 2002, page 91–94. 16 Litfin, in Ibid, page 65. 17 Doppelt, ‘Democracy and Technology’, 2006. pp. 85–87. 18 Haag, Cummings, 2009, pp. 301–320. 19 Selic B, ‘Models, Software models and UML’, in Lavagno, Martin and Selic ed. 2003. page 1–4. 20 Imaz and Benyon, 2007, pp 12. 21 Fowler, 2004. pp. 1–28. 22 Haag and Cummings 2010, pp 20. 23 ‘Why Requirements Capture is Difficult’, in Grady et al 1999, pp. 112–116. 24 Software Engineering Standards Committee of the IEEE Computer Society, IEEE Recommended Practice for Software Requirement Specifications, IEEE –SA, Standards Body, Approved 25 June 1998, Reaffirmed 9 Dec. 2009. 25 Kachi, 2012, pp 7–8. 26 Basili, 1990, pp. 19–25. 27 Attaran, 2004, pp. 585–596. 28 Kachi, 2012. pp 1. 29 Sethi, Nitin, NGO shelters shut after it pointed out flaws, The Times of India, 04 Jul 2011.



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30 Bhatti Bharat, Dreze Jean, Khera Reetika, Experiments with Aadhaar, The Hindu, Opinion, 27 June 2012. 31 Jaya Dubey, ADG/CPIO, Farid Khan:A-11016/76/09–UIDAI, UIDAI, Planning Commission, Govt of India, 15 Jan 2010. 32 Jaya Dubey, ADG/CPIO, Murthy B N D-29013/RTI 486(10)/2009–C & I, UIDAI, Planning Commission, Govt of India, 13 Nov. 2009. 33 Ashish Kumar, ADG/CPIO, Mohd Asif Ayaz: F-12013/23/2011/RTI-UIDAI, UIDAI, Planning Commission, Govt of India, 25 Jul. 2011. 34 An example of some of the detection techniques may be found in a paper by Antolelli et al in 2006, pp. 360–373. 35 Ashish Kumar, ADG/CPIO, Inderjeet Singh Sehzra: F-12013/08/2011/RTI-UIDAI, UIDAI, Planning Commission, Govt of India, 25 Mar. 2011. 36 Ashish Kumar, ADG/CPIO, Shri Sudhir: F-12013/065/2012/RTI-UIDAI, UIDAI, Planning Commission, Govt of India, 18 Apr. 2012. 37 Gupta Geeta, ‘Aadhaar Letters lost: Phase I was tough says India Post’, Indian Express, New Delhi, 25 Aug. 2012. 38 Special Correspondent, ‘Discrepancies in issue of Aadhaar Cards’, The Hindu, 2 October, 2012. 39 Ashish Kumar, ADG/CPIO, Ms Kusum Giri: F-12013/049/2012/RTI-UIDAI, UIDAI, Planning Commission, Govt of India, 07 May 2012. 40 Ashish Kumar, ADG/CPIO, Sh Mark Quadros: F-12013/55/2012/RTI-UIDAI, UIDAI, Planning Commission, Govt of India, Aug. 2011. 41 UIDAI, Strategy Overview: Creating a Unique Identity Number for Every Resident in India, UIDAI, Planning Commission, Govt of India, Apr. 2010, page 20. 42 UIDAI, UIDAI Data Updation Ver 1.0, UIDAI, Planning Commission, Govt of India, 29 June 2011, pp. 4–11. 43 Seetharaman M S, UIDAI Data Update Policy Ver 1.1, UIDAI, Planning Commission, Govt of India, 29 Mar. 2012. 44 Kaur Sukhdeep, Smart cards for pension hits hurdle: ‘Changing’ fingerprints, Indian Express, 03 Aug. 2 012. 45 Fenker and Bowyer, 2012, pp. 6. 46 Dubey Jaya, Neeraj and Vikram Gaur: A-11016/76/09–UIDAI, UIDAI, Planning Commission, Govt of India, 18 May 2010. 47 UIDAI, Aadhaar Enrollment Client Installation and Setup Manual, Planning Commission, Govt of India, 2010. 48 Winner, 1977, pp. 10–17. 49 Kaptelinin and Nardi, 2006. pp. 44–46. 50 Roco and Bainbridge, June 2002, pp. 4–21. 51 Light, 2010, pp. 583–585. 52 Bonadio et al, 2002, pp. 179–181



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CHAPTER 12

Encryption Standards and Practices Elonnai Hickok Centre for Internet & Society

This note looks at different types of encryption, varying practices of encryption in India, and the relationship between encryption, data security, and national security.

INTRODUCTION: DIFFERENT TYPES OF ENCRYPTION

When looking at the informational side of privacy, encryption

is an important component to understand. Encryption in itself is a useful tool for protecting data that is highly personal in nature and is being stored, used in a transaction, or shared across multiple databases. The quality of encryption is judged by the ability to prevent an outside party from determining the original content of an encrypted message.1

ENCRYPTION IN INDIA

Encryption in India is a hotly debated and very confusing subject.

The government has issued one standard, but individuals and organisations follow completely different standards. According to a note issued by the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) in 2007, the use of bulk encryption is not permitted by Licensees, but nevertheless Licensees are still responsible for the privacy of consumers’ data (Section 32.1). The same note pointed out that encryption up to 40 bit key length in the symmetric key algorithms is permitted, but any encryption higher than this may be used only with the written permission of the Licensor. 400 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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Furthermore, if higher encryption is used, the decryption key must be split into two parts and deposited with the Licensor. The 40 bit key standard was previously established in 2002 in a note submitted by the DoT: ‘License Agreement for Provision of Internet Service (including Internet Telephony) issued by Department of Telecommunications’. Though a 40 bit standard has been established, there are many sectors that do not adhere to this rule. Below are a few sectoral examples: 1.

Banking: ‘Report on Internet Banking’ by the Reserve Bank of India 22 June 2001: ‘All transactions must be authenticated using a user ID and password. SSL/128 bit encryption must be used as the minimum level of security. As and when the regulatory framework is in place, all such transactions should be digitally certified by one of the licensed Certification Authorities’.

2.

Trade: The following advanced security products are advisable: ‘Microprocessor based SMART cards, Dynamic Password (Secure ID Tokens), 64 bit/128 bit encryption’.

3.

Trains: ‘Terms & Conditions’ for online Railway Booking 2010: ‘Credit card details will travel on the Internet in a fully encrypted (128 bit, browser independent encryption) form. To ensure security, your card details are NOT stored in our Website’.

The varying level of standards poses a serious obstacle to Indian business, as foreign countries often do not trust that their data will be secure in India. Also, the differing standards will pose a compliance problem for Indian businesses attempting to launch their services on the cloud. Data Security, Encryption, and Privacy To understand how encryption relates to privacy, it is important to begin by looking at data security vs. privacy. Security and privacy have an interesting relationship, because they go hand in hand, and yet at the same time they are opposed to each other. First, data security and privacy are not the same. Breaches in data security occur when information is accessed without In the Wake of Aadhaar 401


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authorisation. There is no loss of privacy, however, until that information is misused. Though data security is critical for protecting privacy, the principles of data security call for practices that threaten privacy principles. For example, data security focuses on data retention, logging, etc., while privacy focuses on the consent, restricted access to data, limited data retention, and anonymity. If security measures are carried out without privacy interests in mind, surveillance can easily result in severe privacy violations. Thus, data security should influence and support a privacy regime but not drive it. In this context, encryption and data security will create an expectation of privacy, rather than undermine or overshadow privacy. By the same token, encryption cannot be seen as the cure for privacy challenges. Encryption cannot adequately protect data, but when supported by a strong privacy and security regime, it can be very effective. It is also a good measuring rod for determining how committed a company has been to protecting a person’s privacy and ensuring the security of his or her data. In light of the symbiotic yet complicated relationship that privacy and data security have with each other, it would make sense for legislation and domestic encryption standards to be merged and addressed together. This would ensure that a) the standard is not archaic (as the current 40 bit one is); b) would take into account the threat to privacy that surveillance can impose and would address decryption when addressing encryption; and c) would anticipate the collection and cataloging of data and ensure security of the data and person as well as national security. National Security and Encryption Encryption is a subject that causes governments a great deal of concern. For example in order to preserve foreign policy and in national security interests, the US maintains export controls on encryption items. This means that a license is required to export or re-export identified items. Though the Indian government currently does not have an analogous system, it would be prudent to consider one. Though the government is aware of the connection between encryption and national security, it seems to be addressing it by setting a low standard for the public which enables it to monitor communications etc., 402 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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easily. It is important to remember though that today we live in a digital age where there are no boundaries. One cannot encrypt data at 40 bits in India and think it is safe, because that encryption can be broken everywhere else in the world. Despite the fact that there are no boundaries in the digital age, users of the internet and communication technologies are subject to different and potentially inconsistent regulatory and self-regulatory data security frameworks and consequently different encryption standards. One way to overcome this problem could be to set in fact a global standard for encryption that would be maximal for the prevention of data leaks. For instance, there are existing algorithms that are royalty free and available to the global public such as the Advanced Encryption Standard algorithm, which is available worldwide. The public disclosure and analysis of the algorithm bolsters the likelihood that it is genuinely secure, and its widespread use will lead to the expedited discovery of vulnerabilities and accelerated efforts to resolve potential weaknesses. Another concern that standardised encryption levels would resolve is the problem of differing export standards and export controls. As seen by the example of the US, industrialised nations often restrict the export of encryption algorithms that are of such strength that they are considered “dual use”—in other words, algorithms that are strong enough to be used for military as well as commercial purposes. Some countries require that the keys be shared, while others take a hands-off approach. In India, joining a global standard or creating a national standard of maximum strength would work to address the current issue of inconsistencies among the required encryption levels. The Relationship between the Market, the Individual, the State, and Encryption Moving away from the technical language, it is useful to break down encryption from a social science point of view. Who are the actors involved— what is their relationship with each other, and how does encryption come into the picture. When one looks at encryption, it is possible to conceive of many different scenarios, each with different players. In the first scenario there is an individual and another individual. They are sending information In the Wake of Aadhaar 403


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back and forth. The third individual could be an entity, a business, or just another individual. The first two individuals want to keep their information away from this third, unknown person or entity. For that reason, the first two encrypt their communications. Encryption is a tool that has the ability to redraw the lines between the public and private sphere by giving individuals the ability to form a very private line of communication, and thus a very private relationship in a space that is very non-private—such as the internet. In another scenario between the individuals and the markets: the market wants information about an individual to enhance its effectiveness and profits. To create trust, the market promises that information given is encrypted. Thus, the market is attempting to initiate a trusting relationship with individuals. This relationship, though, is forced and false, because individuals must compromise how much information they disclose for a product or service in return. In the second scenario, there is an individual, another individual, and a Government. In this situation the two individuals again say that they want to have a private conversation in a public space, and so it is encrypted, but the Government—which is worried about national security - decides that it wants to listen in on the conversation. This places a new dynamic on the relationship. No longer are the two individuals private. Not only can the government hear their conversation, but they have no choice over whether their conversation is heard or not. This is a relationship based on the the premise of distrust between the government and individuals. It presupposes, and is biased in assuming, that if you have done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide. Using the same set of actors, perhaps a government requires the collection of information about its citizenry that is sensitive. To ensure the privacy of its people, the government encrypts the information, but the individual has essentially lost control over his/her information. He/she is forced to trust that the Government will not misuse the information given. In the third scenario there is a market, an, individual, and the government. The market gathers information about an individual on transactional levels, but encrypts it—because in the wrong hands this information could be misused. 404 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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The government still wants access to the information, and so they demand the information. What does the market say? Does it side with the individual or the Government? If governments sanction the market, they can make it bend to their will. Thus, the government is in a position to control the market and the individual, but to what ends and for what means? In all of these situations the understood role of the market, the government, and the individual has been shifted by the ability to encrypt information. The idea of using encryption as a means to keep information safe speaks to a new relationship that has formed between the government, the market, and the individual.

REFERENCES Burke, Jerome. McDonald, John. Architectural Support for Fast Symmetric-Key Cryptography. http://www.princeton.edu/~rblee/ELE572Papers/ArchFastSymmetricKeyaustin.pdf. Munro, Paul. Public Key Encryption. University of Pittsburgh. 2004. Merkle, Ralph. One Way Hash Functions and DES. www.inf.usi.ch/faculty/shrimpton/ spring09/merkle89.pdf Department of Commerce. Federal information Processing Standards Publication. The Keyed - Hash Message Authentication Code. http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/ fips/fips198/fips-198a.pdf http://www. ruskwig.com/random_encryption.htm. http://www.indentvoice.com/other/ISPLicense.pdf Report on Internet Banking’ by The Reserve Bank of India: 22 June 2001. Internet Trading guidelines issued by Securities & Exchange Board of India: 31 January 2000. Website of IRCTC (a public sector undertaking under the Ministry of Railways) American Bar Association: International Guide to Privacy. Department of Commerce: Bureau of Industry and Security—Encryption Export Controls. June 25 201.

NOTES 1

There are many different types of encryption including: Symmetric Key Encryption: Communicating parties share the same private key that is used to encrypt and decrypt the data. This form of encryption is the most basic, and is fast and effective, but there



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have been problems in the secure exchange of the unique keys between communicating parties over networks. Asymmetric Key Encryption: This system relies on the use of two keys—one public, and one private. In this system only the user knows the private key. In order to ensure security in the system a mathematical algorithm that is easy to calculate in one direction, but nearly impossible to reverse calculate is often used. Use of a public and a private key asymmetric avoids the problem of secure exchange that is experienced by symmetric key encryption. The basis of the two keys should be so different, that it is possible to publicise one without the danger of being able to derive the original data. Decoding of data takes place in a two step process. The first step is to decrypt the symmetric key using the private key. The second step is to decode the data using the symmetric key and interpret the actual data. One-way Hash Functions: One-way hash functions are mathematical algorithms that transform an input message into a message of fixed length. The key to the security of hash functions is that the inverse of the hash function must be impossible to prove. Message Authentication Codes: MACs are data blocks appended to messages to protect the authentication and integrity of messages. MACs typically depend on the use of one-way hash functions. Random Number Generators: An unpredictable sequence of numbers that is produced by a mathematical algorithm.



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FINO – A Case Study S. Ananth Independent researcher

Perhaps India’s leading institution in the area of ‘doorstep banking’, FINO overcomes a major last mile in cash transfers for banking, government, retail and insurance through technology services. Its banking services, as the Identity Project saw in field work in Andhra Pradesh, includes offering deposits, SHG loans, JLG Loans, recurring deposits and domestic remittances. FINO markets these products on behalf of the banks, but is also reported to run a small microfinance operation where it has lent nearly US$1.5 million to about 8500 borrowers. It has recently also inaugurated financial inclusion related activities as a business correspondent.

Kurnool District Collectorate: Employees of FINO and Axis bank demonstrate the process in which they enroll, identify beneficiaries and the actual distribution of the benefits like NREGA wages, etc. The demo includes the manner in which they source their data from the government, the manner in which the banks reconcile the data and the actual distribution process. This includes the process for capture of biometrics and the authentication of the biometrics.

FINO (Financial Inclusion Network Organisation) has emerged as a major business correspondent and service provider that plays a pivotal role in disbursing various government welfare related cash transfers in the state of Andhra Pradesh. FINO works especially with providing wage disbursal linkages for Social Security Pensions and NREGA through smart-card enabled processes. FINO was established in July 2006 as a company that provides technology solutions for the unbanked segments. In the Wake of Aadhaar 407


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It was initially incubated by the ICICI Bank and subsequently raised capital from others. The present shareholding pattern includes ICICI Bank (19%), Intel Capital (15%), IFC (15%), Life Insurance Corporation (8%), various Indian Public Sector Banks (22%) and others, including private equity investors like Blackstone. The company operates through various subsidiaries, each of which specialises in one line of activity and its strategy is based on what they fondly term, ‘five year plans’—the first of which was inaugurated in July 2006. The company hoped to achieve a target of 25 million customers by July 2011, while the Second Five year plan targets 100 million. On September 11, there were 21 million customers, 22 banks, 10 MFIs, 4 insurance companies and 12 government entities covering 22 states, 266 districts and 5,884 gram panchayats (village councils). FINO’s turnover was US$22.5 million in 2009–10 and it has set for itself a target of US$52 million in 2010–11. By end of August 2012, the company had expanded further to serve nearly 51 million customers, mostly the lowest quartile, through 31,000 transaction points in 427 districts across 26 States in the country. It claims to handle 5 million transactions a month across the country.1 The company has grown rapidly, indicative of the latent demand for financial services. It is pertinent to note that the company’s expansion has become possible as they operate on behalf of various State Governments.

OPERATIONAL DYNAMICS

FINO’s

‘doorstep banking’ is built on facilitating banks and financial institutions reaching the last mile. It operates in different segments including a) banking; b) government; c) retail; d) insurance; e) technology services. In its banking services, it offers deposits, SHG loans, JLG Loans, recurring deposits, and domestic remittances. It markets these products on behalf of the banks. The company is reported to run a small microfinance operation where it has lent nearly US$1.5 million to about 8500 borrowers.2 It has



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recently also inaugurated financial inclusion related activities as a business correspondent. As part of its retail financial services offerings, it sells third party insurance products, including micro-insurance. Apart from offering third party insurance products, the company delivers smart-card based delivery related to health insurance as part of the Union Government’s Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojna (RSBY) programme. It provides these services to those Below the Poverty line (BPL) segments. FINO operates through a series of agents, called ‘Bandhus’. They operate the customer service points (CSPs) which are the backbone in distributing their products. The activities of the CSPs are coordinated by the employees of the Company. The CSPs, are the last mile service providers who disburse government welfare related entitlements using a Point of Sale (PoS) machine. CSPs are typically members of the local community and are paid a salary and offered a small commission on the products marketed by them. CSP members in AP are often selected from a list provided by the local government officials: often, they are members of the Self-Help Group (SHG) movement. Almost all of them have completed basic formal education (either at least 10+2) and occasionally degree. The company pays a fixed ` 500 to ` 750 per month to the CSP and they earn additional commission for marketing other products. Accident insurance and micro-insurance are the major products that they market. The company claims that there is a compulsive economic logic for expanding banking through business correspondents. Manish Khera, the Chief Executive Officer of FINO claims that ‘a transaction costs US$1 at a bank, 40 cents at an ATM and 10 cents at a BC’.3



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TECHNOLOGY PLATFORM

Though the claims that it offers facility to transact though various

technology platforms, in Andhra Pradesh, FINO’s EBT operations are through the smart card enabled point of sale (PoS) machine at the CSP level. The company claims that ‘There is a Terminal Management System that manages issuance/ blocking/application updating of POS devices; a Card Management System to manage issuance, hot- listing and re- issuance of cards’.4 In Kurnool district, FINO distributes NREGS payments through their Smart Card enabled PoS machines as service provider to Axis Bank. AP government transfers the amount to be disbursed and the money transferred to FINO one day before the date of disbursement. The disbursements have to take place from the 1st to the 5th of every month, and two days after that the company re-collects the biometrics of those people which were not authenticated in the previous round of disbursals. The enrollment of the biometrics in Kurnool district is completed through a mobile device that is linked to the central server of the company. The smart cards are however, despatched by the company from a centralised location.

Presentation of overview of technologies and challenges challenges: Mr. B. Sambamurthy, Director, IDBRT, Hyderabad, at the CSCS Consultation, Hyderabad.



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NOTES 1

Company website. Last visited 12 September 2012.

2

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/india/article.cfm?articleid=4545.

3

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/india/article.cfm?articleid=4545.

4

http://fino.co.in/Technology.



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CHAPTER 13

Legal Legacies of Identity Production Malavika Jayaram and Amba Kak Centre for Internet & Society

Too many databases, with overlapping data and ambiguous uses, could create far more problems, legal and ethical as well as administrative, than they attempt to solve. This essay outlines the history, and the conflicting ambitions, of the MNIC, the Census, the NPR, the RIC and now the UIDAI. Each comes with its own idea on security, rights of access and the use to which it will be put.

THE ORIGINS OF THE UNIQUE ID FROM ‘NATIONAL SECURITY’ TO AN ‘ACCESS TO WELFARE’ RATIONALE

While there have been several efforts historically to map and identify the

population of India (leaving aside for now the issue of whether such exercises targeted citizens, residents, or other limited demographics), many writers trace the origins of Aadhaar to the Multi Purpose National Identification Card (MNIC), proposed more than a decade ago, which had at the time based itself primarily on a strong national security rationale.1 Here we map the origins of the MNIC program, and track, from official publicity, the changing justifications for the idea of a national ID card. Also, while many researchers locate the roots of the UID to the MNIC, it is perhaps useful to explore certain crucial distinctions between the two.



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INTRODUCTION The Multi Purpose National Identification Card and the National Population Register The origins of the concept of a national ID card can be traced back to the Kargil Review Committee Report of 2000, which had first recommended that steps be taken to issue ID cards to border villages in J&K, and eventually to other vulnerable areas in the ‘North-East, Sikkim, and parts of West Bengal’.2 It did not take long for the idea, referred to as a ‘smart card’, to catch on with parliamentarians. A review of questions asked in Parliament in 2001 revealed suggestions for using the ‘smart card’ for everything from punctuality of Government employees and Employee Provident Funds to selling electricity.3 The MNIC was approved in 2001, based on the report of the Group of Ministers titled Reforming the National Security System. The problem of illegal immigration was the stated rationale behind the project. In the chapter on Border Management, the Report states: Illegal migration has assumed serious proportions. There should be compulsory registration of citizens and non-citizens living in India. This will facilitate preparation of a national register of citizens. All citizens should be given a Multi-Purpose National Identity Card (MPNIC) and non-citizens should be issued identity cards of a different color and design4 The report further stated that border management would be refashioned on a ‘one-border-one-force principle so as to obviate problems of conflict in command and control’. MNIC was located within this agenda presumably as a way to identify ‘outsiders’. From “national security” to “access to public welfare” The 2000 report however echoed the belief that a documented and enumerated citizenry would result in a secure nation. Non-citizens were identified as the main threat to national security but there was no explanation of what this



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category would include, or how this identification would tackle the problem of illegal immigration. It did, however, mark the start of an aggressive campaign to use technology to divide the population along lines of citizenship, united under a common identification system. A crucial shift took place in the rhetoric employed by the Government when in 2006, the Ministry of Information Technology listed the ‘National Citizens Database’ as one of the projects that would usher in the ‘era of e-governance’ in order to improve ‘the delivery of public services and simplify the process of accessing them’.5 This shift would be most apparent in the subsequent Report of the 11th Plan Working Group on Integrated Smart Card System in 2007.6 The report, titled Entitlement Reform for Empowering the Poor: The Integrated Smart Card, made no mention about securing borders. Instead, it stood on a different, relatively undisputable claim, of providing access to public welfare. Discussing the use of a ‘Unique ID’ card for welfare activities, the report highlighted potential problem areas. It separated welfare schemes that were based on the household, such as the Public Distribution System (PDS) and National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), from those that would work with the individual beneficiary, upon which the Unique ID would operate. Given that the ID would be restricted to adults, the Report went on to express concerns regarding its applicability to child centered welfare schemes such as the Mid-Day Meal Scheme and Integrated Child Development Scheme. It went on to recommend that ‘the biometric information of all family members needs to be in-built into the smart card’ (ibid). The MNIC pilot project was reported to have been carried out between 2003 and 2008 by the office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner, under the Home Ministry, in select areas with a cost of 30 crore covering nearly 31 lakh people.7



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NPR AND THE CENSUS VARYING STANDARDS OF PRIVACY PROTECTION IN DATA COLLECTION EXERCISES

Soon after this, a new entity was announced, the National Population

Register (NPR). The NPR was to be aimed at identifying all residents by collection of data under 15 heads including biometric information. Its stated goal was to be an enhanced targeting of benefits under government welfare schemes, election purposes as well as updating/de-duplicating databases such as PDS, NREGS etc.8 Data was to be collected for the NPR along with the Census 2011. The NPR was announced as a data collection exercise with the end goal of creating a database, as distinguished from an ID card or a unique identification number. In other words, the creation of an information database which may later be used for a variety of as yet unknown uses. The coastal NPR project announced in 2009 for 9 maritime states was linked to the issuance of MNIC cards9 and indeed, recently the Home Ministry announced a proposal for a Resident Identity Card (RIC) to be issued to each individual based on the data collected under the NPR exercise10 in ways that may appear to be in conflict with the UID (discussed below). In 2011, as data for the NPR was collected along with the Census, many wrongly conflated the two exercises when in fact the NPR schedule had been merely been tagged on to that of the Census.11 The Census is of course an established governance practice of enumerating citizenry with the aim of acquainting the government with the composition of the population in order to tailor make programmes. The fundamental difference between the two is that unlike the Census, the NPR is not confidential. NPR is being carried out under the Citizenship Act, 1955 and not the Census Act. While the latter protects its database from inspection or admissibility as evidence, the Citizenship Act has no corresponding confidentiality provision, which has been a cause for concern.12 Census records cannot be disclosed or inspected by any authority, including the Court.13 This protection guarantees citizens that any information obtained from them in this data collection exercise will be used solely for In the Wake of Aadhaar 415


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creating statistics for governance and policy formulation.14 Although personal information relating to an individual may be required in the process, the final result is of aggregated facts, and particular identities are never disclosed. The NPR Schedule, on the other hand, explicitly connects the information collected with names of individuals/households. As per the NPR Instruction Manual, after filling the schedule, Census enumerators provide households with an acknowledgment slip on the basis of which biometrics will be measured at a later date. The register will contain names with corresponding data as well as a unique number. This would certainly violate the confidentiality requirement in the Census Act, and one of the criticisms being made is that the schedule is being canvassed under the Citizenship Act, 1955, in order to entirely avoid such privacy safeguards.15 To many researchers, this could have the effect of undermining the sanctity of Census operations.16 Data collection exercises carried out by the State have always enjoyed co-operation and goodwill from people, as compared to corporations who suffer an obvious bias due to their profit motives.17 This is reflected in the fact that corporations today even resort to providing financial incentives for consumers to divulge personal information18 whereas State data collection takes place on the promise of the public good. Even so, exercises such as the Census have focused globally on maintaining this co-operation through policies that ensure voluntary compliance.19 Promises of confidentiality and respect for individual data play the dominant role in these policies.20 Most statistical scholarship supports the claim that individuals provide more accurate data when they trust, rather than fear, the data collectors. (ibid. 1039) There is consensus that an accurate census necessarily requires cooperation and goodwill of the people, and the Indian Government appears to understand this link between accuracy and privacy, as is reflected in the instruction manuals for data collectors for the Census, 2011. The instruction manuals state:21 4.4 To ensure willing co-operation of the vast majority of population during the Houselisting Operations, you must be in a position to explain to the respondents the use to which the data collected through Census is put. 416 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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In order to better convince the public, it reminds data collectors of the greater good behind the exercise: 4.5 You are, therefore, requested to assure the households that these details would be kept confidential. The details collected in the Houselisting will prove useful for policy formulation to improve the overall quality of life for every person in the country. In this context, the conflation of ground level collection of data for the two exercises, the Census and the NPR, given the different confidentiality status between the two, is clearly a matter of concern. Different government databases foster different relationships and target different categories of the population. While the target population may converge in this case, it is important to distinguish the two exercises based on the relationship they create with people and the corresponding level of privacy they will afford. In the absence of such a distinction, it may well be hard to convince a public that is being asked to simultaneously fill up two forms, one with a higher level of confidentiality than the other, or being faced with multiple data collectors from government agencies. It goes without saying that privacy standards are crucial for an accurate database. Whether it is the census or the NPR, all data collection exercises are crucially dependent on larger claims that better governance ensues from true data. And so, even keeping legal or ethical reasons aside, it may be useful to assert the need for uniform privacy standards as a means by which the goals of governance could be better achieved. In the absence of such a debate around governance, we have seen an undermining of the very definition of public good. Britain’s experience, to take the best known example, makes it obvious that citizens will no longer accept vague and patronising claims of better governance without scrutiny. In Britain, from early on, efforts by the census to collect excessive personal information, which it is unable to adequately protect, have been opposed.22 Additionally, the census has been attacked for lack of participation from the public, for asking intrusive questions, for its inability to provide adequate confidentiality safeguards and for its tendency to generate inaccurate information.23 Few today are In the Wake of Aadhaar 417


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convinced that the government, as against private players, does not misuse information. In Britain, it became quickly apparent that the census itself could be used to make a political point—like the creation of the ‘Jedi faith’, as protest against the intrusiveness of questions about religion.24 Faced with the prospect of mandatorily revealing who slept in their home on a certain night, their qualifications, marital status and even the type of central heating, at the cost of paying a hefty fine, opposition was mounting. In 2010, the government suggested that the 2011 national census would be the last one as it was out of date and inefficient.25 While most agree that its motives may be beneficial, data collection of this scale and sensitivity has been rejected by the public primarily due to privacy concerns. The British experience demonstrates that the claim of greater public good cannot be made at the cost of privacy concerns, and perhaps more importantly, that the claim of public good itself is coming increasingly under public scrutiny. The debate surrounding UID is taking place on similar battlegrounds: on whether the need for such a project actually exists, whether it will achieve its stated goals, and finally, at what cost to privacy and democracy.

‘CHOICE’ & SOCIAL CONTROL

The increase in data collection by the State may be viewed as intrusive in itself,

but another problematic aspect is the ‘voluntariness’ of these exercises. In any debate on the UID, its proponents invariably cite the argument of choice, with the UIDAI repeatedly emphasising that it is a voluntary scheme. In this section, we will briefly investigate the limits to this choice.

The NPR is mandatory for all residents, unlike the UID which is officially voluntary. In 2009, a coastal NPR project was announced for 9 maritime states, and was linked to the issuance of MNIC cards.26 The project took off from Karnataka, where the Principal Secretary of e-governance described it as ‘a development programme with the aim of having a citizen-centric database, 418 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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with basic information’.27 Although advertised as a public welfare programme, these biometric smart cards were made compulsory for fishermen with the objective of strengthening security along the coast. Officials were quoted as stating that fishermen who did not opt for the smart cards would not get subsidised diesel from the Government.28 Further, as a part of the NPR, fishermen from the coastal area of Awas in Maharashtra were also issued biometric MNIC cards.29 These smart card contained fingerprints of the holder, and also contained other details like PAN card number and even driving license details in an embedded electronic chip. As recently as in January 2011, in an exercise conducted jointly by the NPR in the Ministry of Home Affairs and the state government’s marine fisheries, more than 35,000 fishermen in the coastal villages were provided with biometric MNICs to prevent against infiltration by illegal immigrants and subversive elements coming in through sea routes.30 The enumerators collected data including the genealogical order of the family, their nativity status and fingerprints of those aged above 18. The enumeration and data entry was complete in April 2011. On the other hand, and placed in contrast to such initiatives, is the UID’s claim to be officially a ‘voluntary’ scheme. Given that the draft bill that was presented before Parliament (and rejected by the Standing Committee on Finance) did not guarantee this right, it is hard to predict whether such voluntariness is intended to be permanent. In the absence of any legislation that clarifies the collection and use of the data, and the safeguards and principles that will govern the scheme, one cannot speculate as to how the voluntary versus mandatory battle will play out. One possibility is that it will nominally be described as voluntary until there is enough traction to make a strong case for it being mandatory. Another is that the ‘voluntary’ label pays lip service to the criticisms leveled at the scheme, while the UID juggernaut proceeds to tie the number to various government benefits and schemes, as well as a plethora of goods and services, such that it becomes effectively compulsory. It is impossible to consider something voluntary when it would be nearly impossible to function in society without it. If every transaction, service or good presupposes having a UID, the alleged voluntariness of the scheme becomes moot. If one’s only choice is to be a hermit, it is not a In the Wake of Aadhaar 419


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choice at all. If the intended beneficiaries of the scheme are people without identity documentation, and this scheme is crafted as an enabler and a tool of progress, it would make only sense if the people who see utility in having it apply for a UID, leaving people who are otherwise identified (whether through a passport, driving licence, PAN card, ration card or other acceptable means of official identity documents) with the option to sign up if they see a perceived benefit in having one. Most government departments stipulate what they will accept as valid ID for various services (usually passport, driving license, pan card and ration card).31 It is indeed possible for the government to make the UID the sole valid ID for certain services in the future. Even in its current form, UIDAI has already signed Memoranda of Understanding (MoUs) with several government departments to link the UID number registration with programs such as the PDS and NREGA. For a majority of the poor in our country, these schemes are indispensable, and the UIDAI obviously intends to capitalise on this to ensure registration. There is also the mandate of financial inclusion by which the UIDAI wishes to tie up with Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC), and in the future, all financial institutions, so that bank accounts can be opened by only verifying the UID number instead of the multiplicity of Know-Your-Customer documents required today. MoUs have been signed with the Human Resource Development Ministry which envisions the UID number on all mark sheets, migration and merit certificates etc., thereby tracking student mobility through their education.32 Clearly, the future that the UID project envisions is of universal application, which permeates into all aspects of our everyday lives. Disclosing personal information to the government, therefore, is far from a question of choice. The recent Collection of Statistics Act, 2008, was enacted to make unwillingness to furnish information sought by the government from companies/individuals a penal offence attracting imprisonment.33 The Act provides for collection of information for the broadest possible categories of information; including economic, demographic, social, scientific, and environmental information, from both industrial concerns as well as from 420 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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individuals and households.34 Along with this, the Information Technology Rules of April 2011 give the government the power to demand any data from any body corporate (including ‘sensitive’ data).35 This has raised concerns over the power of the government to obtain information about the mental, physical and physiological health of persons or their sexual orientation. Some argue that these developments are new methods of social control by the State, and place government agencies in a position to ‘demand’ any information of its citizens at any point.36

TURF-WARS & OVERLAPPING DATA COLLECTION EXERCISES The MNIC, UID, NPR & RIC That it was the failure of the MNIC to take off that provoked the creation of UID project was confirmed by the 2008 Report of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs (2008 Report).37 It stated that ‘running two parallel schemes appears to be overlapping in objectives and may be perceived as wastage of time and resource’. The report noted that the MNIC Pilot Project had taken an ‘unduly long time’. The Committee recommended that the MNIC and UID project should be merged into an integrated programme to avoid overlapping objectives and wastage of resources. The report also stated the main purpose behind the MNIC was to enable access to socio-economic benefits and transactions. Although it appears in this document that the national security motivation behind the MNIC has more or less faded from the official record, we have noted earlier that as recently as in 2011, well after the UID project had been launched, the MNIC was still being promoted as a security measure. In any case, equating the objective of the MNIC with that of the UID, as was done in the 2008 Report, is problematic since the idea of the MNIC, like that of the NPR, was that of a citizen’s database and its use in coastal areas has centered around segregating citizens from non-citizens. On the other hand, the UID In the Wake of Aadhaar 421


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has officially distanced itself from concerns relating to citizenship and has, instead, expanded its target group to residence in India.38 In a continuing battle between the UIDAI and the Home Ministry, the Home Minister has announced that a Resident Identity Card (“RIC”) would be created and distributed along with the NPR exercise as a way to address ‘security issues’, stating that: The ID cards are just a beginning to address security issues. We have been conducting census for the past 100 years, but specific details like citizen or foreigner status were never recorded. Post Mumbai attacks in 2008, the government has decided to issue cards with photograph to all people with details like name, father’s name, age, address, place of birth, profession along with biometric details.39 The RIC is being projected as a national identity card, which will carry a 64 Kb chip with photographs, biometrics and personal data, and almost ` 7000 crore have been sought to fund the project. Although little is known about any trials or feasibility studies, the Home Minister has drawn parallels to the controversial Malaysian card MyKad, (ibid.), which has had its share of problems with privacy violation.40 Further, the Home Ministry has clarified that the RIC was distinctive from the UID in that it would be a card and not merely a number for authentication.41 Although the RIC is projected as a security tool, a high-powered expenditure committee has been constituted to examine its use as a platform for delivery of targeted services like MGNREGA or PDS or financial inclusivity. The UIDAI has objected to the RIC project on the ground that the UID number with its online platform is better for smooth delivery of targeted schemes42 whereas government departments have proposed, in rebuttal, that offline platforms are more likely to work given the unreliability of the internet network in India. Such conflicts highlight the problems of multiple databases with overlapping data and ambiguous uses. The diagram below represents the overlap of demographic information collected between the three data collection exercises carried out almost simultaneously. The biometric technology used by the NPR and UID overlaps exactly. Both data collection 422 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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exercises collected the same biometric modalities i.e. face photograph, ten fingerprints and two iris scans. Whereas the census can be distinguished by its established aims and uses, the NPR and the UID are both nascent data collection exercises characterised by uncertainty regarding the uses to which they will be put.

Overlap in Demographic Data Collection

UID 1. 2. 3. 4.

Name Age Gender Address

5. Name of father/ mother/husband

NPR 1. 2. 3. 4.

Name Relationship to head Father’s name Mother’s name

Census 1. 2. 3. 4.

Name of the person Relationship to head Sex Date of birth and age

5. Spouse’s name

5. Current marital status

6. 7. 8. 9.

6. 7. 8. 9.

Sex Date of birth Marital status Nationality as declared 10. Place of birth 11. Present address of usual residence

Age at marriage Religion Scheduled Case Scheduled Tribe

10. Disability 11. Mother tongue



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12. Duration of stay at 12. Other languages present address known 13. Permanent 13. Literacy status residential address 14. Occupation 14. Status of attendance (Education) 15. Educational 15. Highest educational qualification level attained 16. Working any time during last year 17. Category of economic activity 18. Occupation Nature of industry 19. Trade or service 20. Class of worker 21. Non economic activity

THE PROMISE OF TECHNOLOGY: BIOMETRIC PROGRAMMES PRIOR TO THE UID AND THE ERA OF ‘E-GOVERNANCE’

Although the UID pegs its ‘uniqueness’ from its use of technology

for governance, in reality it is only the first central programme in a history that has seen several such state level projects across the country. Outside the framework of both the NPR and the MNIC, several State Governments have been working with the idea of introducing both biometric ration cards and driving licenses. In May 2010, the Andhra Pradesh State Government had collected biometric information resulting in an iris scan database of approximately 5.8 crore people. The collection



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of such information took about 5 years, and was followed by the creation of an online database for ration cards. In the process of de-duplication, 1.1 crore ration cards were found to be bogus.43 The Andhra Pradesh Food & Civil Supplies Department that was in charge of this programme, declared their desired goal as being the consolidation of databases for various schemes such as Public Distribution System, National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, Pension, etc. into a single integrated database.44 Similarly, the Karnataka State Government began issuing biometric ration cards based on a 2006 survey of citizens below the poverty line. Here, the collection of data involved fingerprints and photographs.45 An official figure of 5.56 lakh biometric ration cards were meted out to BPL families. The Tamil Nadu State Government has been set to issue biometric ration cards to 1.97 crore ration card holders in a project which should have been completed by June 2011.46 The biometric information would include iris scans and fingerprints along with photographs of the heads of families. Extending this logic of de-duplication to other identity documents, several State governments began issuing biometric driving licenses in order to weed out fake/bogus driving licenses, making fingerprints the primary basis for identity.47 Biometric attendance for students and teachers was started way back in 2006 for primary schools in the Narmada district in Gujarat.48 That project, covering 77,000 students and more than 2000 teachers, was based on fingerprints with Fingerprint Recognition Terminals at all schools. In 2008, the government announced its intention to expand the programme to other districts. The stated purpose was improving retention rates and checking the drop-out ratio in primary schools to improve quality of education. Apart from rectifying bogus inflation of attendance, it was claimed to help in the correct targeting of beneficiaries for the mid day meals program and free text book/school uniform distribution in schools. (ibid.) A similar system was announced by the Punjab State education department, which instituted biometric attendance for schools in early 2010.49 In many instances, State Governments have gone about these programs without any legislative sanction, or indeed without any evident frameworks for regulation. Given the obviously sensitive nature of biometric information, In the Wake of Aadhaar 425


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it is a cause for concern that there was no law preventing the sharing of this biometric information with other state agencies such as the police. Despite this, there appears not to have been too much public discord or opposition to the collection of biometric data for these projects, evidence perhaps of a general lack of sensitivity in India to issues of information privacy in the country. Several law enforcement agencies in India have also taken to the idea of biometric databases to enhance security operations. In 2009, the Central Government announced the ‘Crime and Criminal Tracking Network System’ (CCTNS) to create a biometric database of all criminals, to be implemented in 21 states.50 The purpose of the CCTNS is to enable real-time sharing of information across police stations at district, state and central levels so as to result in ‘improved investigation and crime prevention and better tracking of criminals, suspects, accused and repeat offenders’. In fact, a very recent report speaks of the government’s plan to link the UID database to the CCTNS.51 The CCTNS falls under the Information Technology Rules, 2011, which, as described earlier, provide the Government wide powers of surveillance and monitoring. ‘Unique’ ID? Given the similarities in the technology used, the ‘uniqueness’ of the UID project clearly does not lie in its processes of de-duplication using biometric databases. The UID is indeed distinct from these State level attempts in that it focuses on the provision of identification to the individual, as against the household. Unlike ration cards, or driving licenses, which provide some manner of utility or function in and of themselves (access to rations or the legitimacy to drive on the road), the UID only provides a number on the basis of which external agencies can authenticate identity. It is clear from the policy documents as well as the public statements made by UID personnel that the UID does not in itself confer any benefits. In several of his writings and public conferences, the Chairman of the UIDAI has spoken of the need for the UIDAI arising from the problem of ‘lack of identity’ for those who wish to access government welfare.52 In particular, he has emphasised the need for every Indian to be recognised by the State in order for development to take place in any meaningful manner. While this seems perfectly acceptable, a review of 426 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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the press conference/publicity material from the UIDAI often uncovers the need for such recognition through arguments that are axiomatic or circular: the approach seems to be that ‘there is a problem of identity therefore we must solve the problem of identity’. In early 2012, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance released a report on the UID.53 Its findings were that the project was ‘conceptualised with no clarity of purpose’ and ‘directionless’ in its implementation, leading to ‘a lot of confusion’. It criticised the unresolved overlap between the NPR & the UID as well as the absence of any structure of the UIDAI prior to the exercise being embarked upon. For these and other structural and philosophical failings to be overcome, the ‘problem of identity’ that is the driver for identification schemes must first be clearly articulated. Only then can a solution that is fit for purpose, proportional and is the best of all possible alternatives be reasonably adopted. To do otherwise would be to indicate the triumph of administrative fantasy over genuine transformation.

NOTES 1

See R. Ramakumar, ‘High Cost-High Risk’, The Frontline, Volume 26, Issue 16, Aug. 01-14, 2009; Praful Bidwai, ‘Questionable Link’, The Frontline, Volume 27 Issue 12, June 15-27, 2010; Ann Raymond, ‘Aadhaar: Where It Goes Wrong’, available at http://www.mindtext.org/view/120/ Aadhaar:_Where_It_Goes_Wrong/. (Last visited on July 20, 2012).

2

Taha Mehmood, ‘Notes from a contested history of National Identity Card in India: 1999-2007’, available at http://www.sacw.net/article391.html (Last visited on 10th April 2012).

3

The Minister for Information & Technology, Pramod Mahajan, also stated that a Committee to formulate standards for “Multi Application Smart Cards” had been set up, however the report of this Committee has never been made public.

4

‘Recommendation of the Group of Ministers’, Reforming the National Security System, available at http://mod.nic.in/newaddition/rcontents.htm (Last visited on July 22nd 2012).

5

Department of Electronics & Information Technology, National e-Governance Plan, available at http://www.mit.gov.in/content/national-e-governance-plan (Last visited on July 22nd 2012).

6

Report Of The Eleventh Plan Working Group On Integrated Smart Card System, Entitlement Reform for Empowering the Poor: The Integrated Smart Card, available at http://planning commission.nic.in/aboutus/committee/.../wg11_smtcard.doc (Last visited on July 22nd 2012).

7

TNN, ‘Citizen IDs to cost ` 1.5 lakh crore’, The Times of India, June 26th 2009 available at http:// articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2009-06-26/india/28210207_1_id-cards-ration-cardsidentity-cards (Last visited on July 22nd 2012).



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8

Dr. Rajendra Kumar, National Population Register, available at http://www.mit.gov.in/ sites/upload_files/dit/files/DIT%20-%20National%20Population%20Registry(1).pdf (Last visited on July 22nd 2012).

9

The Hindu, ‘Biometric Cards for Fisherman’, the hindu, December 2nd 2008 available at http://www. thehindubusinessline.in/2008/12/02/stories/2008120251591900.htm.

10 Ministry of Home Affairs, Identity Card to Every Adult Resident of the Country under NPR; No Card being issued by UIDAI, 7th December 2011, available at http://pib.nic.in/newsite/ erelease.aspx?relid=78189 . (Last visited on July 22nd 2012). 11 Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India, National Population Register, available at http:// censusindia.gov.in/2011-Common/IntroductionToNpr.html. (Last visited on June 22nd 2012). 12 See Usha Ramanathan, ‘A Unique Identity Bill’, Economic and Political Weekly (Mumbai), July 24, 2010. 13 Section 15, Census Act, 1948. 14 Instruction Manual for Houselisting and Housing Census, 2011 places emphasis on communicating the confidentiality protection to citizens. (available at http://censusindia.gov.in/2011-Documents/ Houselisting%20English.pdf) It states that: 4.4 To ensure willing co-operation of the vast majority of population during the Houselisting Operations, you must be in a position to explain to the respondents the use to which the data collected through Census is put. The information collected during the Census is used to provide statistics which do not permit identification of any individual or household. Besides, secrecy is maintained during processing of the data collected through Census and it is an offence for anyone to disclose the particulars of any identified individual. . . 4.5 You are, therefore, requested to assure the households that these details would be kept confidential. . . To further emphasise the confidentiality of individual and household data collected through the Census, the blank Census Schedules carry a prominent legend on top saying “Confidential when Filled”. 15 Usha Ramanathan, supra note 10. 16 Center for Policy Studies, India, ‘UIDAI & the National Population Register’, available at http:// cpsindia.org/index.php/current-articles/361-the-uidai-and-the-national-population-register (Last visited on June 22nd 2012). 17 See Mladen, Karen, ‘A Report of Research on Privacy for Electronic Government’, Privacy in Canada, available at http://joi.ito.com/privacyreport/Contents_Distilled/.../Canada_E_p252-314.pdf (Last visited August 1st 2012). 18 For example, Google’s Screenwise program which will pay those who volunteer to give up their privacy rights, disclose data and allow surveillance of surfing trends. See Casey Johnson, ‘Google paying users to track 100% of their Web usage via little black box’, available at http://arstechnica.com/ gadgets/2012/02/google-paying-users-to-track-100-of-their-web-usage-via-little-black-box/. . (Last visited August 1st 2012). 19 Douglas Sylvester and Sharon Lohr, ‘The Security of Our Secrets: A History of Privacy and Confidentiality in Law and Statistical Practice’, 83 DENV. U. L. REV. 147 (forthcoming 2005). 20 Douglas Sylvester and Sharon Lohr, ‘Counting On Confidentiality: Legal And Statistical Approaches To Federal Privacy Law After The USA Patriot Act, 2005’ Wis. L. Rev. 1033, 1038. 21 Census of India, ‘Instruction Manuals for Housing and Houselisting Census’, available at http:// censusindia.gov.in/2011-Documents/Houselisting%20English.pdf.



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22 Jon Henley, ‘Do we actually need a census?,’ The Guardian, 10th March 2011, available at http:// www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/mar/10/census-2011-do-we-need-it. (Last visited on 1st August 2012). 23 Open Thread, ‘Time to scrap the census?’, The Guardian, 21st February 2011, available at http:// www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2011/feb/21/census-ons-information#startof-comments. (Last visited on 1st August 2012), Guardian Professional, ‘Government defends the need for census’, The Guardian, 21st February 2011, available at http://www.guardian.co.uk/ government-computing-network/2011/feb/21/ons-director-defends-national-census. (Last visited on 1st August 2012). 24 Ross Hawkins, ‘No changes planned for ‘intrusive’ 2011 census’, BBC News, 5th July 2010, available at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10516437. 25 Reporter, ‘National census in 2011 could be last of its kind’, BBC News, July 10th 2010, available at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10584385. 26 The cards were to be issued to citizens living in coastal villages of Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Orissa and West Bengal by 2010. Ministry of Home Affairs Press Release, ‘Home Minister Launches Resident Identity (Smart) Cards for People of A&N Islands’, available at http://pib.nic.in/newsite/erelease.aspx?relid=79778. 27 Nandini Chandrashekhar, ‘State chosen for unique ID project’, Deccan Herald, 24th May 2009 available at http://www.deccanherald.com/content/4218/state-chosen-unique-id-project.html. 28 The Hindu, Biometric Cards for Fisherman, The Hindu, December 2nd 2008 available at http:// www.thehindubusinessline.in/2008/12/02/stories/2008120251591900.htm. 29 Vijay Singh, ‘Alibaug fishermen to get biometric smart ID cards’, The Times of India, Feb 25th 2009 available at http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2009-02-25/mumbai/28038452_1_ smart-cards-biometric-coastal-villages. 30 PTI, ‘Multi-purpose National Identity Cards for Orissa fishermen’, The Hindu, Jan 23rd 2011 available at http://www.thehindu.com/news/states/article1118691.ece. 31 As an example, the Indian Railways Department stipulates ‘valid ID proof’ on their website as including passport, voter ID, PAN card, driving license, photo identity cards issued by Central/State governments for their employees, student ID cards with photograph issued by recognised schools/ colleges and nationalised bank passbooks with photograph. Available at http://erail.in/Rail/FAQ/ E-ticket.html (Last visited on July 21 2012). 32 Reporter, ‘HRD Ministry signs MoU with UIDAI’, The Economic Times (Delhi) October 27, 2010. 33 The Collection of Statistics Act, 2008, available at http://mospi.nic.in/mospi_new/upload/COS_ Act_2008_English_26may11.pdf?status=1&menu_id=159. 34 Section 3, Collection of Statistics Act, 2008. 35 Rule 6, Information Technology Rules, April 2011 available at http://mit.gov.in/sites/upload_files/ dit/files/GSR315E_10511(1).pdf (Last visited on 21st June 2012). 36 Usha Ramanathan, ‘A constitutional value for privacy’, The Hindu, July 30th 2011 available at http:// www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/article2306023.ece (Last visited on 21st June 2012) 37 PTI, ‘Parallel schemes for I-cards wastage of time: Par panel’, April 20th 2008 available at http:// news.outlookindia.com/items.aspx?artid=564010 (Last visited on 21st June 2012). 38 The preamble of the National Identification Authority of India Bill states that such numbers shall apply to ‘individuals residing in India and to certain other classes of individuals’. 39 Deccan Chronicle, ‘Include Aadhaar number in population register, says PC’, The Deccan Chronicle, 24th January 2012 available at http://www.deccanchronicle.com/channels/cities/chennai/includeaadhaar-number-population-register-says-pc-418.



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40 See Mathews Thomas, ‘Is Malaysia’s MyKad the ‘One Card to Rule Them All’? The Urgent Need to Develop a Proper Legal Framework for the Protection of Personal Information in Malaysia’, 28 Melb. U. L. Rev. 474 2004. Here, the author describes how this dossier of sensitive personal information, enabled targeting and discrimination of minorities. 41 Ministry of Home Affairs, ‘Identity Card to Every Adult Resident of the Country under NPR; No Card being issued by UIDAI’, 7th December 2011, available at http://pib.nic.in/newsite/erelease. aspx?relid=78189 (Last visited on 22nd July 2012). The Press release also states ‘UIDAI has informed Government that UIDAI is not issuing any card’. 42 Manan Kumar, ‘Nilekani blocks Chidambaram’s ID card project’, DNA, 21st June 2012, available at http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report_nilekani-blocks-chidambarams-id-card-project_1704674; Sahil Makkar & Remya Nair, ‘Govt committee to review residential ID card scheme’, Live Mint, 21st June 2012, available at http://www.livemint.com/2012/06/20231319/Govt-committee-to-reviewresid.html (Last visited on 22nd June 2012). 43 ‘Ration Cards: 1.1 Crore Biometric Samples Found to be Duplicate’, The Hindu Business Line, May 13, 2010, available at http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2010/05/13/ stories/2010051351831900.htm (Last visited on July 22nd 2012). 44 See K. Raju and M. Padma, Department of Rural Development, in R K Bagga, Piyush Gupta (eds.) TRANSFORMING GOVERNMENT – EGOVERNMENT INITIATIVES IN INDIA, 2009 available at http://www.nisg.org/ knowledgecenter_docs/B02020001.pdf?PHPSESSID=15bff8502a0710f6c6d46c8ad895dfc6 (Last visited on July 22nd 2012). 45 Shankar Bennur, ‘Mysore: Biometric Ration Cards Issued to 5.56 Lakh Beneficiaries’, The Hindu (New Delhi) July 17, 2010, available at http://www.hindu.com/2010/07/17/ stories/2010071752020300.htm (Last visited on July 22nd 2012). 46 ‘Centre’s Nod for Bio Metric Ration Cards’, Times Chennai, July 26, 2010, available at http://www. timeschennai.com/index.php?mod=article&cat=Chennai&article=5871 (Last visited on July 22nd 2012). 47 TNN, ‘Hi-Tech Tell-All Driving Licence Launched’ The Times of India May 12, 2010 available at http:// articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2010-05-12/surat/28285732_1_licence-rto-jn-waghela, S. Sandeep Kumar, ‘Online Slot Booking for Driving Licenses Shortly’, The Hindu, November 30th 2008, available at http://www.hindu.com/2008/11/30/stories/2008113058490300.htm; Neha Shukla, ‘RTO to Take Fingerprints for Smart Driving Licence’, The Times of India June 10th , 2009 available at http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2009-06-10/lucknow/28172667_1_dls-smart-cardbiometrics (Last visited on July 22nd 2012). 48 Express News Service, ‘Biometric attendance to keep track of students, teachers in primary schools, July 25th 2008 available at http://www.expressindia.com/latest-news/biometric-attendance-tokeep-track-of-students-teachers-in-primary-schools/340201/ (Last visited on July 22nd 2012). 49 Anonymous, ‘Biometric for teachers’ attendance in Punjab’, 6th July 2010 available at http://www. igovernment.in/site/biometric-teachers%E2%80%99-attendance-punjab-37729 (Last visited on July 22nd 2012). 50 ‘Union Home Minister’s mission statement for NCRB under CCTNS’, available at http://ncrb.nic.in/ cctns.htm (Last visited on July 22nd 2012). 51 Nanki Chawla, ‘Could India Create The World’s (Second) Largest Police State?’, Eurasia Review, available at http://www.eurasiareview.com/03072012-could-india-create-the-worlds-secondlargest-police-state-oped. (Last visited on July 22nd 2012). 52 Nandan Nilekani,‘The power of identity’, available at http://www.inclusion.in/index.php?option=com_ content&view=article&id=537&Itemid=77 (Last visited on July 22nd 2012). 53 ‘Why Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance rejected the UID Bill’, IBN Live, December 13th 2011 available at http://ibnlive.in.com/news/why-the-parliamentary-panel-rejected-the-uidbill/211597-3.+ (Last visited on June 1st 2012).



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4


– Migrant Lives



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Counting the migrant1 in India: forced migration and the identification project Sahana Basavapatna Independent lawyer and researcher, New Delhi, working on forced migration and environmental laws

In July 2011, the UNHCR in India started issuing refugee cards (replacing the Refugee Certificates), promoted as a safer and better option that would ‘make a real difference to their lives’. Later, in April 2012, at an Ad-Hoc Working Group Workshop on ‘Biometrics for Identity Integrity in Immigration’, held under the auspices of the Bali Process in New Delhi, the Government India presented the Aadhaar project and the Immigration Visa and Foreigner’s Registration and Tracking (IVFRT). While Aadhaar seeks to identify residents, the IVFRT will develop a ‘secure and integrated service delivery framework that facilitates legitimate travellers while strengthening security’. The participants in the ad-hoc Workshop agreed to strengthen authorised migration, prevent or disrupt unauthorised or irregular migration, and, lastly, to consider developing a framework of voluntary minimum standards to facilitate sharing biometrics to strengthen immigration integrity within the legal framework of member countries. The question of whether a combination of Aadhaar, the registration of citizens under the Citizenship Act, 1955, the IVFRT and the UNHCR Refugee Cards, is primarily intended to profile individuals, or whether it will enable access to services and protection, is for the present yet to be answered. This paper explores the complex history of migration and asylumseeking within situations where international boundaries forcibly divide people otherwise culturally united, and legal structures remain fuzzy. 432 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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INTRODUCTION

The study of migrant populations seeking asylum in India and how they

are counted, documented or provided an identity remains an unexplored topic in the Indian context. The Aadhaar project is in many ways only the latest of a history of population-counting projects that aim to cover the entire resident population, in order that welfare schemes and services reach their intended beneficiary, and the Census of India—on which the National Population Register is based, as per Section 14A of the Citizenship Act, 1957—the oldest. Refugees and asylumseekers are an important constituent of the population-mapping exercise, as we see in the rationale of the Foreigners Act, 1946, which in its Statement of Objects and Reasons spells out the responsibility of the state to regulate the entry, residence and exit of foreigners. In turn, the Foreigners Act, 1946, derived its own rationale from 19th century initiatives that harnessed the mobility of various populations for state building projects (Samaddar: 2003, 77). Any identification project in this long history has had to consider background elements: including both the social history of migration in the South Asian sub-continent along with the complex legal situation that we see in this subcontinent. Although hard to quantify, the fact is that asylumseekers arrive in the country in huge numbers each year. India, it is often argued, complies with its international obligations towards refugees: India has not deported them, thus adhering to the principle of non-refoulement, and India allows the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to carry out refugee status determination on Indian territory. While India has so far chosen not to adopt a refugee law, citing in part the Eurocentric character of the Refugee Convention of 1951,2 India does commonly invoke the legacy of its courts and the provisions in the Constitution to substantiate its claim that refugees are adequately protected in this country. However, the neat categorisations that the law makes between refugees and economic migrants does not begin to answer the many and complex ways in which those fleeing their countries of origin both identify themselves and In the Wake of Aadhaar 433


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define their concerns. Only a small percentage of those who arrive each day in India as refugees actually seek asylum. Additionally, the different categories of refugees, migrants and stateless persons are fluid and the distinctions cannot be appreciated within the language of the law alone. Although refugees3 are a central subject of this paper, any account of the mapping of refugees would be incomplete without taking into account those who do not formally enter the legal institutions of the state: one that the State calls ‘illegal migrants’. As the following section explains, these two broad categories—‘refugee’ and ‘illegal migrant’—provide a critical background to the tracking and counting exercise currently underway in India. A study of forced migration in India reveals that this entire population can be identified along a spectrum, with one end denoting a citizen and the other a foreigner. It points to the complexities in the migratory pattern in India, where the catch-all phrase of ‘illegal migration’ typically fails to explain the need for differential application of existing laws on migrants. A large body of literature has emerged that explains Indian policy on the various nationalities that make up the refugee population. Some events have of course received greater amount of attention than others, their experiences have been more extensively articulated and in doing so, the response of the Indian state also better documented: the obvious example is the 1947 Partition, which has had a rich scholarship.4 As a result, Partition refugees remain the most cared for in all of India’s refugee population, partly as a result of India’s obsession with its own ‘Hindu’ identity. Similarly, asylum-seekers from Burma, Afghanistan, Tibet, and Sri Lanka have received considerable attention, making it possible to better understand India’s asylum policy.5 Section three of this essay, Identifying, counting, and tracking forced migrants attempts to comprehend how the Aadhaar project, the National Population Register, other applicable Mission Mode Projects of the Government of India’s e-governance plan, and the UNHCR’s documentation mechanism, seek to count and track the migrant population in India. Given the politics of asylum seeking in India, it seeks to outline the purposes, utility and challenges of Aadhaar, and other e-government projects. In doing 434 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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so, it also sketches out an account of the legal system that regulates refugee movement in India. There is a rich literature on the way the law functions in protecting and promoting the rights of refugees, and this section focuses on a specific part of that law: on the practice of refugee protection, and on its relationship with counting as a state function. Briefly, this essay attempts a pan-India overview of migration, focusing on refugees, asylum-seekers and stateless persons who have come to be identified, by institutions mandated to protect, including the courts, and sometimes through the voices of the migrants themselves. It also sketches out the various ways in which refugee, asylum-seeking, and stateless communities have been able to access the benefits of state welfare schemes. My analysis therefore is not only in order to better understand how massive projects such as Aadhaar and the NPR could impact refugees, but also how such projects prove their utility given that their main ostensible aim is to ensure that welfare schemes reach all qualifying residents.

MAPPING THE FORCED MIGRANT IN INDIA

At the centre of any mapping exercise of this nature is of course the national

frontier. The space of the frontier is, as Devdas and Mummery write:

an ambivalent one. . . it is, on the one hand, a space of regulation and discipline where the operations of power to govern the movement of bodies, lives, ideologies, and goods, are most strikingly evident. On the other, the space of the frontier is also a space that reminds us of the necessity and urgency of rethinking particular concepts, relationships, modes of living, that govern our everyday lives.6 Like most frontier regions, India's North Eastern borderlands are frontiers such as this: they commonly comprise a motley mix of communities who more often than not share ethnic and religious links with their neighbours across the borders in China, Burma, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh. In the Wake of Aadhaar 435


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Migration in the frontier regions Most states in the north east, including Mizoram, Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh, Tripura and Sikkim have traditionally been ‘refugee’-receiving states7 and exhibit continuous migration across their borders. In such migration, ethnic, religious and cultural ties more often than not bind the ‘refugee’ community to local inhabitants of the North East: providing both the cause of support as well as of antagonism between communities across such states.

Achan Mungleng, Coordinator of South Asian Euro Burma Office, and well known human rights activist, speaks of the identity issues that face people in the Manipur region that sees, on the one side a Burmese state, and on the other, various kinds of legal, and political issues on the Indian side. Given that the border cuts right through neighbourhoods and even people’s homes, she speculates on both the expectations people there could have with the Aadhaar card and their possible apprehensions.

North East India For instance, the Chins, a tribal group that shares ethnic ties with Mizos, has both a relationship going back centuries as well as a common origin myth.8 Chin migration into India and especially into its immediate neighbouring states, Mizoram, Manipur, and Arunachal Pradesh, continued well after India and Burma attained independence in 1947 and 1948 respectively: but grew significantly after 1988 when countrywide demonstrations against the Burmese military junta were brutally crushed and a large number of political activists sought asylum in India.9 With a deteriorating 436 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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economic situation, absence of health care and education, it was perhaps inevitable that Chins, Kachins and Rohingyas started arriving in India’s North East, making Aizawl, Lunglei, and other border towns in Mizoram, and Moreh, Churachandpur in Manipur, their home, either temporary or permanent.10 Given both the nature of such migration and, in a cultural sense, the ease with which it happens, it becomes difficult to estimate the number of Chins living in the North East difficult. Various estimates put the number between 100,000 and 500,000.11 Chins, Kachins, Burmans, and the Rohingyas from Arakan/Rakhine State also form a significant class of mandate refugees in India.12 All except the Rohingyas possess a reasonably well-networked and well-organised community in Delhi, not only active in the campaign for democracy in Burma but also one that extends assistance to other refugee groups.13 Sikkim hosts Bhutanese nationals of Nepali origin, who were stripped of their citizenship by a combination of new policy implementation and new laws including the 1985 Citizenship Law, the new process of issuing voluntary migration forms, the ‘one-nation-one-people’ policy etc.14 A South Asia Analysis Group report of 1998 states that an estimated 10,000 Bhutanese lived outside the camps in Nepal and India.15 More recent reports have documented that around 7000 Bhutanese refugees who were forced to leave in the 1950s and 1960s live in Arunachal Pradesh, and around 15,000 in West Bengal and Assam: all of them formal refugees.16 A Deutsche PresseAgentur report dated February 6, 1999 stated that around 30,000 Bhutanese refugees fled to India. Bhutanese refugees do not register with UNHCR, nor are they granted refugee status by the Government of India. Arunachal Pradesh is home to the Singhpo ethnic group, officially recognised as a Scheduled Tribe under the Constitution of India. The Singhpos in Arunachal Pradesh are the Kachins in Kachin State and, like Chins and Mizos, Singhpos, and Kachins are related, divided only by the international border. Kachin nationals are believed to live in parts of Arunachal Pradesh, but little information is available about those who flee the Kachin state for either political or economic reasons. Around 60,000 Kachin nationals are reported to have fled Kachin state to China following violence after the In the Wake of Aadhaar 437


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ceasefire agreement between the Kachin Independence Organisation (KIO) and the Burmese government ended after 17 years in 2011.17 A report of the Chin Human Rights Organisation of June 2004 stated that around 100 Kachin refugees live in Arunachal Pradesh.18

Interview with Sukhendu Debbarma, University of Tripura.

Tripura has historically witnessed migration over the last century. As a predominantly tribal state in the early part of the 20th century, the Tripura kings allowed immigration of the trading as well as professional groups. With partition in 1947, a large number of (mostly) Bengali Hindus sought asylum, which continued until the 1970s when the official registration of ‘refugees’ stopped.19 Migration from across the western borders of India The borders on the western side of India do not allow for easy migration, due to fencing following the Partition, but accounts of migration from Pakistan into Rajasthan, Punjab, Gujarat, and Jammu & Kashmir in 1947 tell us something about both the nature of migration here, and the Indian response. While tremendous attention has been given to migration into the Indian side of Punjab,20 and West Bengal and other parts of the North East,21 little attention has so far been paid to migrations from Sindh into Gujarat or to Jammu & Kashmir.



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The Partition of 1947 and the creation of Bangladesh in 1971 remain two of the earliest events that forced the Indian state to adopt a refugee policy. The displacement after 1947 was something that the nascent state had never seen in all its history. In the brief period following Partition, 14 million people crossed borders. Additionally, whereas Partition migrations on the Western border are considered to be largely limited to the period between 1947–1950, population movements in the East have continued beyond the event.22 The Government of India’s response to the crisis differed in the West (Punjab) and the East (West Bengal/East Pakistan). The need to address the inflow of refugees from East Pakistan was taken up only after 1950, when a large number of Muslims who had earlier left Bengal for East Pakistan now returned, and the Government of West Bengal undertook an assessment of the number of refugees and the nature of rehabilitation that was needed.23 As far as refugees from Punjab were concerned, the Government of India viewed them as active participants in nation-building activity. According to Ritu Menon, ‘. . . his recruitment in, and contribution to, its economic life had been the distinct features of government policy and practice’.24 A direct result of this was the founding of the Ministry of Relief and Rehabilitation, along with a host of laws to cover various aspects of refugee and evacuee transfer and resettlement.25 The Hindus from Pakistan also sought refuge in India after 1965 (Yoginder Sikand),26 and an estimated 100,000 Hindu refugees fled from Sindh following religious persecution, and are known to live in Jodhpur and Jaisalmer. The Pak Visthapit Sangh, later renamed the Seemant Lok Sanghatan, a group based in Jodhpur, has systematically documented the experience of these refugees in India. Sikand quotes Hindu Singh Sodha, himself a refugee who now manages the Pak Visthapit Sangh and states: The first major wave of Hindu migration from Pakistan to India after 1950 occurred . . . in the wake of the 1965 war between India and Pakistan, after which, in 1971, after another war between the two countries, some 80,000 Hindus, mainly Sodha Rajputs and Meghwals but other castes as well, crossed over into India. Since then . . . this migration has been In the Wake of Aadhaar 439


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continuing, although on a reduced scale. Earlier, this was relatively easy as many people would simply slip across the border, which was not fenced. Now that India has erected a fence along the entire border, those who want to migrate have to do so legally, by travelling all the way to Wagah, in Punjab, and cross into India on Pakistani passports with Indian visas. This has made it much more difficult and costly for them . . . but yet many people take that option. Once they come to India they generally travel to Rajasthan or Gujarat, and then seek long-term visas or extensions in the hope of eventually getting the right to settle in India permanently. . . . this is not easy, as, due to security reasons, the Indian embassy authorities in Islamabad, because of security reasons, are not very willing to give visas to Pakistanis, Hindus, and Muslims, to visit border districts in Rajasthan and Gujarat, which is where the relatives of most Pakistan Hindus who want to migrate to India live and whom they want to join. Rita Kothari, in The Burden of Refuge: The Sindhi Hindus of Gujarat provides a detailed account of the reasons for Sindhi migration and their experience of both migration and resettlement. The Hindus or Sindhis from the Sindh are not the typical Hindus, she shows, but practiced a form of Hinduism that had substantial influence of Sikhism and Sufism.27 She explains further that ‘the overlapping context between the Hindus and Muslims of Sindh was made possible by centuries of proximity going back to the first Arab invasion of Sindh by Muhammad bin Qasim in A.D. 711’ (ibid). One of the major demands of this community has been to be made formal citizens of India. Bharat Bhushan, an independent journalist, notes that in recent times, many have applied for citizenship. For instance, between 2008 and 2010, around 1700 applications were received and 866 were granted citizenship. Between 2009 and 2011, 148 applications were received and only 16 were granted. 119 applications are under consideration.28 Little is known about migration from across the borders into Jammu and Kashmir but refugees from West Pakistan are reported to have lived in the State for decades, having fled from the 1965 and the 1971 wars. Puri notes:



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But (the) most glaring omission in the report29 is (the) total ignorance of the refugees from Pak-administered part of the state who are by far the largest in number. 42,000 families were official registered. Their number has obviously multiplied by now. They are state subjects like any other class of citizens of the state. Unlike refugees in Punjab, their claims for the properties left behind were not registered and they received no compensation for them, on the specious plea that PoK (Pakistanoccupied-Kashmir) was a part of India and they would be rehabilitated there when it would be liberated. But after sixty years this plea has hardly any meaning. There is absolutely no justification for not treating them at par with the refugees from Pakistan in other parts of the country. Likewise, Ved Bhasin notes the ‘absence of history’ as far as the non-Kashmiri Hindus and Sikhs who came from Azad Kashmir to Jammu & Kashmir, or those who came from Sialkot and adjoining areas to Jammu.30 He explains: Large number of people was sent from Pathankote to different parts of India (in Meerut etc.). There were few families, mostly rural people who crossed over and settled in border areas of Jammu like R.S. Pora; but they continue to be stateless. That time, their number was 60,000 to 70,000 but now their number has gone up to 2 lakhs (ibid). In more recent times, political discourse in India has been obsessed with Bangladeshi migration into India, the roots of which can be traced back to the Partition and then to the 1971. This migration has never stopped, but various political events have been responsible for Chakmas (primarily belonging to the Chittagong Hill Tracts in eastern Bangladesh), Hindus and Muslims to cross over to the North Eastern parts of India. From thereon, Bangladeshis have migrated to other urban centres looking for livelihood options. The Bangladeshi immigration has not been looked as a ‘refugee’ problem, and India’s obsession is visible in the way it characterises this phenomenon and the policies and legislative measures that have been applied. Yet, given Bangladesh’s political history, one can argue that Bangladeshi migration is complex and the lines between ‘refugees’ and other ‘immigrants’ a thin one. In the Wake of Aadhaar 441


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TAMIL SRI LANKAN REFUGEES AND STATELESS TIBETANS Migrating out of Sri Lanka There are an estimated 68,000 Sri Lankan refugees in India, most of whom are Tamils.31 Although the Sinhalese, notably journalists, have also fled Sri Lanka immediately after the war, none of them came with the intention of seeking refuge in India, knowing well that the Government of India would not entertain such requests. Without exception, all have been ensured a safe passage out of India, and have eventually successfully sought refuge in countries in Europe.32 Tamil Nadu hosts a majority of Tamil refugees and has an extensive system of surveillance to ensure that none who enters the Indian territory is an LTTE member or supporter. It is presumed that there is at least one camp in each of Tamil Nadu’s 32 districts, with over a hundred camps in all. A PUCL report has documented the condition of refugees in the camps visited Keelpathupattu, Periyasevalai (Villupuram district), Thiruvadhavur (Madurai district), Kullanchaavadi, Virudhaachalam (Cuddalore district), Pavalathaanoor, Kurukkappatti, Athikattanur (Salem district), Paramathi Velur (Namakkal district), Karur, Bhavanisagar Dam (Erode district) as well as Mandapam camp in Rameshwaram, where new arrivals have to report.33 The Organisation for Eelam Refugee Rehabilitation (or Ofeer), which is extensively spread out in Tamil Nadu, essentially manages the welfare measures for the Tamils. UNHCR has a limited role of assisting refugees in voluntary repatriation.34 Mandate refugees in India Asylum-seekers from Burma The Burmese, an exception to the government of India’s policy of not granting refuge to asylum-seekers from its immediate neighbourhood, are the second largest mandate refugee population in India. They are allowed to register with the UNHCR, and following a successful refugee status determination in New Delhi, are recognised as refugees by the international refugee agency. According to UNHCR estimates, 7,029 Burmese nationals 442 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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have been recognised as refugees out of 17,380 of those registered.35 New Delhi, however, hosts a minority. A large number of Chins from Sagaing Division and Chin State in Myanmar/Burma are known to live in Mizoram and Manipur.36 Most of them arrive with little or no documentation but are provided informal refuge. They also form a large work force. The Rohingyas from the Rakhine/Arakan region of Burma have only recently approached the UNHCR, although they are believed to have lived in various parts of India for several years. Rohingyas were until recently given ‘asylum cards’ by UNHCR, which according to the agency was equivalent to a ‘refugee card’ given to mandate refugees. Only recently, at the end of 2012, did UNHCR begin the Refugee Status Determination process. In comparison to the Chin refugees, the Rohingyas are smaller in number and are reported to be living in states of Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Jammu and Delhi, among others.37

Yasmin Ara, 21, and her husband, Mohammad Zakaria, 22, pose with their UNHCR issued asylum-seeker cards and the Myanmar government issued white colored ‘state guest’ card, at a makeshift camp in New Delhi on May 11, 2012.38

The Afghans The largest of the asylum-seekers in India are Afghans, totalling 9,180 refugees and 807 asylum-seekers, who include Muslims, Sikhs, and Hindus. They do not include the Afghan refugees who have not registered with UNHCR and number about 60,000, according to a 1999 estimate by South Asia Human Rights Documentation Centre.39 An accurate count of refugees is extremely difficult given the number of refugees who do not register with In the Wake of Aadhaar 443


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UNHCR. Sikhs and Hindus account for 90% of Afghan refugees in India and seek naturalisation (Gaur Singh, 2010). Although the Sikhs and Hindus are projected as having had fewer hurdles in settling and integrating into India, this process has not been anywhere as easy as what it is made out to be.40 The ethnic Afghans, as the Muslims are normally referred, have found conditions in Delhi and other cities precarious, with little access to basic services.41

The Registration Certificate for Tibetans. This is valid only for a year and must be annually renewed.

The efflux from China: The Tibetans and Uighur refugees Tibetans have a long history of refuge in India. They arrived in India in four phases, between 1959 and 1979, 1980 and 1993, 1994 and 1999, and 2000 and the present (Tibet Justice Centre 2011). Estimated to be between 1,10,000 to 1,30,000 in number in India, Tibetans first arrived in 1959 following the Lhasa Uprising (ibid). They are now spread throughout the country including in Dharamshala (government-in-exile), Delhi (business establishments), Chandranagri in Odisha (farming and sweater weaving), Bylekuppe in Karnataka (Buddhist monastries), and in Dehradun. The Tibetans, along with the Sri Lankan Tamils, form the largest community seeking asylum in India who have been granted refuge by the Government. This is visible in the extensive support, making it possible for Tibetans to start businesses, acquire education, set up their own government in exile in Dharmashala and lawfully travel abroad on the basis of travel documents issued by the Government of India.



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In contrast to the Tibetans, a handful of Uighurs, originally from Xinjiang province of China have also sought asylum; their small numbers have made them invisible. Most Uighur refugees first arrive in Nepal and are granted asylum. Some arrive in India hoping for better living conditions and resettlement.42

Interview with Tibetan poet and activist Tenzin Tsundue, MeLeodganj, Himachal Pradesh.

The African refugees43 Although India has had a long history of migrants from Africa, not many Indians are aware of African nationals seeking asylum.44 African nationals including Somalis, Eritreans, Ethiopians, Sudanese, and Congolese, are few in number: about 1,000, and are known to live in Delhi, Hyderabad, and a few other cities such as Bangalore, and Mysore. The African refugees share a similar story of harassment and a sense of hopelessness about their future in India.45 Refugees from the Middle East India hosts a minority of Iranian, Palestinian, and Iraqi refugees in India, and most are believed to live in New Delhi. Recent UNHCR estimates46 suggest that around 1,171 refugees belonging to these three groups have sought asylum in India. Out of these, 175 refugees are yet to be recognised. Iranians and Iraqis are among the least studied refugee communities in the country. While newspaper reports have documented the social and economic conditions of the refugees,47 a comprehensive survey of the communities is absent.



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IDENTIFYING, COUNTING, AND TRACKING FORCED MIGRANTS Non-citizens have been the subject of the state’s gaze, but the tools employed by the state and how these implicate non-citizens has not been discussed enough. A brief description of the existing mechanism may therefore provide useful. The Foreigners Act, 1946, regulates the entry, movement and exit of refugees and forms one of the several legislations that impact refugees.48 While the courts in India have made a distinction between refugees and other foreigners, and thus created a body of law that protects rights of refugees,49 for all other purposes, refugees are subject to the same requirements under these legislations as a foreigner. First, like any foreigner, an asylum-seeker runs the risk of arrest and detention under Section 3(g), Foreigners Act, 1946 in the event that s/he does not register with UNHCR, on the grounds of entering India without a valid visa. If convicted by a court of law, either for illegal entry or travel without valid documents, refugees are liable to be deported under Section 3(cc) of the Foreigners Act, 1946 unless it is brought to the notice of the concerned authority or court that the person is seeking asylum.50 For instance, Burmese asylum-seekers in Mizoram have faced threats or actual deportation by the Young Mizo Association for illegal entry.51 Second, recognised refugees of Burmese and Iranian nationality are entitled to a Residence Permit under Rule 7, Foreigners Order, 1948. One instance that provides evidence that refugees are being treated as plain and simple foreigners, was in December 2008 when Burmese refugees, who became aware that their Residence Permits were coming up for renewal, were asked by the Foreigners Regional Registration Office (FRRO), New Delhi, to pay a visa fee and a penalty fee in order to extend the validity of their Residence Permits. The fee was calculated on the basis of the date of arrival of the refugee in India and the date on which an application for Residence Permits were made. Prior to this imposition of fine, refugees did not pay a fine or a fee while applying for the Residence Permit.52



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The last aspect concerns biometrics. While the collection of biometric information has been questioned by critics of the Aadhaar project among others, on the ground that a law allowing such collection and protecting the information is absent in India, biometric information including photograph, finger impressions, hand writing impression and signature can be collected from foreigners under as far back as Section 3(e)(iv) of the Foreigners Act, 1946. Although little information about collection of biometric information of a refugee exists, such a move can be justified under the law. While the foregoing section is a general description of the state of the law, the case of Tibetans and Sri Lankan Tamils in India are specific instances of how refugees are tracked and documented. The case of Tibetans seeking refuge in India: In order to ‘keep track of new arrivals, the Indian government, with the cooperation of the [Central Tibetan Administration] CTA, issued Registration Certificates (RCs) to the majority of Tibetans’ arriving in the 1960s through the 1970s.53 These Registration Certificates are not proof of their legal status but only allow them to live in certain parts of the country. Those arriving in the 1980s and 1990s through Nepal were not granted legal status, although they were not stopped from entering the country. However, and importantly, the government reportedly turned a blind eye to the rampant practice by which new arrivals were able to obtain fraudulent RCs. Only those arriving through Sino-Indian borders were repatriated. In the 1990s, owing to, among other things, the increase in the number of Tibetans in India, the government began to curtail the practice of distributing RCs, and many were also asked to return to Tibet. In the mid1990s, the Government’s priorities appeared to change further. Voluntary repatriation appeared to overshadow all considerations, including the adherence to the principle of non-refoulement, recognised as a principle of customary international law. This policy, which was agreed to between the Government of India and the CTA, led to a widespread denial of RCs for new arrivals. Threats of deportation and detention of Tibetans were reportedly common during this time. Since 2000, India’s position on Tibetan refugees has reflected their legal status in India. The Tibet Justice Centre has claimed that refugees have been In the Wake of Aadhaar 447


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stopped from entering India irrespective of whether they hold valid RCs. It has also been reported that, since 2003, the CTA and the Government of India started issuing Special Entry Permits (SEPs) to those arriving in India through Nepal. The Tibet Justice Centre notes: Some seven years later, at the time of this writing, the actual extent to which India has been issuing SEPs and implementing this new policy remains unclear. What is clear is that SEPs do not provide their bearers with a right to either citizenship or permanent residence in India. TJC’s research suggests that India and the CTA have been trying to establish a better system for the issuance of RCs and other documentation to Tibetans currently residing in India. Sri Lankan Tamil refugees The Sri Lankan Tamil refugees are subject to a thorough process of enquiry and registration in the camps. A People’s Union for Civil Liberties report of 2006 visited the camps, where 4,343 refugees had arrived following the war between LTTE and the Sri Lankan government. The report states that refugees arriving in Tamil Nadu are first ‘checked . . . by the Indian Navy, and then [by] the Special Branch enquiry at Mugandaraya Chatram and then enquiry and registration by police at Danushkodi Police station’. . . Following this, ‘they are being offered food provided by voluntary agencies’. It further states, ‘those newly arrived are quarantined under police custody at the Mandapam Camp. This is a prison house. When we visited, 39 people were confined to the quarantine (nearly 20ft/20ft) for males’. Giving the example of Bhavanisagar camp and Keelpathupattu camp, the report noted that ‘Though registration cards are immediately provided to those in the camps, in many camps, there are many without registration. For example, in Keelpathupattu camp, 949 people belonging to 100 families live without refugee registration. They don’t get any facility provided by the government. The refugee registration for children born to those who marry outside the camps are cancelled . . . ’54 Apart from these procedures, in which state authorities are directly involved—the only direct access there is to information about recognised refugees and other registered asylum-seekers is through UNHCR. No formal 448 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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agreement exists allowing or recognising UNHCR’s role or mandate in India; it functions in India through the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Under an informal system, basic information including the name, date of birth, sex and country of origin and biometric data including the face, are collected as part of the UNHCR’s internal registration process and this data shared with the Government of India (Ministry of Home Affairs) on a monthly basis.55 UNHCR maintains that the claims of individual asylum-seekers remain confidential. This information is part of the larger mechanism of registration, defined as ‘. . .the recording, verifying, and updating of information on persons of concern to UNHCR with the aim of protecting and documenting them and of implementing durable solutions’.56 Under Procedural Standards for Refugee Status Determination under UNHCR Mandate (hereafter ‘UNHCR Procedural Standards’)57 the purpose of registration: is to gather standard information about all persons of concern to UNHCR, including Applicants for mandate RSD [Refugee Status Determination] and other asylum-seekers, refugees, returnees, internally displaced persons, and stateless persons. The registration information permits the UNHCR to make informed assessments of the number and profile of persons of concern and to design programmes for protection and assistance. The registration information also permits UNHCR staff to identify and assist persons with special needs, and to make decisions about whether the individuals should be referred to further UNHCR procedures. As Applicants for mandate RSD are persons of concern to UNHCR, UNHCR must maintain current standard registration information for each individual Applicant, including Applicants for derivative status’. (Ibid. Unit 3, Registration Procedures for Applicants for RSD)



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RECENT INNOVATIONS

In addition to practices for identifying and sorting refugees from the

migrants and/or those posing security threats, the Indian state has now embarked on new identification projects couched in the language of welfare and protection as well as addressing internal security needs. Of relevance to migration are three projects: Aadhaar, the compulsory registration in the NPR, and the Immigration Visa and Foreigner’s Registration and Tracking (hereafter ‘IVFRT’). In what ways do these projects directly impact refugees and asylumseekers in India? The UNHCR’s registration process, as well as the actual experience of legal recognition of Tibetan and Sri Lankan Tamil refugees, helps comprehend the ways in which these people are implicated in the state system. Access to education, employment or ration in the case of the Tibetan and Sri Lankan Tamil refugees, depends on recognising them as refugees, which only follows once they are registered in designated places of entry. The counting and tracking mechanisms serve to allay the security fears of the government in addition to responding to other needs such as allowance, ration, proof of identity, and legal status. As one protection officer of the UNHCR explains: you can’t serve a population if you don’t know who they are, and registration is the first step toward that. All protection interventions stem from getting the people on our books—knowing who people are individually makes all the difference between being able to provide assistance or not. Registration and data management can help you do a plethora of good acts for the population we’re dealing with. Sometimes you get staff doing registration with strongly technical backgrounds or you have people with protection backgrounds. If you can marry the two, the output for assisting people is very strong.58

This reasoning given for collection of personal data about an individual is questionable, if seen in the context of a country such as India. Despite detailed and regularly updated information about the claims, needs and vulnerabilities of refugees being on record with UNHCR, the status of refugees remains 450 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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precarious across communities. The Indian refugee management policy is conceived to allow for the most flexibility in addressing a particular influx, as the case of both the Tibetan and Sri Lankan Tamil refugees shows. This flexibility is a factor of local political concerns, foreign policy or, as the case of migration in the North East India suggests, the impossibility of controlling borders. This flexibility is manifested in India’s outsourcing of some essential functions such as the Refugee Status Determination to UNHCR, which, in addition, is allowed to also implement protection programs. Such posturing helps India to indicate its seeming adherence to international law while at the same time maintaining a distance from the international agency. Since immigration is a central subject falling under Entries 17 and 19 of the Union List (List I) of the Constitution of India, the central government has plenary powers over matters related to immigration. It is in this context that the identification project of the government of India needs to be studied. Given that there is no single policy for managing a refugee community, access to services, protection, and availability of welfare schemes for refugees is not a primary or even a necessary component of the government’s refugee policy. The Tibetan and the Sri Lankan Tamil experience leads to a safe inference that security concerns dominate India’s population mapping projects. The recently concluded Bali Process meeting held in New Delhi in April 2012 suggests that such a contention is not misplaced. Initiated at the Regional Ministerial Conference on People Smuggling, Trafficking in Persons and Related Transnational Crime, held in Bali in February 2002, the Bali Process brought together 46 members including UNHCR and IOM and 29 observers, to work on practical measures to help combat people smuggling, trafficking in persons and related transnational crime in the Asia-Pacific region. New Delhi chaired its latest and recently concluded Ad Hoc Group Workshop on ‘Biometrics for Identity Integrity in Immigration’ from 23-26 April 2012.59 The Government India presented two case studies: the Aadhaar project and the Immigration Visa and Foreigner’s Registration and Tracking (IVFRT) (Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs, Government of India, 2010). While Aadhaar seeks to ‘identify’ residents, the IVFRT60 has as its objective the development and implementation of a ‘secure and In the Wake of Aadhaar 451


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integrated service delivery framework that facilitates legitimate travellers while strengthening security’. The participants in the workshop agreed to ‘strengthen authorised migration’, ‘prevent or disrupt unauthorised or irregular migration’ and, lastly, ‘to consider developing a framework of voluntary minimum standards to facilitate sharing biometrics to strengthen immigration integrity within the legal framework of member countries’ and to ‘review these arrangements within 12 months in an appropriate Bali Process forum’. In addition, the application of biometric technology in border and immigration process was shared. It was agreed that countries that are part of the Bali Process would ‘co-operate amongst themselves in managing cross border risks and adopting common strategies for improving outcomes and maximise benefits of biometrics’ with the shared understanding that biometric technology would improve security, service, and savings. It was also stated that the biometric information would be shared with partners in line with legislative and regulatory requirements, and in a spirit of protecting privacy. The workshop appears to have acknowledged that adopting of biometrics to strengthen its immigration would impact the non-citizens. Some possible problems that might arise—including the absence of a legal authority, the question of trust (unknown use and sharing of the data collected) and the lack of awareness—were raised as challenges. It was recognised that, in keeping with UNHCR’s principles related to handling of data of asylum-seekers/ refugees, some checks would need to be placed whereby personal data was not shared with countries from whom asylum-seekers seek protection. UNHCR reportedly agreed that—subject to legal and confidentiality considerations—it will share information with states. It noted in particular that any sharing of data of asylum-seekers or refugees with the country of origin of the refugee, either directly or indirectly, is prohibited, and has recommended that states have consent of the individual whose biometric data is to be collected, clarity of purpose for which it is gathered, and put security safeguards in place. In addition, it has pointed out that individuals should have the right to correct misinformation and an opportunity for 452 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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redressal. Further, data sharing among governments must be preceded by a legal framework for adequate protection of privacy and compliance with data protection principles. Additionally, sharing of data should be restricted to what is necessary and based on the assessment that data will not be misused by the party in question. Aadhaar and IVFRT appear to supplement each other. While the former seeks to provide a number that will guarantee identity, the latter seeks to bring a foreigner within the gaze of the state by registration and tracking. The use of Aadhaar and the IVFRT as tools to identify, classify, track and manage the asylum-seeking migrant population, is not matched by the State’s responsibility to set up a refugee protection law (and not just a policy). Second, authenticating ‘identity’ lends itself to a number of challenges, as the case of the refugee population in India suggests. Lastly, independent of these questions posed here, these projects remain works-in-progress, given the scale, reach and the policy inadequacies in the existing system of refugee management in India. Differentiating between authorised migration and illegal migration requires a clear, certain, and well defined body of law that would lay down the various categories of refugees that are recognised by the state. The Partition experience is useful here, for the resettlement and rehabilitation of millions of refugees who crossed borders and sought asylum in India were dealt with under clearly defined laws.61 As far as mandate refugees are concerned, such a mechanism is absent. While it may be argued that India is a generous host to millions of refugees, a number of examples corroborate the observation that an ad-hoc policy is not a substitute for a legal framework. For instance, although Rohingyas have been in the news for fleeing the Rakhine/Arakan state following clashes with the Buddhist population, newspapers in India have reported the arrest of ‘illegal Rohingya migrants’ in Manipur.62 Second, studies on forced migration in the sub-continent have repeatedly pointed out that migration in the region is made possible by a host of factors, with the easy permeability of the borders being only one of them. The cartographic exercise divided the territories, but it failed to segregate communities that In the Wake of Aadhaar 453


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share ethnic, religious, and cultural ties. This implies that identifying a citizen becomes a difficult task precisely where migration is impossible to check: such as the North East. This is illustrated by the case of Indian citizens being denied a voter-identification card for having stated that they speak ‘Nepali’.63 This returns us to our earlier question—how does the Indian state propose to strengthen ‘authorised’ migration and prevent/disrupt ‘unauthorised’ or ‘irregular’ migration? Any effort in this direction appears to come from the recent government’s policy of issuing ‘long term visas’ for recognised refugees in India. An announcement to this effect was first made in relation to Rohingya refugees. Rohingyas, living in various parts of the country for several years, protested before UNHCR in May 2012, seeking refugee status and access to protection. They also claimed that Rohingyas should be given ‘refugee certificates’ like other mandate refugees and not ‘asylum cards’ as was the practice. UNHCR announced that ‘. . .following discussions with the Government of India, UNHCR has been informed that the Government will give them long-stay visas that will allow them to legally remain in India, based on their UNHCR asylum-seeker cards. For this purpose, they need to return to their places of residence in India and approach the local Foreigner’s Registration Officers (FRO)’.64 According to information available from the Ministry of Home Affairs and the FRRO, this process involves an application to the FRRO, a letter from the UNHCR confirming that the applicant is a recognised refugee, utility documents as proof of residence, and a letter from the house-owner confirming the same. The Ministry of Home Affairs claims that, on the basis of the verification conducted by the FRRO or FRO (as the case may be), the Ministry will further verify whether the refugee is an economic migrant or a refugee fleeing persecution and issue a ‘long term visa’ only to the latter.65 The long term visa will legally allow refugees to access education and employment in the private sector. A number of projects and programs make the ‘refugee’ a central part of their existence; yet the current policy framework has the potential to throw up more confusing scenarios and questions than concrete answers.66 The 454 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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Aadhaar project, for instance, has been welcomed by the Tibetan refugee community so far.67 Tenzin Tsundue, a Tibetan activist, explains that Tibetans have taken an interest in the Aadhaar numbers. Some believe that an Aadhaar ‘card’ replaces the Registration Certificate; it is a ‘better’ identity document than the Registration Certificate, and an easier way to identify oneself. Others, such as Hindus from Pakistan (to take an example), may also welcome such a project signifying that they too want to be counted. Assuming that refugees do want to be counted, the absence of a legal framework that can address issues of confidentiality, privacy, and data protection, highlights areas of concern. Asylum-seekers are known to fear authority, including agencies like UNHCR, the police, and the FRRO, which may explain their reluctance to share their biometric data. In countries such as India where refugees face hostility, they may consider fingerprinting or collection of other biometric information to be an indicator of criminality. Such profiling needs therefore to be carefully considered for potential misuse. If, for example, a genuine asylum-seeker wishes to apply for asylum but is unable to do so for whatever reasons, what protection is envisaged so that s/he does not face harassment, detention, or deportation, but is instead introduced to an RSD process? It may be argued that these systems/structures of mapping have the potential of protecting the refugee population. For instance, in July 2011, UNHCR in India started issuing refugee cards (replacing the Refugee Certificates). These have been promoted by UNHCR as a safer and better option that would ‘make a real difference to their lives’.68 Refugees argue, and understandably, that these cards are helpful. Three points may be noted in this connection. UNHCR functions in a country that exercises complete control over all matters related to immigration. Not only does India does not implement projects such as Aadhaar under a law, but it also does not spell out its relationship with UNHCR in clear terms. As an RTI reply by the Ministry of External Affairs states, UNHCR functions under the auspices of UNDP, but this does not explain the nature of UNHCR’s relationship with the Government of India. Indeed, UNHCR has stated in the ad-hoc Workshop In the Wake of Aadhaar 455


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of the Bali Process held in India that it would share information with the Government of India only when clear laws are in place that would ensure privacy of the refugee, confidentiality of information and laws on data protection. UNHCR, as the practice stands today, shares basic biometric data (and not the information on the claims) with the Government of India on a regular basis, thus suggesting that the unease and concerns with biometrics, data sharing and surveillance is a real one. Assuming that projects like Aadhaar would benefit every resident, would the benefit extend automatically to refugee groups? Research on refugees in India (especially in the last 2–3 years) has repeatedly pointed out that although refugees and asylum-seekers are assured of protection and assistance as articulated by the UNHCR Policy on refugee protection and solutions in urban areas adopted in September 2009,69 they have also observed that, in the long term, protection programmes for refugees and asylum-seekers require more than a policy document. In this background, technology is unlikely to play a transformational role in the absence of a mandate that is backed by clear laws and efficient mechanisms. Refugees and refugee advocates have for long insisted that India ratify the 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees and, irrespective of such ratification, adopt a law. The Government of India is disinclined to change the status quo.70 In such a political scenario, what assurances are there that a potentially technologically savvy government will want to do things any differently from an earlier one? Does this then lead us to conclude that a combination of Aadhaar, the registration of citizens under the Citizenship Act, 1955, the IVFRT, and the UNHCR Refugee Cards, primarily aims to profile individuals in ways geared making access to services and protection a reality?—or is it rather more geared towards national security concerns? Lastly, but no less important (and in fact a central argument of the Aadhaar project), are the categories that these projects ostensibly help create and sustain: categories commonly perceived to solve problems of security and welfare. The applicability and implications of the Aadhaar and related identification projects on refugees are yet to be empirically documented systematically. 456 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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However, migratory patterns in South Asia demonstrate sufficiently that this phenomenon defies easy categorisation, and a monochromatic narrative, and therefore while identification projects may document a number of refugees/ asylum seekers, many others would fall outside of such mechanisms. Migration in South Asia highlights the layered nature of identity that is the hallmark of citizenship in South Asia. The North East, for instance, is a kaleidoscope of movements of people across and within the borders. These continually changing patterns turn the received and valorised conceptions of nation state and citizenship on their head, suggesting that distinctions made in law between the citizen and the alien, the insider and the outsider, the excluded and included, lose their meaning. The identities are fluid and not always hostage to the ones determined by the state; the allegiances towards ‘brothers’ across the borders continue to be strong, as the cases of Arunachal Pradesh or Mizoram indicate.71 The North Eastern frontier emphasises that physical borders are continually broken only to revive old ethnic and historical ties.

CONCLUSION

While explaining the functioning of laws applicable to refugees,

Rajeev Dhavan states that a ‘great deal of the actual practice followed [by the Government of India] is not known. The reason for this is that, apart from the more obvious arrangements, much of the practice is handled confidentially on the basis of records and official notations that are not publicly available for scrutiny’ (Dhavan 2004, 83).. In the context of the refugee/migrants mapping exercise, such an observation cannot be overemphasised. Vis-a-vis refugees, identification projects are dictated more by India’s security considerations and less by any need to protect refugees. The Tibetan and the Sri Lankan Tamil experiences are a good indicator, and newer projects such as Aadhaar as well as others point to an attempt to streamline and strengthen them. However, whether and how security concerns trump the rights of refugees or the unintended benefits that may accrue, would require sustained empirical research. In the Wake of Aadhaar 457


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Newspaper articles Alawadhi, N. 2012. ‘Afghan refugees surviving solely on kindness of neighbours’, The Hindu, February 4, (http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tpnewdelhi/article2859149.ece). Asia News. 2011. ‘Burmese soldiers in civilians clothes attack and rob Kachin civilian’s, January 7, (http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Burmese-soldiers-in-civilian-clothesattack-and-rob-Kachin-civilians-21986.html). Bhattacharya, S. 2012. ‘India’s Myanmar refugees get visas after month of protests in Delhi’, The Nation, May 17, (http://www.thenational.ae/news/world/south-asia/ indias-myanmar-refugees-get-visas-after-month-of-protests-in-delhi). Bhuyan, A., 2011. ‘Somalia’s nowhere people’, Open Magazine, September 10, http:// www.openthemagazine.com/article/international/somalia-s-nowhere-people. Chakma, T. 2012. ‘Afghan refugee family denied space in India’, Merinews, June 24, http://www.merinews.com/article/afghan-refugee-family-denied-space-inindia/15871163.shtml.



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Dasgupta D. 2011. ‘Exiles in back streets’, Outlook India, July 4, http://www.outlookindia. com/article.aspx?277506. Gautam, N. 2008. ‘Bhutan’s way of ethnic cleaning’, ex Ponto Magazine, July 23, (http:// expontomagazine.com/nl/opinie/244-bhutans-way-of-ethnic-cleansing). Kachin News Group. 2012. ‘Singhpo in India hold 28th Manau dance festival’, March 22, (http://www.kachinnews.com/news/culture/2238-singpho-in-india-hold-28thmanau-dance-festival.html). Mani, J.T. 2008. ‘Citizenship issues plague Nepali-speaking Indians too’, 14 March, Business World, (http://www.businessworld.in/index.php/Miscellaneous/ Identity-Crisis.html). Mann Z., 2012. ‘Rohingyas in India demand full refugee status’, Irrawaddy, May 1, (http://www.irrawaddy.org/archives/3388). Outlook. 2008. ‘Hindu migrants from Pak await citizenship for 17 years’, June 16, (http://news.outlookindia.com/items.aspx?artid=580909). Puri, B. Undated. ‘Refugee problem in Jammu and Kashmir’, Kashmir News, (http:// www.kashmirnewz.com/a0002.html). Raina, P. 2012. ‘Thousands of Myanmar Rohingyas struggle for refugee status in India’, The New York Times, India Edition, May 18, http://india.blogs.nytimes. com/2012/05/18/thousands-of-myanmar-rohingyas-struggle-for-refugee-statusin-india/). Sharan, A. 2010. ‘Iraqi refugee fights for survival in city’, Hindustan Times, December 27 (http://www.hindustantimes.com/India-news/NewDelhi/Iraqi-refugee-fightsfor-survival-in-city/Article1-643198.aspx). Sikand, Y. Undated. ‘Pakistani Hindu migrants in India: Demanding to be heard’, Cobra Post, http://www.cobrapost.com/documents/pakistani_hindu_migrants_to_india. htm). Stancati, M. 2012. ‘Burmese refugees not tempted by new Myanmar’, The Wall Street Journal, May 16, (http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2012/05/16/burmeserefugees-not-tempted-by-new-myanmar/) 2008. ‘India not to sign the refugee convention’, 28 March, IANS, http://twocircles.net/ node/5733. 2012. ‘Stateless Burmese Rohingyas lament India “hardships”’, May 17, BBC http:// www.bbc.co.uk/news/18082296. Tun, S. 2010. ‘Border fence unnecessary, Mizoram authorities say’, Mizzima News, September 9, (http://www.mizzima.com/news/regional/4339-border-fenceunnecessary-mizoram-authorities-say.html).

Jounals (including online journals) Bagchi, J and Dasgupta, S. 2002. ‘The problem, in Porous Borders, Divided Self: A symposium on the Partitions in the East’, India Seminar, February, http://www. india-seminar.com/2002/510/510%20the%20problem.htm. Basavapatna, S. 2012. ‘Chins in Mizoram: The case of borders making brothers illegal’, Journal of Borderland Studies, Volume 27, Number 1.



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Devdas, V. & Mummery J. 2008. ‘Protean borders and unsettled interstices’, Borderland e-journal, Vol 7, No.1, http://www.borderlands.net.au/vol7no1_2008/editors_ protean.htm. Hans, A. 1993. Srilankan ‘Tamil refugees in India’, Refuge, Vol. 13, No. 3 (June), (http:// pi.library.yorku.ca/ojs/index.php/refuge/article/viewFile/21731/20401). Hans, A. 1997. ‘Sri Lankan Tamil refugee women in India’, Refuge, Vol. 16, No. 2 (June), (https://pi.library.yorku.ca/ojs/index.php/refuge/article/ viewFile/21913/20582). Jama, L.M and Basavapatna S., 2009. ‘Africa: The policy will kill us: Somali nationals seeking asylum in India’, Pambazuka News, Issue 458, http://pambazuka.org/ en/category/refugees/60378. Saxena, P. 2007. ‘Creating legal space for refugees in India: the milestones crossed and the roadmap for the future’, International Journal of Refugee Law, IJRL 2007 19 (246).

Articles and Reports Chandrashekaran, S. 1998. ‘The problem of Bhutanese refugees in Nepal—Role for India, South Asia Analysis Group’, (http://www.southasiaanalysis. org/%5Cnotes%5Cnote4.html). Chin Human Rights Organisation. 2004. ‘An assessment of Chin refugees in Mizoram and Delhi’, (http://www.chro.ca/resources/refugee-issues/286-assessmentreport-on-burmese-refugees-in-mizoram-and-delhi.html). Human Rights Watch, 2009. “We are like forgotten people: unsafe in Burma, unprotected in India”, (http://www.hrw.org/reports/2009/01/27/we-are-forgotten-people). Levesque J and Rahman, M.Z. 2008, ‘Tension in the rolling hills: Burmese population and border trade in Mizoram’, Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies, Research Paper 14, April, (www.ipcs.org/pdf_file/issue/1636771605IPCS-ResearchPaper14. pdf). McLean, P. 2011. ‘Incomplete citizenship, statelessness and human trafficking, A preliminary analysis of the current situation in West Bengal’, Policies and Practices, January, Calcutta Research Group. Minorities at Risk Project. 2004. ‘Chronology for Lhotshampas in Bhutan’, (http://www. unhcr.org/refworld/docid/469f386a1e.html). Mirante, E. 2004. ‘Razor’s Edge: Survival Crisis for Refugees from Burma in Delhi, India’, Project Maje, USA. (http://www.soros.org/publications/razors-edge). Nair, R. 2001. ‘Burmese refugees in New Delhi—Denied refugee status subsistence Allowance’, Human Rights Features, HRF/37/01, (http://www.hrdc.net/sahrdc/ hrfeatures/HRF37.htm). Nair, R. undated. ‘The Situation of Burmese Refugees in Asia: Special Focus on India’, SAHRDC, (http://www.hrdc.net/sahrdc/resources/burmese_refugee.htm). Nair, R. 1999. ‘Abandoned and betrayed: Afghan refugees under UNHCR protection in New Delhi’, South Asian Refugee Watch, Volume 1, Number 2, December, http:// www.calternatives.org/resource/pdf/Abandoned%20and%20Betrayed%20-%20 Afghan%20Refugees%20under%20UNHCR%20Protection%20in%20New%20 Delhi.pdf.



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People’s Union for Civil Liberties (TN & Pondicherry). 2006. ‘Conditions in Sri Lankan Tamil refugee camps’, (http://www.pucl.org/Topics/International/2006/ refugees-srilanka-report.html). Refugees International. 2009. ‘India: Close the gap for Burmese Refugees’, (http:// www.refugeesinternational.org/sites/default/files/120909_india_closegap. pdf). Refugee Watch. 2010. ‘An interview with Ved Bhasin on forced migration’. No. 36, (www. mcrg.ac.in/rw%20files/RW36/9.Interview.pdf). Relief Web. 2012. ‘Myanmar: Bleak prospects for Chin refugees’, June 21, http:// reliefweb.int/node/505316. Singh, D.G. 2010. ‘Afghan women in the diaspora: Surviving identity and alienation’, NTSAsia Research Paper No. 4, Singapore: RSIS Centre for Non-Traditional Security (NTS) for NTS Asia, (http://www.rsis.edu.sg/nts/HTML-Newsletter/Report/pdf/ NTS-Asia_RP_Deepali.pdf). Smith, M. 2002. ‘Burma (Myanmar): A time for change’, Minority Rights Group International, (www.minorityrights.org/download.php?id=133). South Asia Human Rights Documentation Centre. 1997. ‘Survival, Dignity, and democracy: Burmese refugees in India’, (http://www.hrdc.net/sahrdc/resources/survival_ dignity.htm). South Asia Forum for Human Rights. Undated. ‘Survey of unrecognised Bhutanese refugees in Nepal’, (http://www.safhr.org/index.php?option=com_conte nt&view=ar ticle&id=130:sur vey-of-unrecognised-bhutanese-refugees-innepal&catid=38:programme-activities&Itemid=80). South Asia Human Rights Documentation Centre. 1999. ‘No place to turn: Afghan refugees in New Delhi’, July 26, http://www.hrdc.net/sahrdc/hrfeatures/HRF04. htm. South Asia Human Rights Documentation Centre. 2008. ‘Somali refugees in India: A struggle for survival and dignity’, http://www.hrdc.net/sahrdc/hrfeatures/ HRF185.htm. Tibet Justice Centre. 2011. ‘Tibet’s stateless nationals II: Tibetan refugees in India, A report’, September, (http://www.tibetjustice.org/reports/stateless-nationals-ii/ stateless-nationals-ii.pdf). Suzuki, R. 2004. ‘Social capital and the significance of pre-migration context among Burmese refugees communities in Canada’, MA Thesis, University of Waterloo. World Refugee Survey—India. 2009. http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/country,,USCRI,,B TN,,4a40d2a75d,0.html. Xavier, G. 2007. ‘The protracted refugee life of the Sri Lankan Tamils’, Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group, (www.mcrg.ac.in/AddReading/2007/Gladston1.doc). Bali Process. 2012. ‘Ad-hoc group workshop on biometrics for identity integrity in immigration, India, Final co-chair’s statement’, April, (http://www.baliprocess. net/files/Final-Co-chairs%20Statement%20Biometrics%20Workshop%202012. pdf). Bali Process. 2012. ‘Ad-hoc group workshop on biometrics for identity integrity in immigration, India, UNHCR’s statement’, (www.baliprocess.net).



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Government of India documents Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs. 2010. Implementation of mission mode project on ‘Immigration, visa and foreigners’ registration & tracking (IVFRT)’, Press Information Bureau, May 13, (http://pib.nic.in/newsite/erelease. aspx?relid=61800). 2008. Communication by the Joint Secretary (Wel. & Inf.) & CPIO of the Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India dated January 9, No. RTI/551/403/2007.

UNHCR documents UNHCR. 2012. ‘Summary conclusions of meeting with representatives of asylumseekers from northern Rakhine State, Myanmar’, (http://www.unhcr.org.in/ pages/showmainstory/10). UNHCR. 2011.’ UNHCR distributes pioneering smart ID cards to refugees in India’, August 1, (http://www.unhcr.org/4e4bd1506.html). UNHCR. 2009. ‘UNHCR Policy on Refugee Protection and Solutions in Urban Areas’, September, (http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/4ab8e7f72.html). UNHCR. 2007. ‘Q&A: Refugee registration takes UNHCR official across southern Africa’, March 30, (http://www.unhcr.org/460d08e34.html). UNHCR. 2005. ‘Procedural standards for refugee status determination under UNHCR’s mandate’, September, Geneva, (http://www.unhcr.org/publPUBL/4316f0c02. html). UNHCR. 2003. ‘UNHCR handbook for registration: Procedures and standards for registration, population data management and documentation’, September, (http://www.unhcr.org/3f8e9ce14.html).

Case laws Mr. Bogyi v Union fo India, CR 1847 of 1989 (Guwahati High Court) Dr. Malavika Karlekar v Union of India, WP 583 of 1992 (Supreme Court of India) Digvijay Mote v Union of India, WA 354 of 1994 (Karnataka High Court) P. Nedumaran v Union of Indiam WP 12298 and 12313 of 1992 (Madras High court)

Interviews Interview with Abdulla Dawood, Uighur refugee, January 6, 2009, New Delhi. Interviews with Afghan refugees by South Asia Human Rights Documentation Centre, 2007, New Delhi. Discussion with Rohingya refugees, May 15, 2012, New Delhi. Interview with UNHCR India, August 20, 2012, New Delhi. Interview with an official of the Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India, August 28, 2012, New Delhi. Interview with Tenzin Tsundue, Tibetan activist by Centre for the Study of Culture and Society, undated, Dharmashala available at: https?//paa.ma/cko/info.



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NOTES 1

The term ‘migrant’ best captures the various categories of migrants that arrive each day in India. For the purposes of this section, the term migrant refers to the act of migration and does not only refer to the ‘economic migrant’ with which that this term is normally associated. The neat classifications usually made in the discipline of ‘forced migration’ do not cover economic migrants. These include refugees and stateless persons, and denote individuals who necessarily cross the borders of their country owing to political persecution and the inability or unwillingness of the refugee to seek protection in the country of origin.

2

Saxena 2007, 3.

3

The term ‘refugee’ will, for the purposes of this essay, include the asylum-seeker as well as the stateless person.

4

Roy, 2010; Menon and Bhasin 1998; Bose 2000; Bagchi and Dasgupta 2003; Samaddar 2003; Samaddar 1999.

5

Smith 2002; Suzuki 2004; SAHRDC 1997; Refugees International 2009; IPCS 2008; The Other Media 2010; Tibet Justice Centre 2011; Hans 1997; Xavier 2007; Nair 1999.

6

Devdas and Mummery, 2008.

7

Internal displacement in the North East due to ethnic conflict, claims over land, and ‘development’ schemes, to name a few, are out of the purview of this chapter while discussing the North East.

8

Sakhong 2003.

9

Migration between Mizoram and Chin State/Sagaing Division in Burma is a historically accepted fact. In fact, Mizos who once travelled to these parts of Burma before both the countries became independent note with nostalgia that given a right political climate, they would migrate to the Chin state permanently.

10 Significant political developments have taken place in Burma over the last one year, including the release of Aung San Suu Kyi and the holding of local elections, but the positive impact of these is yet to be seen in the frontier regions of Burma. The population along the ethnic nationality states in Burma has been reported to have fled Burma, including Kachins and Rohingyas. Recent reports in India’s mainstream newspapers have also noted the diffidence amongst the Burmese refugees in returning to Burma. See for instance, Stancati, Margharita, 2012, http://blogs.wsj.com/ indiarealtime/2012/05/16/burmese-refugees-not-tempted-by-new-myanmar/ (last accessed July 21, 2012). 11 Relief Web 2012; Human Rights Watch 2009. 12 Mirante, 2004; Nair, 2001; Baujard, 2001. 13 The Other Media, 2010. 14 The refugee crisis of Bhutan may be traced to the Bhutanese monarchy’s policy of the 1990s of ‘cleansing’ the state from citizens who migrated from Nepal since the 7th century. In 1990, Bhutanese nationals of Nepali origin were systematically stripped of their citizenship through the enactment of a Citizenship law passed in 1985 and the policy of “one nation-one people”, which led to the migration of several thousands of Bhutanese nationals into India and Nepal. Most refugees eventually settled in camps in Nepal. The government of India refused to give refuge to the Bhutanese nationals, who were arrested, as several newspapers reported, and detained in jails in West Bengal in the mid-1990s. See, Minorities at Risk Project, Chronology for Lhotshampas in Bhutan, 2004, available at: http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/469f386a1e.html. See also Gautam, 2008, http://expontomagazine.com/nl/opinie/244-bhutans-way-of-ethnic-cleansing (last accessed



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June 27, 2012) for a historical account the migration of Lothsampas into Bhutan and the political considerations that lead to Bhutan allowing such migration. 15 Chandrashekaran, 1998. accessed June 27, 2012).

http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/%5Cnotes%5Cnote4.html

(last

16 South Asia Forum for Human Rights, undated, http://www.safhr.org/index.php?option=com_content& view=article&id=130:survey-of-unrecognised-bhutanese-refugees-in-nepal&catid=38:programmeactivities&Itemid=80 (last accessed June 27, 2012). 17 Kachin News Group, 2012, available at http://www.kachinnews.com/news/culture/2238-singphoin-india-hold-28th-manau-dance-festival.html (last accessed June 27, 2012). See also, Asia News, January 7, 2011 http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Burmese-soldiers-in-civilian-clothes-attack-androb-Kachin-civilians-21986.html (last accessed June 27, 2012). 18 CHRO: 2004. 19 Bhattacharyya, 2008. 20 Menon & Bhasin: 1998; Samaddar: 2003, 152-181. 21 Bagchi & Dasgupta: 2003; Samaddar: 2003, 211-280; Bose: 2000; McLean: 2011. 22 Bagchi and Dasgupta 2002. 23 Samaddar 2008. 24 Samaddar 2003:156. 25 Bose, 2000. 26 Sikand, http://www.cobrapost.com/documents/pakistani_hindu_migrants_to_india.htm accessed June 12, 2012).

(last

27 Kothari, 2007: 2. 28 Presentation at the Digital Deliberations: Workshop on Digitalisation of Identity and its Impact on the Migrant Masses, June 29-30, 2012, organised by Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group, Calcutta/CSCS, Bangalore. 29 The report of the working group on ‘confidence building measures across segments of society’ in J&K state presented at the third roundtable conference in New Delhi on April 24, 2007 30 Refugee Watch, 36, 2010. 31 UNHCR, 2012. 32 A number of journalists who were outspoken during the war were targeted. A few prominent journalists were also killed, allegedly by the State authorities, as some news reports indicate. A handful of journalists who arrived in India soon left for European countries where they could apply for asylum. The Government of India's policy is clear that it would not grant refugee status to any Sinhala from Sri Lanka, given its relationship with the Government of Sri Lanka. 33 PUCL Report, 2006 available at http://www.pucl.org/Topics/International/2006/refugees-srilankareport.html (last accessed June 27, 2012). 34 Reply by the Joint Secretary (Wel. & Inf.) & CPIO of the Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India dated January 9, 2008, No. RTI/551/403/2007 which stated in paragraph 3 that ‘there were exchanges of letters between Government of India and UNHCR with regard to facilitating smooth repatriation of displaced persons of Sri Lanka...’ 35 See www.unhcr.org.in. The rest include Afghans, Congolese, Eritreans, Sudanese, Iraqis and Iranians. 36 Banerjee and Raychaudhuri, 2011:125, Banerjee et. Al, 2005, 213. 37 Stancati 2012, BBC 2012, Irrawaddy 2012 and personal interviews with Rohingya refugees in Delhi, May 15, 2012.



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38 http://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/18/thousands-of-myanmar-rohingyas-struggle-forrefugee-status-in-india/ . 39 SAHRDC 1999. 40 See for instance, Alawadhi, 2012, available at http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/ tp-newdelhi/article2859149.ece (last accessed June 27, 2012). 41 Chakma 2012; Nair 1999; Gaur Singh 2010, and Interviews with Afghan refugees by South Asia Human Rights Documentation Centre, 2007. On file with the author. 42 Personal interview with Abdulla Dawood, an Uighur, living in India since 2003, January 6, 2009, New Delhi. 43 Little is known about African refugees in India. The Congolese, Sudanese, Eritreans and Eritreans, form a minority amongst the African refugees in India. There appears to be no study of these communities. However, it is safe to conclude that their social and economic conditions are no different from other mandate refugee groups. 44 Samaddar: 2003. 45 SAHRDC 2008, Dasgupta 2011, Bhuyan 2011, Jama and Basavapatna, 2009. 46 The UNHCR website www.unhcr.org.in does not include Palestinian refugees in the category ‘others’. However, other reports do note an unspecified number of Palestinian refugees in India. 47 Sharan, 2010; World Refugee Survey 2009. 48 The other being the Citizenship Act, 1955, which, in specific reference to the population mapping project, requires all citizens to be registered in the National Population Register. The Unique Identification Authority of India Bill, 2010, strictly in terms of the law, would not apply, although the project is currently underway. 49 See for instance, Mr. Bogyi v Union fo India, CR 1847 of 1989 (Guwahati High Court), Dr. Malavika Karlekar v Union of India, WP 583 of 1992 (Supreme Court of India), where the court held that refugees have a right to undergo refugee status determination, and thus stopped their deportation, Digvijay Mote v Union of India, WA 354 of 1994 (Karnataka High Court), where the court directed that a destitute refugee may be provided with basic amneties, P. Nedumaran v Union of Indiam WP 12298 and 12313 of 1992 (Madras High court), where it was held that forced repatriation is not permissible. 50 The reasons may be many including lack of information, the inability to travel to New Delhi to register with UNHCR or the decision not to formally seek asylum. See for instance SAHRDC, Survival, Dignity, and Democracy: Burmese Refugees in India, 1997, available at http://www.hri.ca/partners/sahrdc/ burmese/fulltext.html (last accessed June 27, 2012) which notes that Burmese refugees who initially fled to India following the crackdown on pro-democracy protestors in 1988 opted not to apply for asylum because of their belief that their applications would be rejected by UNHCR. 51 Basavapatna, 2012: 64; HRW 2009. 52 It is not clear whether this issue has been resolved. Refugees argue that approaching the FRRO at the time of their arrival in the country puts them at a risk of being arrested for violating Section 3, Passport (Entry into India) Act (entering India without a passport), 1920 and Section 14, Foreigners Act, 1946 (continues to stay in India after the expiry of the period for which a visa was issued). Secondly, since the Refugee Status Determination process of UNHCR takes anywhere between 6 months to 2 years, they are not in a position to apply for Residence Permits at an earlier stage. It cannot be ruled out, however, that one of the reasons for imposing this fee may also have had to check the number of Burmese nationals officially seeking asylum. 53 Tibet Justice Centre, Tibet’s Stateless Nationals II: Tibetan Refugees in India, A Report, September 2011, p. 8. available at http://www.tibetjustice.org/reports/stateless-nationals-ii/statelessnationals-ii.pdf (last accessed June 27, 2012).



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54 TN & Pondicherry PUCL Report, 2006, available at http://www.pucl.org/Topics/International/2006/ refugees-srilanka-report.html (last accessed June 27, 2012). 55 Interview with UNHCR India, August 14, 2012, New Delhi. 56 UNHCR Handbook for Registration: Procedures and Standards for Registration, Population Data Management and Documentation, September 2003, p.6. Available at http://www.unhcr.org/3f8e9ce14.html (last accessed August 10, 2012). 57 Procedural Standards for Refugee Status Determination under UNHCR’s Mandate, September 2005, UNHCR, Geneva, http://www.unhcr.org/publPUBL/4316f0c02.html (last accessed June 27, 2012). 58 Q&A: Refugee registration takes UNHCR official across southern Africa, March 30, 2007, UNHCR, available at http://www.unhcr.org/460d08e34.html (last accessed August 12, 2012) 59 Representatives from Australia (co-chair), Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, Peoples Republic of Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, Maldives, Republic of the Union of Myanmar, Islamic Republic of Pakistan, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Kingdom of Thailand, United States of America, and Vietnam as well as representatives from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) participated. Canada and the United Kingdom attended the meeting as observers (Bali Process April 2012: Final Co-Chairs' Statement). 60 A Mission Mode Project approved by the Cabinet Committee on Economic affairs in 2010. The National Institute for Smart Government (NSIG) was selected and tasked with the responsibility for generating a comprehensive e-Governance solution for the immigration, visa issuance and foreigners’ registration and tracking functions, and to prepare a Detailed Project Report (DPR) for the same. 61 See for instance, Anupama Roy, 2010. 62 ‘60 undocumented migrants pushed back while trying to enter Manipur’, The Hindu, September 2, 2012 available at http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article3850239.ece (last accessed September 2, 2012). 63 Mani, 2008, available at http://www.businessworld.in/index.php/Miscellaneous/Identity-Crisis.html (last accessed 26 August 2010). 64 Bhattacharya, 2012, available at http://www.thenational.ae/news/world/south-asia/indiasmyanmar-refugees-get-visas-after-month-of-protests-in-delhi (last accessed August 12, 2012). See also, ‘Summary conclusions of meeting with representatives of asylum-seekers from northern Rakhine State, Myanmar’, UNHCR, available at http://www.unhcr.org.in/pages/showmainstory/10 (last accessed July 11, 2012). 65 Raina, 2012, available at http://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/18/thousands-of-myanmarrohingyas-struggle-for-refugee-status-in-india/ (last accessed August 10, 2012). 66 For instance the recently announced policy of ‘long term visas’ to refugees is equally confusing. While it is termed as a ‘visa’, the FRRO states that they issue a ‘Residence Permit’ under Rule 7 of the Foreigners Order, 1948, a document that all foreigners have to apply for once they are in India on a valid visa and satisfy certain conditions of duration of stay. If it is only the Residence Permit that is issued to a refugee, this does not explain why the Ministry should carry out a parallel ‘refugee status determination’ (verifying whether the applicant is a refugee or an economic migrant, as stated by the Ministry of Home Affairs official). 67 Interview with Tenzin Tsundue by Centre for the Study of Culture and Society, undated. See video: https://pad.ma/CKO. 68 ‘UNHCR distributes pioneering smart ID cards to refugees in India’, http://www.unhcr.org/4e4bd1506. html, August 11, 2011, UNHCR (last accessed June 25, 2012).



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69 UN High Commissioner for Refugees, UNHCR Policy on Refugee Protection and Solutions in Urban Areas, September 2009, available at: http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/4ab8e7f72. html (last accessed 3 September 2012). 70 Interview with an official of the Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India, August 28, 2012. 71 See for instance, Tun, 2010, http://www.mizzima.com/news/regional/4339-border-fenceunnecessary-mizoram-authorities-say.html (last accesssed June 27, 2012).



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CHAPTER 15

Migration and Financial Exclusion in AP S. Ananth Independent researcher, Hyderabad

Domestic migration, across districts or across state borders, often forces migrants back into extreme conditions of informal debt. This essay proposes that whereas identityverification may well be possible using Aadhaar, the capacity of state benefit to travel to where the migrant is remains a long way off. Even today, benefits extended by State governments typically tie villagers to their domiciled address. Even as direct cash transfer systems come into place, economic migrants in cities either use available formal money-transfer facilities (where these exist) or, more often than not, fall back on usurious informal networks. The essay develops field studies in two out-migration-heavy districts of Chittor and Mahbubnagar in Andhra Pradesh.

INTRODUCTION On domestic migration: The 2001 Census had classified 314 million people as migrants. Nearly 268 million were reported to be ‘inter-State’ migrants.1 An often overlooked aspect of this number was that 74 million of these people migrated from one district to another in the same State. Andhra Pradesh typically sees a high incidence of migration, both to other states and to the neighbouring districts. This migration is often concentrated in a few regions. While official statistics related to migration are clouded by classification of migration following marriage, the proportion of people



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migrating for economic reasons is quite high. The 64th round of the NSSO survey (on Migration in India: 2007–08) observed that AP has a migration rate of 88 per 1000 households2 and 61% of the males in AP migrate for economic reasons.3 This essay is based on field visits and unstructured interviews with migrants in different parts of Mahabubnagar and Chittoor districts of Andhra Pradesh. It attempts to highlight the processes of migration and some of the issues that migrants face on a daily basis. Both districts, along with Kurnool, Karimnagar, Srikakulam, Vizinagaram, Visakhapatnam, and Prakasam, see major out-migration, as we see in the following chart: Name of District

Destination of Migrants

Sector where employment sought

Chittoor

Chennai and Bangalore

Construction, Domestic helps, other informal sector

Kurnool

Bangalore, Guntur, Hyderabad

Construction, Agricultural wage labour (chillies) and other informal sector

Karimnagar

Hyderabad, Mumbai and Gulf

Daily Wage/Manual labour and other informal sector

Mahabubnagar

Hyderabad, Mumbai

Daily Wage/Manual labour and informal sector

Srikakulam, Vizinagaram, Visakhapatnam

Hyderabad, Visakhapatnam, Coastal Andhra Pradesh

Daily Wage/Manual Labour and informal sector

Prakasam

Hyderabad, Chennai, Bangalore

Daily Wage/Manual labour and informal sector



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An attempt is made to trace the issues and the problems faced by migrants and the implications that these issues have on the broader questions related to financial inclusion in Andhra Pradesh, and thence on how the Aadhaar project will affect/impact this sector. At the onset, it is imperative to note that Andhra Pradesh’s economy has certain important features. A major paradox is that such migration clearly places limits on the reach of state welfare initiatives. Although technology, and the mapping of the population of the state, has facilitated access to formal banking institutions even among the poor in remote rural regions, it is still limited to those areas where the person is meant to be domiciled: once a person migrates to the towns/cities, the institutions of the State have little knowledge about the existence of the person. Migration, even into a neighbouring district, therefore invariably forces the migrant right back into earlier informal systems and practices of debt.

FACETS OF MIGRATION IN AP

Old woman making agarbattis in Narasimhapuram Village of Palasamudram Mandal of Chittoor District. 470 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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Economic causes underscore migration in a number of districts.

Historically, though the precise causes for migration have varied over the centuries, broadly, the aspiration for a better economic life is what drives the mobility of labour. One key cause is rural distress migration, which is correlated to the failure of monsoons rains. The past year has witnessed a dire situation in parts of Chittoor district: to take one instance that this researcher saw, the drought in the past year has seen even some of the landed elites of Gangavaram Mandal of Chittoor district migrate to Bangalore or Hyderabad, forced to seek jobs in the lower layers of the hospitality sector. This particular village assumes significance as the landed elite in the village were in the past known for their ability to play host to government or other guests who visited any village in the neighbourhood: and this incident was widely relayed as a metaphor for the distress in the rural areas. The destinations are often the largest cities. This essay highlights the migration to Hyderabad and Bangalore. Both the cause and the form of migration varies from district to district. A large part of the migration is facilitated by relatives/friends or through agents (professional labour contractors, often a hereditary occupation). In a number of cases, agents and contractors make frequent rounds to the villages.

MIGRANTS OF MAHABUBNAGAR DISTRICT

In Mahabubnagar district, a labour contractor signs

contractual agreements with large real estate companies for the supply of manual labour. These labour contractors supply labour in tens of thousands to various large builders and infrastructure companies in Hyderabad. A person wanting to migrate for work contacts an agent, and negotiates an interest-free advance. The number of persons in a household who are willing to migrate is part of the initial negotiations with the agent. The oral agreement to migrate varies and may extend up to 6-10 months, rarely beyond that duration. During the discussions, the terms and conditions, allowances, menu of the food to be provided at the work location,4 and other details are discussed. A few days before the actual relocation, agents In the Wake of Aadhaar 471


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provide the advance, which serves also as a prepayment: the advance varies from ` 50,000 – ` 100,000, and even higher if the entire family is migrating. This advance is often an important attraction for the migratory labour since it is often used to retire high cost debt or to meet other family expenses. The high cost of credit in the local economy invariably adds to the attraction of such advance payments. Payment for labour at the work site is essentially for daily maintenance. The allowance is usually a few thousand per month, and suffices only for subsistence. One day, generally a Sunday, is a holiday. A person working on a Sunday is paid extra money, in cash for extra work. The process of relocation often draws headlines in local newspapers, with lorries and buses lining up village roads to transport migrant labour to the major cities. Usually the cost of transportation is borne by the labour contractor. The migrant labour is housed on the construction site in temporary structures. In Mahabubnagar, it was common for able-bodied members of a household to migrate for work, and to leave behind the old or children in their village. In recent years, there has been an emphasis on children’s education, and children are definitely a smaller portion of migratory labour than before. Older members of the family, especially grandparents, tend to take over the responsibility of handling the immediate needs of children. The financial needs of those left behind are provided either through a network of family and friends, or by negotiations with either the banking sector or the informal agent network. We return to the movement of money among the migrants later in this essay.

MIGRATION IN CHITTOOR DISTRICT

The problems in certain parts of Chittoor district highlight some interesting sidelights of India’s development model. Parts of the district which borders two States (Karnataka and Tamil Nadu) clearly highlight the role that geographic distance from the district headquarters plays in how government benefits reach intended beneficiaries. The historic cultural familiarity and 472 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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kinship ties between people on both sides of the border only make migration easier. Relocation to a new place and the ability or inability to adjust to a new environment is not an issue in the district. Interestingly, access to parts of AP is easier through Tamil Nadu. This proximity to other States means that it is common for people residing on the AP side of the border to possess ration cards on both sides of the border. However, care is commonly taken to use the Tamil Nadu ration card only as identification where necessary, and to avail fees concessions in educational institutions, and not for drawing on the Civil Supplies department subsidies.5 Typically, those on the AP side are cautious and avoid accessing other subsidies on the Tamil Nadu side to avoid antagonising political interests on that side. A large part of the financial requirements in the border areas are met by informal moneylenders from Tamil Nadu. They charge rates that could be as high as 40% per month. The picture below is from the sheet of one such lender.

Much of the migration in Chittoor district is to two major cities in the vicinity—Bangalore and Chennai. Unlike Mahabubnagar, where labour contractors hold dominance, migration is facilitated by previous business relationships and peers. Migration in the district is for a shorter span of time 3 to 6 months. The period immediately after Sankaranthi/Pongal inaugurates the movement of people. The peak season for migration is from January-May. The construction sector, especially brick kilns, are an important source of employment for migratory labour. As in the case of other districts, migration is restricted to the able-bodied members of the family. As with Mahbubnagar, the major attraction is the interest-free advance. However, in contrast to Mahabubnagar, there is a fundamental difference in the manner in which labour is paid. The interest-free advance component is In the Wake of Aadhaar 473


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not substantial, and rarely exceeds around ` 20,000 per person. However, in addition to this advance, migrants are eligible for fixed, pre-agreed wages. In the case of those working in the brick kilns, they are paid a flat rate of ` 1.20 per brick. A family (comprising of husband and wife) can make between 800–1000 bricks per day with strenuous labour and can therefore earn a maximum of ` 1000 per day: typical daily expenditure for a migrant family averages about ` 300 per day. In other industries too, it is common for migrants to earn a substantially larger amounts of money in the cities. The average earnings of a husband and wife could be up to ` 500–600 per day. This higher income earning potential in the cities is the single most important attraction for migration from the rural areas to the urban regions, coupled with the non-availability of work in the rural areas after the completion of the Kharif season. Migrants reside in clusters where relatives and other members from the home district reside. Migrants from Chittoor continue to frequent their villages after migration to visit their kin, to meet their debt and their other obligations within their village. Migrants unable to visit their village often service their debts or other obligations through friends and family members.

MIGRATION AND MONEY TRANSFERS

The mode of transferring money varies widely in different parts of the

State. In districts such as Warangal, Karimnagar, Mahabubnagar and Kurnool, it is common for migrants to blend informal social networks with banking to remit their earnings in a manner that supplants former informal money transfer systems. In a short span of time, and thanks to technology, the branchless banking initiatives of the formal sector have largely displaced informal sector players. Migrants working as daily wage earners or as lower level employees in the urban service sectors now transfer money by depositing money through the State Bank of India’s ‘online services’ in distant towns. For people who have migrated to Mumbai, it is common to deposit money in the accounts of friends and relatives, and for villagers 474 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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to use ATM cards in the nearest town. The ATM system has entirely supplanted a previous informal system of money transfer using agents. One consequence of this has been the reduction of costs to a minimal level (only the charges for SBI ‘online’ services apply), alongside the speed of the transfer. Agents even in the recent past would charge up to 5% of the value only to make the transfer, and required 4-5 days for the transaction to be complete. Deploying the services of friends and family however has its own limitations due to the inability to carry large sums of money. In contrast to the other districts mentioned above, in Chittoor, access to formal banking institutions through the accounts of peers is mostly nonexistent. Members of the community we spoke to claim that this is due to instances of cheating, where moneys did not reach intended recipients. Here the use of an agent network for migrants (internal and transnational) is nonexistent. Money is either despatched through the official banking channels if there is access to one, or circulates within the informal savings instruments in the cities where the migrants work. The case of migrants from Chittoor is illustrative of the improvisation of financial instruments to suit new requirements. It is common for a number people from neighbouring villages to migrate during the peak season to various cities. Invariably, both social and kinship ties ensure that migrants reside in close vicinity to each other. Social life revolves round friends, relatives and acquaintances from their home district. A predominant majority of the migrants have no access to formal banking institutions. Since keeping cash in unsafe living conditions is the least-preferred option, migrants often start chit-fund groups in order to invest the money that they earn. These chit-funds are open only to those who are part of the large social or kinship group. The amount invested in such chit funds is, at times, quite high and could go up to ` 15,000 per month. The duration of the chit funds coincides with the stay of the migrant labour in the major cities.



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CHAPTER 15

ISSUES FACED BY MIGRANTS

The problems faced by migrants are symptomatic of the problems

related to the quality of access to formal institutions that participants in the nonformal sector face. However, it is pertinent to note that in AP, access to formal financial institutions such as banks is not indicative of financial inclusion. On the contrary, the existence of bank accounts is a product of either the Self-Help Group (SHG) movement or of the AP government’s decision to encourage cash transfers of various subsidies only through bank accounts. The lack of portability of the accounts leaves much to be desired and tends to reinforce exclusion, especially when people migrate from the rural areas. Identification (or the lack of it) is here an important issue: the inability to access formal financial institutions that facilitate savings and remittances in a safe and cost-effective manner in the vicinity of where they work and where their villages are, is a major problem for migrants. While Aadhaar has the potential to solve the problem of identification, the lack of access to formal infrastructure is more problematic and sometimes forces migrants to invest/ park their savings in risky investment products. Despite various technology solutions implemented by the government, there is a complete absence of portability of services and cash across the rural-urban divide. It is for that reason that migrants have to either access the benefits in their villages (their place of domicile as per government records) or simply forego them due to the lack of portability in the benefits programme. The case of various benefits provided to the citizens by the AP Civil Supplies department is illustrative of these issues. Subsidised items provided through the Civil Supplies department are either accessed by the members of the households who remain in the villages, or the families are forced to dispose it in the community or the ration shop owner. Chittoor district is an exception due to the short distance to the city, thereby facilitating migrants to make the occasional trips to access government benefits. However, migrants face a distinct uncertainty around their continued ability to access government welfare programmes in their villages. Periodic verification 476 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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by government agencies creates a problem for migrants, since absence at the time of the visit of the government official is construed as non-existence of the person/family. This necessitates frequent trips to the village and use of various methods, including requesting the services of local politicians. On occasion there have been some benefits catering directly to such migrants: trains offering daily services (like the one from Kuppam in Chittoor District to Bangalore) to cater to the needs of the migrants are on the rise, allowing migrants to commute.

NOTES 1

http://censusindia.gov.in/Census_And_You/migrations.aspx.

2

Migration in India: 2007-08, National Survey Sample 64th Round, National Survey Sample Office, New Delhi, A-95.3 Migration in India: 2007-08, National Survey Sample 64th Round, National Survey Sample Office, New Delhi, p. 132.

4

The food provided to the migrant labour at the work site usually consists of discussion about items like the number of days that eggs or even chicken will be provided by the labour contractor—once every fortnight. On other days the menu usually consists of Rice and dal.

5

The ease with which people adjusted to this problem of remoteness has interest facets. It is common for residents on both sides to maintain mobile GSM sim cards in both States. Thus when collecting the contact details it is common to ask for the ‘AP phone number’ and the ‘Tamil Nadu phone number’.



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5


– The Homeless



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CHAPTER 15

Shelter, Enumeration and Homelessness: Historical and Contemporary Contexts for Delhi Diya Mehra South Asian University

In 2008, Delhi inaugurated its Mission Convergence programme, with the aim of integrating existing social security and welfare schemes and improving access through a more unified structure. The plan was to include over 40 social programs spread across 9 different departments, all mounted on a database to which would be appended a smart card. The Identity Project focused on one of these programmes, which addressed the city’s homeless: headquartered with the Mother NGO at the St. Stephen’s Hospital. This project had enumerated a number of the city’s homeless people via the creation of Homeless Resource Centres, and a mechanism identifying the geographical location where the homeless typically lived. Such a project spoke to a long history of Delhi’s definition of the slum, the poor, the homeless and the need for shelter for such people. The essay provides a historical overview of the issues of defining, and then enumerating, a people who have themselves been victims of diverse kinds of policy—from eviction to rehousing to now biometric identification.



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INTRODUCTION

I come to the topic of Aadhaar and the homeless in Delhi as someone who has

researched both the history of shelter policy in the city, as well as slum demolitions since the late 1990s, and not as an expert on homelessness or Aadhaar. In this paper, I will try and bring this experience to bear on the issues of shelter, homelessness and policy, with a critical eye and, at the end of the essay, I will hope to have raised some questions about what the past can tell us about the present. What is perhaps most critical is that while a great deal has been written about slum settlements, researching a history of homelessness in the city of Delhi from secondary sources is extremely difficult given the paucity of sources, and also given numerous contradictions in the data available. If nothing else, this essay is testimony to the difficulties of enumeration—both of the homeless, and of solutions to their problems. The first section of the paper will outline a brief genealogy of shelter policies in the city for slum and pavement dwellers, showing that while the state has not been able to provide shelter to all, it has come up with a number of different policies to deal with slums and the homeless population. The second section shows how benefits under these policies have tended to decline, even as policies themselves have shifted between accommodating and evicting the urban poor, as seen in section three. Section four considers Delhi’s contemporary situation, concluding by arguing that given the historic stability in shelter and housing policies vis-à-vis the urban poor and homeless as outlined, what is critical perhaps is not the vehicle in which policy comes, but whether there is widespread delivery of critical and holistic benefits to the urban poor.

A BRIEF GENEALOGY OF SHELTER POLICIES

If we start to consider a history of shelter, homeless, and the urban poor in

Delhi, a good place to begin would be the last decades of the colonial Empire. This, mainly, as the building of New Delhi heightened a conversation about the state of In the Wake of Aadhaar 481


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the native city, or Old Delhi, where ‘too many people lived in too few houses’ (Hume, 1936), in comparison to the lavish imperial capital that Lutyens had built. As Ritu Priya (1993) and Legg (2007) have shown, attention to congestion, poor quality housing, and poor living conditions became a feature of municipal consideration, particularly after 1936, resulting in A.P. Hume’s Report on Relief of Congestion in Delhi, which suggested the setting up of an Improvement Trust both to increase the housing supply in the city, and to manage the problem of slums through slum clearance and rehousing. Little was actually done by the Delhi Improvement Trust. However the concerns with inadequate housing supply, slums and shelter would continue into the new republic especially following Partition when hundreds and thousands of homeless refugees fled to the city. Spurred by concerns for the state of the new capital which had already been experiencing high demographic growth, the spectre of squatters everywhere and the anger of the refugees themselves, the Government of India, egged on by Nehru, instantiated a series of policy measures and legal regimes which continue to inform the city’s urban development and shelter policies even today. Housing Solutions In a second and larger attempt to orchestrate the equable development of the city, the Delhi Development Authority (DDA), established in 1957, was mandated with the acquisition, development, and disposal of massive tracts of agricultural land that lay within the Delhi’s rural hinterland (Birdi, 1982). The DDA Act is an expansion of the colonial model of low-income housing schemes, wherein the DDA, as the competent bureaucratic authority, would subsidise such housing from the profits made from selling land for private commercial and residential use. For the new planners, such a scheme would be effective in ensuring the planned growth of the city, and critically in preventing any future growth of slums, because unlike its colonial counterparts, the DDA controlled the entire land market, and could thus control land use, land speculation and the volatility of land prices. The Delhi Master Plan of 1962, in turn, provided the highly detailed vision of the new city that the Delhi Development Authority was to build and manage, along with the Delhi Municipality. Critical here is its outlining of land use planning the purpose to which land would be used, standards of infrastructure (social, transport etc.)—all 482 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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provided in great detail for different parts of Delhi, as it existed and into the future until 1981. What is salient here, and in the decades that followed are these factors. Firstly, and most critically, the DDA never built the quantities of low-income housing required, even as it emerged as the monopoly land owner and developer in the city. The Master Plan of Delhi did not accurately envision the quantities of housing required in the future. DDA HOUSING STOCK BUILT 1957–1986 Economically Weaker Sections - 45967 (38%) Low Income Group - 34256 (23%) Middle Income Group - 28862 (19%) Self Financing Scheme - 39684 (28%) Total Dwelling Units built: 1.5 lakhs Population of Delhi in 1981: 62.50 lakhs Source: Maitra, 1991. Consequently, since the 1960s, we can identify a stable pattern wherein the number of the urban poor always exceeded the legal low-income shelter available, as Delhi’s economy grew, and as the number of people coming into the city increased. Further, any housing not built by the DDA or on land sold by the DDA was generally illegal, as was the ‘encroachment’ of government land. In sum what we had was a situation where the government controlled the supply of land, and any illegal use of land by the urban poor rendered them prone to eviction. This, in a situation where high land prices make it near-impossible for the urban poor to actually purchase land. Indeed, there is not a decade in any history of modern Delhi where high land prices—including rentals—are not discussed, even for the middle classes (see for example Bose, 1973). In this context, until recently, the literature considered a continuum of both the inevitable presence of illegality and lack of shelter for the urban poor In the Wake of Aadhaar 483


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in Delhi: in the form of unauthorised colonies (built on land sold illegally), slum/squatter dwellers, and pavement dwellers, with pavement dwellers living and sleeping around their areas of work, under the sky. Surveys done over the decades suggest that not having permanent housing, even in the form of a slum, could be an economic strategy of saving among the pavement dwellers surveyed, which in Delhi have historically tended to be working single men, rather than families. Most studies between the 60s and 90s (Iyer and Verma 1964, Basu 1988, Riberio 1987, Kuruvilla, 1990–1991, Dupont and Tingel 1997) focus on the Old City, on railway stations and wholesale markets as areas where pavement dwellers were to be found in large numbers, and where work for the urban poor—in construction, as rickshaw pullers, and as coolies—could be found. What we see here is a fairly stable pattern since at least the 1970s, of the homeless renting space and quilts on sidewalks as shelter, sleeping within or around work premises, on rickshaws, in open parks and spaces, etc. as well as, in some cases, a long term attachment to the area where the person is ‘homeless’ or a pavement dweller, and to roadside restaurants for food and community facilities for water, etc. Interestingly, the period of the 1960s–1970s does have a larger percentage of homeless women, which was to decrease in the 1980s and 1990 (Census, 1976).

Interview with Ashok, a homeless resident in Delhi.

For the homeless, as for slum dwellers, the architecture of governmentprovided shelter too finds its roots in the 1950 and early 1960s. Indeed, the all-India community organisation Bharat Sevak Samaj would be instrumental in drawing attention to the plight of both slum dwellers and pavement 484 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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dwellers through surveys and reports (Bharat Sevak Samaj 1958; Iyer and Verma, 1964). State Benefits More critically for our purposes, as with slum dwellers, so too pavement dwellers would see a reduction, or at least little improvement, in both the kinds of shelter benefits provided by the state and in their quantity over the decades. For slum dwellers, the largest effective housing subsidy provided has been through the violence of eviction, and relocation. Resettlement Plots provided in Delhi under different schemes Year

Plots

Scheme

1960-1975

52,864

JJ Removal Scheme

1975-1977

1,48,262

Emergency

1990-2008

60,000 (approx)

‘New Slum Policy’, revised 1990

In the case of slums, the MPD-1962 had referred to an existing Municipal scheme which had suggested a mixed formula of improvement, provision of community facilities, redevelopment and clearance. In 1957, the Delhi Slum Areas (Improvement and Clearance Act) was passed, under which 49 areas would be demolished and redeveloped. In 1959 and 1960, the JJ Removal Scheme was cleared, which provided subsidised relocation plots for evicted slum dwellers (the scheme was later amended). However the plot size and community facilities provided in new relocation areas following slum demolition has only declined for evicted slum dwellers. In 1960, slum dwellers were given 80 square yard plots under the JJ Removal Scheme, later reduced to 25 sq. yards in 1962 (Birdi, 1981); it was 18 sq. m in 1990, and reduced further to 12.5 sq. meters for eligible slum dwellers who came after 1998.



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Decreasing amenities for Squatter Settlements Amenity

1964 JJ Removal Scheme (eligibles)

1987 Environmental Improvement Scheme (UBSP)

Water: hand pumps Filtered water Hydrants

1 for 20 families 1 for 40 families

1 tap for 30 families

Latrines

1 for 5 families

1 for 10 families

Baths

1 for 6 families

1 for 10 families

Surface drains

Storm water drains

Storm water and open drains

Source: Ali, Sabir. 1998

For the homeless, the number of night shelters remained fairly consistent even as the number of homeless people increased (although there is some disagreement on this). In 1964, the Bharat Samaj Sevak survey indicated 6,000-odd homeless people in Delhi; but by 1971, the Census of India noted that there were 19,163 homeless people in the city, and the 1981 census put that figure at 22,516, and the 1991 census at about 18,838, although Dupont and Tingel (1997) quote the DDA estimate at between 50,000–100,000, given that Census enumerators were given one night to count the homeless in 1991; Sabir Ali (1995) also quotes the DDA as stating that there were 75,000 homeless people in Delhi. At the same time, the number of night shelters has remained fairly constant, even decreasing between 1971–1981. Ranjan Basu (1988) suggests that after the Bharat Sevak Sangh started its first shelter at Ajmeri Gate in 1956, the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) opened its first shelter in 1961, with provisions made for loans to be provided under the Slum Clearance and Improvement Scheme for shelters.



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Night Shelters in Delhi Year/ Source

Permanent Temporary

1961-62 Kuruvilla, 1990

1963-64 10 Birdi, 1981

7

1976 11 Census of India, 1976

10

1980-81 6 Ranjan Basu, 1988 1997 Dupont, 1997

9

Total

Conditions Homeless of setting Population up and operation

14 (8 run by the Bharat Samaj Sevak Sangh) 17 (disputed by BSS report, possibly temporary tents) 21 for 3000 people

12,000

15

22516 Census of India 50,000 – 100,000 (estimated by the DDA)

16 for 4000 people

Media reports extreme cold conditions

19163

However night shelters have not ever seemed highly popular. The Bharat Sevak Samaj (1964) reports that it had to cajole pavement dwellers to try the shelters. By the 1970s, the few sources we have indicate that ‘hundreds’ In the Wake of Aadhaar 487


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of other pavement dwellers would rather live on the streets for a number of reasons (dirt, violence, the lack of maintenance of shelters etc.) (Census 1976).

A GENEALOGY OF POLICY SHIFTS AND OSCILLATIONS

As with slum dwellers, pavement dwellers have also had to deal with

constant oscillation in government policy towards their growing presence—an oscillation between the desire for a modern, clean, beautiful orderly capital of the republic and a concern for the urban poor. In defining these moments, we can consider broadly the moment after the Partition as a moment of putting things in place—as legal regimes, and governmental policies were enacted to ensure that shelter was provided to all, an experiment which we have seen was only to fail, and which explains both a scheme to provide low-income shelter, slum eviction and resettlement, and the passing in 1959, of the Anti-Beggary Act, to ensure that the urban poor was kept in their state-determined place. The 1970s, as well, are marked by both by the Environmental Improvement Scheme (Singh, 1998), focused on the in-situ upgradation of slums and resettlement sites, and the Emergency, when hundreds of slum settlements were destroyed and removed to the periphery of the city. Singh and D’Souza note that during the Emergency the number of homeless appeared to increase, as peripheral sites provided to evicted slum dwellers were too far to commute from. This, even as in the case of pavement dwellers, the 1976 census quotes one homeless street resident as saying, ‘the police comes in jeeps at night, armed with batons. Those who cannot run . . . suffer much’ (Census of India, 1974). Kuruvilla (1990) suggests that in the period 1975-1976, in particular, drives were carried out to ensure that the homeless were in shelters and not on the street.



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The period which follows—i.e. post-1980—saw greater leniency for slum dwellers, as state policies of slum demolition shifted to policies focused on in-situ upgradation through an added thrust on programmes like the Environmental Improvement Scheme. This policy shift came both in relation to worldwide development paradigms increasingly interested in an in-situ approach ignoring illegality, as well as part of the fallout of the harshness of the Emergency, and which would, for example, bring pay-cum-use toilets, water hydrants, hand pumps, tankers, some drainage, and dhaloas to slum settlements. Kuruvilla notes that these new community facilities were also used by pavement dwellers. At the same time, a series of articles published in the Economic and Political Weekly around 1984 point to the criminalisation of squatting on public land, pavement or otherwise (Ghose, 1984). In the case of slum dwellers, their own desire for public visibility goes alongside shifts in the larger urban ambience. In my own experience of working with slum settlements in the 1990s, residents were both fearful of governmental surveys—as they often heralded slum demolition—while at the same time wanting to be included in surveys, as it was felt that this may bring the possibility of obtaining a resettlement plot, given that not all slum dwellers were compensated following their eviction. For homeless pavement-dwellers as well, these dynamics of periodic eviction and police harassment have to be squared within the everyday ethos of negotiation that defines Indian cities. Dupont and Tingel (1997) suggest that bribes are paid to the police to allow the homeless to remain, or the police left alone those homeless who were known to work in a particular neighborhood. There have also been a plethora of charitable organisations that have provided services to the urban poor, through the decades. Writing in 1990, Kuruvilla suggests that over time, if left alone long enough, some pavement dwellers would eventually build some kind of consolidated space for themselves. At the same time, when I worked in the Yamuna Bazaar in the 1990s—an area well known for its homeless population—the presence of an excess of community organisations and government officials would see the homeless move deeper into the Old City, whose narrow galli based geography provided



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the best available cover from harassment and eviction that came from too much public visibility.

CONTEMPORARY DELHI

If we turn to the last decade, the picture is somewhat different. As many

have written, the late 1990s–2010 was a period in which a large number of slum settlements were removed from the city, through adversarial court judgments, on PILs filed in the Delhi High court and Supreme Court. Such evictions were implemented by the democratic state, with the levels of resettlement for evicted slum dwellers decreasing steadily, both in terms of plot size, and in the number of evicted slum dwellers actually given compensation, given the presence of cut-off dates for eligibility ending in 1998. In a survey in 2008, IGSSS attributed the 53% rise in homelessness to such slum demolition. Further, a survey of homeless people carried out by the Institute for Human Development in 2007 noted that eviction was the greatest threat perceived by homeless street dwellers, now outpacing police harassment. Yet in the same IGSSS report, the team notes ‘signs of hope’—namely in new recognition of the problem of homelessness, brought about by the activism of civil society actors, the Courts, and the media. The first wave of expansion of work on the homeless seems to come from 2002, when, as in 1961-62, a cold wave hit Delhi and the media reported that hundreds of homeless people had died. In reaction to ‘adverse’ media reports (Kanth, year unknown), state interest in the homeless increased, and we saw a steady increase at least in the number of temporary shelters run and managed by NGOs. However, reports also suggested that a number of existing shelters were demolished for various reasons, even as the number of temporary shelters increased (IGSSS, 2008). The critical moment for these efforts however appears to have come in late 2009-early 2010, with the Delhi High Court taking suo moto cognisance of a Times of India report on the demolition of a temporary night shelter near 490 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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Pusa Road as part of the beautification drive for the Commonwealth Games.1 By January 20th 2010, the Supreme Court had also intervened, asking the Delhi State Government to ‘take immediate steps to provide night shelters, improve facilities of existing shelters, and provide additional facilities i.e., blankets and mobile toilets, to homeless people in the state’.2 By 2010, a new architecture for managing shelters for the homeless in Delhi had come into place under the Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board, with Mother NGO responsible for managing services for the vastly increased number of shelters, many of which are run by NGOs.

Presentations by Nipesh Narayanan mHS (Micro Housing Solutions) and Nitesh Kumar (SPYM) at the CSCS-NIS Digital Deliberations Bangalore Consultation on Homelessness. The panel was called ‘Market-based approaches to Shelter’. mHS is a ‘social enterprise that designs economically viable housing solutions for under-served populations in India’. According to their statistics, under the ‘urban household by income bracket’, the homeless lie at the less than rupees twenty five hundred per month income bracket. Sixty per cent of homeless individuals had apparently been homeless for more than 10 years. mHS is faced with what he refers to as ‘aspirational urbanism’ when they approached the government. The Society for Promotion of Youth and Masses (SPYM) in New Delhi was started in 1984 by JNU students. This organisation works for the benefit of the ‘homeless’, ‘poor’ and ‘drug users’. The basic motives of the organisation’s Homeless Resource Centre include identification and mapping, provision of basic services, empowerment, livelihood promotion and resource mobilisation. Having identified the needs of the homeless to include health, food, shelter and dignity; they run permanent and winter shelters that try to meet the food, entertainment, and sanitation needs of the people residing there. In a survey conducted by SPYM in 2010, they discovered that around eighty per cent of the homeless population work as street hawkers, rickshaw pullers In the Wake of Aadhaar 491


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and so on. SPYM’s new foray into the shelter problem was the creation of upgraded shelters, branded as Working Men’s Hostels. Among facilities provided including health care and sanitation and vocational training, etc., the SPYM lists ‘Linkage with UIDAI for Aadhaar number & Opening of Bank Accounts’ as one of the additional facilities at the working men’s hostel. This presentation more or less represented problems of homeless people in Delhi and some of the measures taken by the SPYM including this very link with UIDAI as a measure to resolve these problems.

While I do not want to take away from the Courts’ orders, or the long and consistent activism of those involved in bringing attention to the homeless in the city over the last decade in what has been a very difficult atmosphere for the urban poor in Delhi, what is critical is that this attention to the homeless does not resolve the tricky problem of land, and affordable housing for the poor. Further, it is entirely possible to place this effort within a familiar oscillation: creating Delhi as a beautiful city, and the concern for the urban poor which has historically marked the city. In the events of 2010, what is curious here is the historic reversal of both the courts, and the media. Almost a decade earlier, the same courts had ordered the demolition of large numbers of slums in the case of the former, and the same media had maintained a critical silence about the process that had gone on, as hundreds of slum dwellers were forcibly removed from the city. What was critical in the new shift to push for homeless shelters, I would like to argue, was the Commonwealth Games (CWG): indeed, the massive process of transformation that Delhi was undergoing, with the Games being used as a deadline to push through upheavals in the city’s physical landscape. As the Games grew closer, the city emerged as one enormous construction site, and remained so for three years—dug up to complete the vast new metro system and to finish highways connecting the city to new facilities and to new suburbs. All government action came to be interpreted as part of the CWG phenomenon, getting ready to show Delhi as a truly world class city, the problems of residents be damned. By 2010, public fatigue and anger at the singular focus had begun to show, and this I propose is what explains the kind of new attention that we see today in the problems of the homeless poor. In the early 2000s, middle class RWAs had fought inside very supportive courtrooms to have slum dwellers 492 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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housing their own domestic staff to be removed; by 2010, the same middle class was in the police stations and in the press, trying to ensure that their maids and their drivers, along with other beggars, workers, homeless, and slum dwellers, were not deported from the city as the Games approached. The question then arises is whether new attention of the homeless represents a critical and definitive shift, or is it simply another governmental oscillation responding to larger political concerns and politics? What then of the contemporary state of the homeless themselves and the current interest in their situation? At the outset, I would like to say that my remarks that follow are not based on fieldwork, but on a textual reading of the media-based evidence available on contemporary developments. Of particular salience here, following the events of 2010 and the Court’s intervention, is firstly, the shift to a large number of permanent and temporary shelters (estimated as between 136-144) managed by community organisations.3 An analysis of occupancy rates at these shelters available on the DUSIB website and in the media, shows governmental reportage of an average of 4500-5100 persons, with the highest number being over 8000. Indeed, given these low figures spread across a large number of homeless shelters, the Government of Delhi has closed some shelters4 and argued in the courts in 2011 that the large number of shelters put up are not required in the summer, and cost a lot of money,5 even as the media contends that the shelters are in poor condition;6 a situation that some NGOs note come from funding problems vis-à-vis the Delhi government.7 Further, NGOs also note that shelters are difficult to access and thus not used by homeless populations. Dupont (2012) adds that some NGOs are not equipped to manage ‘the increased responsibilities’ transferred to them by government. Low occupancy has also led the DDA to propose that it does not need to follow a higher standard of shelter provision—1 per one lakh population as stipulated in the new Master Plan 2021 because the shelters are not really used by the homeless,8 thus diluting the events of 2010 and the Courts’ directions.



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In the case of the slum dwellers, going forward, new multi-storied housing is to be built on the outskirts of the city under the JNNURM Basic Service for the Urban Poor programme, in order to fulfil the Government of Delhi’s vision of a new ‘slum free’ Delhi by 2015. Documents from the DUSIB9 and the media,10 reveal that only 40-50% of those living in Delhi’s remaining 634 slum clusters will be eligible for housing after they get demolished. It appears that a familiar cycle of partial subsidies provided to slum settlers through the violence of demolition will begin again. Meanwhile, Mrs. Sheila Dixit has been widely accused as using the new Economically Weaker Section flat scheme as an electoral sop,11 making promises at a crucial electoral junction, with slow delivery of the actual flats themselves. Given this, and given that such dynamics have a longstanding history in the city for me, perhaps the critical question vis-à-vis the introduction of Aadhaar for the homeless follows Jayati Ghosh12 in asking—what is the actual delivery of services and benefits provided through new initiatives? To what extent are benefits extended to any poor population, and to what extent can these provisions be viewed as holistic (for example housing near place of work)? Delhi has seen both a number of different schemes as well as different administrations, with shelter policy frequently shifting between the DDA and the MCD in its administration. The current governmental and developmental dispensation in Delhi since at least 2000 has revolved around the State government, and has focused on enumerating, auditing, and rationalising city systems done jointly by the courts and the state government, whether in land titling or in services, as well as through privatisation both in building, operating and providing civic services. Given the long history of inadequate shelter provision in the city, the question remains—what do any new policy dispensations actually provide for the shelterless, and for slum populations including in the newly constructed apparatus of delivery?



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REFERENCES Ali, Sabir. 1995. Environmental and Resettlement Colonies of Delhi. Delhi: Har Anand Publications. Ali, Sabir. 1998. Environmental Scenario of Delhi Slums. New Delhi: Gyan Sagar. Basu, Ashok Ranjan. 1988. Urban Squatter Housing in Third World. Delhi: Mittal Publications. Bharat Sevak Samaj, 1958. Slums of Old Delhi, Delhi: Atma Ram and Sons, Delhi. Bose, A. 1978. India’s Urbanisation: 1901-2001. Institute of Economic Growth; New Delhi: Tata McGraw Hill. Dupont, V and Tingel, D. 1997. Residential And Economic Practices Of Pavemeht Dwellers In Old Delhi. Institute of Economic Growth Working Paper E/186/97. Dupont. V. 2011. ‘Infrastructure project, beautification and forced evictions in Delhi— The exemplary story of a cluster of slum dwellers rendered homeless’. Paper presented at the conference Rethinking Development in an Age of Scarcity and Uncertainity’, University of York. Dupont V. 2012. ‘Which place for the homeless in an aspiring global city like Delhi Scrutiny of a mobilisation campaign in the context of the 2010 Commonwealth Games’. Paper to be presented at the European Conference on South asian Studies, Lisbon, 25-28 July 2012. Gandotra S.r., 1976. houseless in Delhi, Census of India 1971, Series 27, Delhi, part X (a), Special study, Government of India, Delhi. Ghose, A. 1984. ‘Impact of Delhi Anti-Encroachment Bills’. Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 19, No. 36 (Sep. 8, 1984), pp. 1564-1566. Hume, A.P. 1936. Report on the Relief of Congestion in Delhi. Vol. I and II. Simla: Government of India Press. Indo Global Social Services Society. 2008. New Delhi. The Unsung CityMakers . A Study of the Homeless Residents of Delhi. Delhi: IGSSS. Iyer, S S and Verma, K K. 1964. A Roof over the Head, Delhi School of Social Work, Delhi. Kuruvilla J. 1990. ‘Pavement dwelling in metropolitan cities. Case study Delhi’. Thesis, School of Planning and Architecture, Dept. of Housing, New Delhi, Mimeo. Legg, Stephen. 2007. Spaces of colonialism : Delhi’s Urban Governmentalities. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub. Maitra S and Mehta S. 2007. Shelterless Persons in Delhi. Delhi: Institute of Human Development. Riberio, E. 1987. ‘Shelter for Urban Delhi by 2001,’ in Alam, Manzoor S and Alikhan, F ed. Poverty in Metropolitan Cities. Delhi: Concept. Ritu Priya. 1993. ‘Town Planning, Public Health and Urban Poor: Some Explorations from Delhi’. Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 28, No. 17 (Apr. 24, 1993), pp. 824-834. Singh. A.M. and De Souza A. 1980. The Urban Poor, Slum and Pavement Dwellers in Major Cities of India. Manohar, Delhi.



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Singh, Manjeet. 1998. ‘Environmental Upgrading of Delhi Slums’ in Sehgal, R.L ed. Slum Upgradation: Emerging Issue and Policy Implications. New Delhi: Bookwell.

NOTES 1

‘Out in the cold on X-mas Eve’, Times of India, December 25 2009.

2

See http:// sccommissioners.org/Homelessness/homelessness.html, accessed November 11, 2012.

3

http://delhishelterboard.in/main/?page_id=566, January 2012, accessed November 11, 2012. ‘Delhi submits status report on night shelters’, The Hindu, January 5 2012.

4

‘Delhi HC tells Govt. to restart closed night shelters pronto,’ Daily Pioneer, December 14, 2011.

5

‘Govt moves HC to shut down night shelters,’ Times of India, July 5, 2011.

6

‘Homeless prefer sidewalks to Govt. shelters in Delhi,’ NDTV, January 22, 2012, http://www.ndtv.com/ article/cities/homeless-prefer-sidewalks-to-govt-shelters-in-delhi-169357, accessed March 9 2013.

7

‘HC raps NGOs for poor upkeep of night shelters for homeless’, Times of India, 21 July 2011. See Dupont (2012) for more details on this debate between the government and NGOs.

8

‘Move to cut number of shelters for homeless,’ Hindustan Times, June 2, 2012.

9

Minutes of the Fifth Meeting of the DUSIB, December 19, 2011, http://delhishelterboard.in/ main/?page_id=1006, accessed March 9 2012.

10 ‘Bulldozers set to raze 33 slums, no rehab plan yet’. Times of India, July 21, 2011. 11 ‘Bulldozers set to raze 33 slums, no rehab plan yet’. Times of India, July 21, 2011. 12 Ghosh, Jayati 2011. ‘Cash Transfers as the Silver Bullet for Poverty Reduction: A Skeptical Note’, Economic & Political Weekly, 21 May, Vol X LVI, No 21, 71.



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Being Singular: Figuring the Homeless Ecosystem in the Shadow of UID Akshaya Kumar Researcher, The Identity Project

The essay follows over 70 interviews conducted among the denizens of shelters for the homeless: Nizamuddin, KotlaMubarakpur, Raja Garden, and a family shelter at Munirka. How do we define homelessness? What characterises and specifies the homeless identity?

Homelessness in Delhi.

The figure of the homeless, as we imagine it, is defined by a negative

attribute. The aim of this paper is to not only engage with the bases of this negative attribution, but more importantly, find positive attributes to comprehend the experiences of homelessness. Whether or not they correspond to the range of intended beneficiaries of UID scheme may follow from it, if we are able to establish, in the first place, that the scheme intends to benefit them. The contours of homelessness I am going to offer have all emerged from a four-month fieldwork in various shelters of Delhi, most of them managed by SPYM, a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO). In the Wake of Aadhaar 497


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I talked at varying lengths to nearly seventy homeless people, spread across the shelters of Nizamuddin, Kotla-Mubarakpur, Raja Garden, and a family shelter at Munirka, all run by SPYM. I also visited another shelter at Nizamuddin, exclusively for women, and talked to some people who didn’t sleep in the shelters but somewhere around in public parks or in their own rickshaws. The length of interviews varied from two to seventy-five minutes depending on a variety of factors. Apart from this, I also talked at length to those who manage these shelters, observe the lives of the homeless every day, have to contend with them in their various moods, and have strong opinions on their conduct, origins, and typology. My attempt has been to consolidate the diverse experiential regimes of the respondents and counterpose the perceptions against the narrativised experience, the truths against the counter-truths. Such ethnographic aggregation can only be site-specific and the ambitions of theorising must be delimited by the subjects, sites, and specificities it has not been able to interrogate. Keeping that in mind, I attempt to formulate the fundamental conditions and paradoxes of the homeless experience, as seen from inside as well as its immediate outsides. It is in those narrative gaps that homelessness actually survives by not making a claim on either before or after, by confessing to itself its own fragility and making it its only strength. To begin with, it would be useful to acknowledge that the notion of singularity in this paper does not mean a complete denial of the social so much as a resistance to it. The case of drug-users in particular, provides a strong exception to the regime of singularity, but it is a case that I cannot analyse in detail here since it requires a separate analysis of its own. The singularity of the homeless figure that I propose, therefore, is not absolute, and should be seen in relative terms that cut across an overwhelming percentage of the homeless populations. Fully conscious of the limitations of these generalisations, I would like to make in this paper the following interventions interventions: first, the homeless, far from being a uniform category of people who live without homes, are a set of people with several distinctions cutting across them, divided around 498 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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axes of hygiene, work-ethic, self-discipline, and honesty; second, that in order to comprehend the experiential regime of homelessness, there is a need to conceptualise the home not in its territorial significance but in terms of a node that anchors one’s larger connections to the time-space continuum; third, purely on empirical grounds, it could be argued that intoxication of varying degrees is pathologically linked to homelessness and often becomes the only active agent in a life otherwise resigned to being acted upon; fourth, an identity document, though believed to be the only way to overcome one’s perpetually threatened legality, is a solution in spite of the problem; fifth, homeless women find it the hardest to escape sociality of the family kind and are pushed, manipulate, or willed into a series of dubious relationships, increasing the number of children to rear with very few options to earn their livelihood. The bulk of those we identify as homeless live on pavements, under flyovers, public parks, or night-shelters. To find among them people who are not sloshed at night is quite rare. Among them are rickshaw-pullers who carry their belongings along and always sleep on the rickshaw. It mostly includes people who must spend all that they earn in the day because, otherwise, it will get stolen anyway, for they have little access to storage spaces except in some homeless shelters. These are people who have moved from one jhuggi to another, one type of employment to another, who have either narrowly escaped finding a permanent job, or quit a reasonable business one day and left it all. But they have also seen their jhuggis burnt down when they came back from work, leaving them without any documents and belongings. Many of them speak of resisting police lathis for nearly fifteen years as they refused to move from beneath the fly-over. However, today, they live in suspension, often suffering from mental health issues and often heavily intoxicated. With little care and attention available, a wide variety of mental health problems remain unaddressed under the pressing livelihood concerns. When asked about the future, most of the older respondents just smiled or shrugged their shoulders, the others usually declared, ‘life is nonsense’. When the caretaker at Raja Garden asked them who will give them kandha when they die, or where their bodies should be sent, they often fell silent. Going back home is not an option because they could not lay a claim to anything at home In the Wake of Aadhaar 499


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anymore. ‘Maar ke bhaga denge [they’ll beat me up and throw me out]’, a few of them said, citing the gap since they left home without being accountable to it. In the absence of an anchor to guide one’s mobility and ambitions, and combating the primacy of everyday struggles in their lives, the homeless often lose the sense of the larger territory they inhabit, perhaps because they reciprocate the disinterest of the territory in them. They may not have entirely unhinged themselves from the attachments of the home, but the mention often surprises them, shakes them out of a suspended equilibrium.

CHARITY VERSUS THREAT

To comprehend the homeless in relation to their surroundings,

two key notions would be: charity and threat. On one hand, the homeless are considered figures worthy of a charitable disposition, a task often ably performed by various NGOs who have now taken over from the government. It is under the charitable tag only that romantic associations such as ‘unsung heroes’ and ‘makers of the city’ are accommodated. However, at the same time, undercutting the logic of charity is the notion of threat from a population marked by a dubious legality and a potential to cause disorder. It is true that an overwhelming percentage of the homeless are or have been involved in petty crimes. The incidents of stealing water taps from shelter toilets, breaking the window grill or any iron rods in the gates so as to sell them, are relatively common. In the winter season, they are given free blankets which they keep collecting and then sell in the mornings. In the same shelters that they are put up, they choke toilets, steal set-top boxes, and dirty mattresses that they refuse to clean. The alcoholics often get into a brawl at the slightest provocation by a fellow homeless in the shelter and the altercation often ends with police intervention. The caretakers admit to having to abuse them and beat them up when required. All of these are part of a struggle to manage a population that resists order. The police too knows them as usual suspects; as many of them, mostly drug-users, are always up to some mischief, they are easy to arrest 500 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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and put into jail to make up the ‘target numbers’. At Kotla-Mubarakpur in particular, various incidents of mobile or chain snatching occur, drug users are rounded up, beaten mercilessly and then left alone. There is a reluctance among the police to lock them up in jails because there have been many cases of drug users dying in lock-ups or jails when they can’t get drugs. On the contrary, near Nizamuddin, a homeless woman told me she often pleaded with the police to arrest her only son, a drug-user, so that when he came out in a few years’ time, he would be out of drugs. Between charitable imperatives and threat perceptions swings the pendulum that signifies the precarious balance of the homeless populations in the urban milieu. The keystone remains social order. It is in the name of social order that the charitable disposition is offered to them but the paternal expectation of self-discipline is rarely fulfilled as the homeless continue their ‘foul’ ways. This is not to suggest a uniformly hostile behaviour of the homeless towards society, but to mark a paradox which remains at the heart of the homeless question. Indeed, there are many seasonal or full-time migrants who live in the city to earn and maintain families back home by saving up a fair proportion of their earnings. These would perhaps be the homeless citizens, as per the preferred State definition; people who choose to be homeless only so that they could save more than they would otherwise. In such cases, the home as an anchor of one’s mobility in the time-space continuum maintains its sway over the lives of the homeless. I shall argue that the charity versus threat conundrum remains the ultimate blind spot in various configurations of the homeless question. Unless we find a way past this conundrum, we are unlikely to be fair to the homeless as well as to those whose ways intersect with theirs. Even though there exist older forms of charity manifested in a cartful of food delivered at various points in Delhi both by people and organisations, more organised forms of charity have a keen desire to know the identity of the subjects of charity, therefore to monitor it, regulate it, even control it. On one hand, it is done under the wider understanding that to serve anyone better you should know them better, and on the other, it is to keep the threat quotient under In the Wake of Aadhaar 501


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one’s grip. Identity data in this exercise becomes a key resource which could potentially provide an entry point into the relatively complicated personality of the homeless person.

SINGULARITY AND ITS OTHERS

If resigning oneself to one’s pathological condition is a

surrendering of sorts, it also means not making choices that automate, predetermine, or foreclose one’s future. As a result, the homeless person doesn’t bid on the future, not even the next day. The experience of homelessness is an experience carved entirely in the moment, it is an experience of singularity—temporal, experiential, and existential. Most homeless people I spoke to, even those who had been living in the same shelter for more than ten years, did not have any meaningful associations in the shelter. Often, they wouldn’t know each others’ names and had no evening conversations. Intoxicated as most of them entered, they would be set to retire for the day. Those who did not drink were only wary of the others who did, and who could thus not be relied upon. It is common practice therefore, to minimise the risk of theft of money and other belongings by sleeping as far away from the suspicious as possible. At Kotla-Mubarakpur, they have another side of the room, partitioned with a wall, dedicated to those who are used to alcohol. It would be unfair, though, to comprehend the singularity of the homeless only in terms of a suspicion of others. Almost everyone who I managed to talk to spoke of an incident at home that triggered their leaving home. Most often it was domestic violence, or some form of family dispute, in a few cases it was death of a loved one. Very often I was simply told ‘ghar mein kuchh ho gaya tha’ [something had happened at home]. It is this moment of rupture that singularises those who leave home and come to the city. Much as I tried to capture the meaning of this moment in the lives of the homeless, it kept slipping away. It is not as if distress migration never entered the picture. Some of the Bihari respondents mentioned Kosi floods and lack of work. ‘Bihar hi mein hamko kaam mil jata toh yahan kyun ate’! [Why would I come here if I were 502 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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to find work in Bihar itself’?], one of the male respondents told me. Yet, what was surprising is that what I continued to try and arrest as a point of rupture remained a point of mere inflexion in their narratives; the curvature of the narrative was altered but the continuities remained. Partly, this was because most of them were not making a drastic choice even within their context. The lack of work across rural north India, and the promise of the metropolitan city towards anonymity and a surplus of work, formed a direct bridge. Regardless of whether they knew someone in the city or didn’t, the choice of going to Delhi remained largely an ordinary choice. It was a given that they would live outdoors, on the pavements or under a bridge. How the uncertainties of both work and dwelling could be negotiated was a question that got overwhelmed by the hope of finding work. Homelessness, therefore, was hardly a step into unknown territory. It would be a territory—the map of which they had already become familiar, given the nature of social remittances that suffuse migratory circuits. This imagination of the homeless migrant running contrary to the distress migrant—entirely without control over his/her destiny, caught on the wrong foot in a moment of disaster—is an important one to retain, I would suggest. The key question then would be: undesirable as we think homelessness is even for the homeless, on what premise do we sustain its negative attributes and what are the affective boundary conditions to that conception? How is sleeping on a pavement qualitatively distinct for the migrant poor from sleeping under the fly-over, or in a shelter, or in a slum? In that sense, figuring homelessness continues to bring us back to the negative attribution built into it, the originary point of entry into the idea of homelessness, perhaps the only point of entry for us: home. Is it about the loss of a roof over one’s head, or something else? Indeed, the problem and its impossible resolution are both programmed into a category of the homeless that holds no water as an independent concept. It is a mere category that comes into being so as to borrow an alternative frame to look through, at the boundless ‘disorder’ that the urban poor thrust upon the government. However, if we do retain the category, remaining conscious of its imperfections, the homeless population is broadly of two kinds: first, those In the Wake of Aadhaar 503


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who maintain ties with their family in villages or other towns; second, those who maintain no ties anywhere. But of course, it is never so neatly divided. There were plenty who, for example, mentioned to me a Delhi address even though they were from other states. This would most often be their sasural but they hadn’t met their wives in many years. The caretaker at Raja Garden interpreted it in terms of the impossibility to live with ‘these people’. He meant, as he elaborated, their drinking habits and a violent temper once they were drunk. He indeed witnessed and had to manage daily quarrels which often got extremely violent and bloody. At Kotla-Mubarakpur, there were plenty of people sleeping in the shelters even though they were from the same locality simply because they were unwelcome in their own houses due to their drug-using habits. This singularity, however, is mostly denied to women. The women I interviewed came to Delhi from UP, Bihar, and Bengal. They often came with husbands or when young, with their fathers. They were married off early as the young girls are often misbehaved with, and cannot be protected unless they are married. Many of my respondents were married multiple times, were second or third wives with or without their consent. Husbands or sons too could not be trusted as they often stole money from the women, or took to drugs in which case they were to be provided for. Often pregnant or too weak, they cannot do strenuous physical work and have to depend on begging or picking waste. As there are very few shelters for married couples, they either rent a jhuggi or put up in public parks. Each one of my respondents had little kids to look after, thereby leaving them little choice to experience the singularity and freedom that men often enjoyed. Though religion cannot be held responsible, it must be noted that most of the women I spoke to were Muslim and were often married off to first or second cousins considering them ‘safe’. The marriages never lasted as many men were to be found already being in a relationship with more than one woman. Regardless of the number of kids they had had with the man, they could be easily divorced—one woman even reported being divorced on phone—and rearing the children was never a worry for the man.



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If being singular—often a privilege of men—facilitates an inwards folding of the self, the homeless women and families often resent the lack of privacy. The denial of privacy as the prerogative of those who could own spaces and avert the public gaze breaches the desire to let-be. In the case of women, it is easy to notice their extended idea of the self, which may or may not be concurrent with that of a family. In a family shelter, the families sleeping under the same roof can be denied a sexual intercourse for months, may have to contend with an impression of themselves which emerges from the dialogics of another family and would have remained contained within the walls of another household had their cumulative shelter not been without partitions. As one of the women told me, ‘Humko toh baat hi itni zor se lagti hai ki laat kya lagegi! [The words hit me harder than anything else can’!] They spoke of the extreme violence the shelter witnesses at night, much like the shelters for men. It could be about sleeping right beneath the fan, or because someone’s leg hit someone else’s, or because the little one dirtied the floor and the mother refused to clean it. Most of the homeless who were not from Bihar, spoke ill of the ‘Biharis’. A woman from UP said the shelter is a place only meant for people from Bihar and Bengal. The man who guards the shelter in the night is a local goonda and often speaks very abusively to the women, a fact one mother of a 15-year old daughter was most concerned about. Several women also refused to be in the shelter as they said it was surrounded by dubious characters who had knives and could be dangerous. Cleanliness, conduct, nativity, drinking habits, all came to define the lines that would divide the people and be used to violate their self-image and integrity. The affective state of singularity is about being left alone to be as one wants to be, but this singularity continues to be violated in the forced everyday encounters with the others. The state remains, for most of the homeless, only one of these many other agents who violate the freedom to be homeless. Not one of my respondents demanded any favours from the state, or were critical of any of its policies. The only mention of the state machinery that came up repeatedly was regarding how policemen treat them, and how free medicines don’t work for them.1 They sought help from people instead. And it is in that sense that the role of NGOs is crucial. What the state lacks in dealing with In the Wake of Aadhaar 505


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the homeless may not be intent so much as the expertise, the sensibility. The mushrooming of NGOs working with the homeless has, among other things, given an opportunity to people who have themselves been on the street and are capable of being sensitive to the homeless people. Fazl-e-Haq who manages the Nizamuddin shelter has a life-story, much similar to Shankar Gupta who lives in his shelter, both going from Bihar to Punjab to Delhi, working through a variety of jobs and losing money to various kinds of fraud, before their stories eventually diverge. Abhimanyu and Tekchand who work at Kotla-Mubarakpur shelter have been addicts themselves and understand the drug-using people much better than others would. They offer a helping hand the homeless can trust, they are also often approached for counseling by desperate locals. They very nearly become the anchors that most of the homeless have learnt to live without. There is nothing wrong with these people providing the middle ground between the homeless and the NGOs, but what we need to worry about is the absence of a middle ground to host a dialogue between the state and the homeless. The trouble is, NGOs can continue to work within the space available to them, compromising the imperatives for the state. The withdrawal of the state, on the contrary, prepares the ground for a charitable imperative which becomes a breeding ground for NGOs. Take, for example, the various shelters called ‘Rain Basera’ across the city. Not so long ago, these were run by the government itself. Several stories are available about the extreme noncooperation of the officials, stinking and intolerably unclean shelters, and unhelpful timings leading to inadequate footfalls. The handover to NGOs could not have been more radical. In terms of hygiene, administration, cooperation and allied services such as medicines, counseling, food etc., the shelters have drastically improved. In the process, where there used to be three government officers on permanent state employment, are now three lowly paid attendants who often earn less than the homeless do, averaging over a month. Not only does this radically reduce state’s expenditure over running the shelter, it also means the homeless’ rights are now handed over to a franchise, a proxy unit that further distances the homeless from the state. It would be improper to accuse the NGOs for stepping but, given 506 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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that they formulate their problem question in association with but never in opposition to the state, this does make the homeless dependent on the charitable dispositions that erode their self-image and leave them in an uncertain territory.

THE HOMELESS ECOSYSTEM AND ITS TECHNOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT

The homeless, in their refusal and inability to privately own spaces,

mostly depend on public amenities. As the state continues to pander to private interests, the survival possibilities continue to shrink for the homeless. A woman told me she used to go to the railway station to pick waste which would fetch her up to 300 rupees a day. Now, as ragpicking on railway stations or from private homes is organised under recognised contractors, the homeless are asked for identity cards issued by the contractor. The identity card regime is indeed gaining strength, commonly called ‘proof’ by the homeless. While most of the male respondents told me they were never asked for identity cards, some women spoke of the growing demand to prove their identity. This is not really an organised demand, and often depends on the whims of those asking for it. Aadhaar cards still have a very limited acceptance. One woman told me that her child was kept by the police at the station and to prove her ownership of the child, she was required to submit a letter signed by the Vidhayak of the area. Her Aadhaar card was not accepted as proof and she could get her child back only after two days. Those working as construction labourers reported often being asked for an identity card by the people’s houses they worked in. But even when they said they had no such thing on them, nothing was denied to them. The question itself, here, does not have prohibitive powers but through its prescriptive force it is aggregated into a regime of suspicion, perhaps accentuating a need to be suspicious. We need to understand that this regime divides people between those who have the right to ask, or get someone to ask for their interest, and In the Wake of Aadhaar 507


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those who must show, prove their identity. Power-asymmetry is not one of the problematic attributes of this equation, it is the very foundation upon which the identification regime flourishes. The homeless in the city know full well that they do not figure in the ‘scheme of things’, that they are not the intended beneficiaries of urban affairs. That is why, in living the exile, they acknowledge the gap between two ecosystems—one, that of the legitimate city, and the other, their own. There could be exceptional cases like the Munirka family shelter where nearly hundred people who sleep in it, and nearly five hundred living across the road in a jhuggi, are all from the same district, Madhubani in Bihar. They have managed to re-consolidate the village in the crevices of the city. Most others, without such allies, build their own minimalist ecosystems where dependencies are low and the premium on them, even lower. What are the foundational terms of this ecosystem? First and foremost, it is marked by various habits. These habits, to a large extent, determine an informal constitution of individual preferences within the confines of the homeless condition. The habits, of going to a spot to look for work every morning, of coming back to sleep in a shelter, of having a meal at a particular shop, are indicative of a contingency withheld. As opposed to others, for whom home itself becomes the anchor, the homeless habitus is anchored by a pattern of choices now programmed into a habit mode. If we are habituated into making choices all the time, the homeless often habituate themselves into a choicethermal which becomes the ecosystem of their choice for a while, before they move to the next choice-thermal, by persuasion or coercion, among other possibilities. The question to ask then would be, where is the space for the digital ecosystem to intervene into or reinforce the homeless ecosystem, and who exactly is pushing it? If we are to ask what the homeless want, they only seek an acknowledgement of their existing ecosystem and its possible cohabitation.2 It was a common refrain among those who I talked to, that you cannot die in Delhi because of hunger, such is the magnitude of free food available. In fact, enormous quantities are wasted everyday. Also, begging or 508 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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wastepicking fetches the homeless so much money that it is already a cause of resentment for many of those who ‘work’ and/or live in jhuggis. Nearly all of them in the family shelter cook non-veg food every evening, as do a few others in other shelters. Both the caretakers in Raja Garden and Munirka told me, ‘Pata nahin log kyun samajhte hain ki ye log gareeb hain, hamein toh nahin lagta [God knows why people think these people are poor, it doesn’t seem so to me’]. Indeed, most of the homeless, they say, earn more than them. At the family shelter I was told, ‘Sabke chhe-saat bachche hain, har bachcha 300 kama ke laata hai bagal ke signal par bheekh maang ke, maa-baap toh zyadatar kaam hi nahin karte. Jinko bheekh maanga pasand nahin hai woh labour ka kaam karte hain [All of them have six-seven kids, every child goes to the next signal and earns nearly 300 rupees every day. Parents mostly do not even work. Those who do not like to beg, work as labourers’]. Throughout my interviews, I felt the idea of homeless-as-urban-poor was resisted from many sides. Surely it doesn’t mean the homeless are economically privileged, but there is an economic advantage they seem to have over the fixed imaginary of ‘urban poor’. What are the possible distinctions here? One key element seems to be familial, as the homeless shun the familial sociality thus also escaping its compulsive rigour thereby allowing themselves the freedom to indulge. There is also a wider understanding prevalent among those who ‘work’ that demanding or depending on charity—public or private—is disgraceful. What complicates this understanding is the belief that charity often pays more than work does. This is a crucial conundrum, actually, and needs to be probed further. If true, it would produce alarming and radically complicated new terms of understanding urban sociality. What does it say about a middle class subject, for example, who gives more as alms to beggars than to his/her own house-help? It is true that most homeless people work as labourers or rickshaw pullers and do not live off charity but sleeping in public places and often eating food that they don’t have to pay for renders them susceptible to a degree of condemnation. Thus, on one hand we can still converge on the tension between the notions of charity and work at play; and on the other, we can ponder about the huge capacity of those with a growing dispensable income to generate waste and surplus that the urban In the Wake of Aadhaar 509


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poor continue to depend upon for survival. Indeed, it also leads us to think about homelessness in terms of home as private space; while the premium on space has grown rapidly since liberalisation and prices have gone up, real estate investments for the rich have also meant several meanings of home: as investment, as vacation-homes, land to be developed into a post-pension home, etc. Homelessness, situated as it is on the other side of the same spacespectrum, cannot possibly escape the consequences of these major shifts. However, the gap between perception and reality is vital here; this is where the homeless populations demand alternative terms of evaluation. While most of those who resent them are low-salaried informal sector employees often with family obligations, this resentment ties up with the earlier discussed issues of petty crimes and charitable imperative in the sense that if the homeless can lay claim to shelters, free blankets, medicines, food, and many such services in the name of being poor, whether they deserve the charity or not becomes a key question. With the state already working against the beggars and formalising waste picking under contractors, cheap labour is all that the homeless as a category of people provide to the cities that continue to be disturbed by the question whether they have earned their right to charity. According to my observations, there are two ideas that are driving Aadhaar into homeless territory: first, a fear of exclusion from services and practices they already have access to; second, the inadequacy of the national identity cards—coupled with the surprising ease of getting an Aadhaar card through an introducer - to give them respectable access to Delhi. Every time I asked them if they have an identity card, they promptly declined meaning that they had none affirming their right to Delhi. On further probing they would always say, ‘Gaon mein sab hai’. The ‘proof’ for them, therefore is a proof that they belong to Delhi, something they struggle to prove to people who feel—as one of the caretakers vehemently argued—that you must have a fixed address in order to belong to the city.



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The homeless have always had a slippery relationship with the identity regime, not only because they have no fixed address but because the tenets of identity regimes do not accommodate the terms on which they demand identification, on which they are indeed already identified amidst the surroundings they inhabit. Putting the homeless and the UID together, the question we must ask is: how prepared is the digital ecosystem, being pushed in the name of UID, to adjust itself to the terms set by an alternative ecosystem? Also, is technology, at the least, willing to concede that its problem-solving streak can create new problems? Does the techno-logical also create possibilities of dialogue between itself and other imaginations or logics? Indeed, as the digital affronts the material by aggregating its signages and enabling a search through them, the singularity of homeless variety would no longer be possible as the UID would soon become its one positive attribute, however poor an identifier it may be of the homeless condition.

NOTES 1

Whether it is a notional distinction or an empirical one is difficult to know. But more than a few respondents seemed to believe so. It is possible that the govt. dispensaries are keeping an inferior or expired stock but I am in no position to ascertain that.

2

One of them told me, ‘Hum koi ye toh keh nahi rahe hain ki hamko ek crore rupya de do. Sarkar bas ek tho proof bana de aur humko rehne de' [We are not asking for a crore rupees. All we want from the government is to make us an identity proof and let us live].



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6


– The Financially Excluded



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Issues in Credit to the Poor: Following the Microfinance Crisis in Andhra Pradesh S. Ananth Independent researcher, Hyderabad

The Identity Project researched the question of financial inclusion with a major focus on the state of Andhra Pradesh. The project did extensive field work in the city of Hyderabad, and in the Ranga Reddy, and Kurnool districts. Work on the project accompanied a parallel project in 2011 by S. Ananth for the Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty, covering seven districts across the state and 1069 households. The field research conducted takes place in the backdrop of the socalled ‘Microfinance Crisis’ of 2010, involving widely-reported stories of suicides among several over-indebted clients of some of India's biggest microfinance institutions (MFIs), and the sweeping Ordinance in 2010 to ‘protect the women Self Help Groups from exploitation by the Micro Finance Institutions in the State of Andhra Pradesh and for the matters connected therewith or incidental thereto’.1 On the one hand this was widely perceived as draconian, but it was also acknowledged that the MFIs may have brought it upon themselves; that the sector—one that was for all practical purposes unregulated (as Kaushik Basu has acknowledged),2 plagued by excessively high interest rates, excessive and chronic over-indebtedness coupled with perverse incentives upon the poor to borrow—needed some kind of regulation. The regulation of the sector following the formalisation of the Andhra Pradesh Microfinance Institutions (Regulation of Moneylending) Act, 2010 also went alongside a parallel set of initiatives to establish a Banking and Business Correspondents network among the so-called unbanked sectors 514 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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of society, pioneered in that state by the State Bank of India. The second backdrop was the complex process of the state’s Food and Civil Supplies Ministry, the key Registrar for the Aadhaar programme, updating its own biometric database and feeding the new data into a number of major governmental schemes, including the ration card itself, pensions, health insurance and housing. Both backdrops defined our field research, which includes numerous interviews with several chronically indebted persons, with members of the Self-Help Groups and Joint-Liability groups, with Aadhaar operators, enrollers, and intermediary agencies facilitating the process of direct cash transfers, with Banking Correspondents, representatives of key banks in the state, and with government agencies across the spectrum.

INTRODUCTION

Credit, in several economies, is a somewhat unique commodity: often the

larger the supply, the greater is the demand. As such, credit is invariably a double edged sword given that, historically, what we may call imprudent borrowing typically vastly exceeds prudent borrowing practices. While lending prudence does emphasise the need for due diligence, a view reinforced by banking policy makers in contemporary India, judicious use of credit remains a rare phenomenon. Historically, India has always faced problems related to credit availability and credit delivery. Providers of credit, both formal and non-formal, abound (and sometimes even grow exponentially) as the economy grows. Technological innovation has enabled a widespread disbursal of credit over a diverse geographical terrain. Despite technological advances, policy makers continue to be overwhelmed with the problem of chronic over-indebtedness: in essence, the problems related to credit availability to the poor in India —high indebtedness, problems of credit delivery, and high (often usurious) rates of interest—have remained largely unchanged.



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Any study of credit needs to acknowledge that moneylending has existed in India since time immemorial and that, therefore, existing practices may have their origins in distant pasts. An attempt is here made to view the demand for credit in a historical perspective, to throw better light on the recent microfinance crisis in Andhra Pradesh, and the potentialities being offered through digitisation.

HISTORICAL OVERVIEW OF CREDIT IN THE REGION

Many colonial observers have highlighted the problems of indebtedness in

India. Vera Anstey pointed out, for instance, that the dominance of the Banias and shaukars was a long-standing one and that ‘the British rule tended to increase both the demand and facilities for borrowing’.3 F.A. Nicholson’s remarks are directly relevant even to present conditions in the region.4 Nicholson points out that probably there is no ryot who at one time or other has not borrowed. That a man who is rich or has large private lands is nothing; it merely means—as correspondents state and experience proves that they can and do borrow more largely. Moreover, a large proportion of personal credit was provided to ryots by the ryots. He added that anybody with surplus cash was a lender. Nicholson has classified the lenders in the Madras Presidency into nine different classes (essentially based on the category of people they lent to) and has provided fourteen purposes for which credit is taken. The different kinds of lending include ‘(1) masters to servants; (2) landlords to tenants; (3) ryots to ryots; (4) sowcars (moneylenders) to clients; (5) brokers to producers; (6) cattle dealers to ryots; (7) cloth sellers to buyers; (8) shopkeepers to buyers; and (9) domestic to petty lenders’. The purposes for loan cited by Nicholson include ‘(1) Cultivation expenses including purchase of seed, manure, etc.; (2) purchase of cattle, implements, stock in trade, raw material; etc.; (3) 516 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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purchase of land; (4) improvement of lands; (5) relief from prior debt; (6) House building and repair; (7) advances for entering into contracts, small trades, security to employers, etc.; (8) Maintenance; (9) Payment of government dues, rent; etc., (10) Marriages and other social events including borrowing by bridegrooms of money for ornaments and others; (11) Ornaments and other tangible luxuries; (12) Litigation; (13) Education; and (14) Unproductive or extravagant expenditure’. Among the fourteen purposes for borrowing cited by Nicholson, the predominant reason in the presidency was settlement of prior debt (about fifty percent of the loans), marriages (about one-eighth of the loans), and purchase of lands. Interestingly, only about 1.5% of the loans were for improvement of lands. Almost all categories of lending—along with the reasons for assuming debt—remain largely unchanged even to this day.

OVERVIEW OF MONEYLENDING

Gilbert Slater’s observation that ‘India has a scarcity of people

willing to practice the unattractive virtues of thrift and forethought’5 underscores the structural issues that lending-borrowing businesses have historically faced. Since colonial times, the State’s attitude to moneylenders has varied from a grudging acceptance of their role to attempts to reduce dependence on them. V. Krishnan has pointed out both the characteristics of the moneylenders and the nature of the business in the years immediately before and after independence.6 According to him, the moneylender primarily finances agriculture, and occasionally cottage and small industries. While the moneylender advances money on a promissory note and does not care about end-use, the indigenous banker takes care to see that loans are used for productive purposes. Western observers were generally surprised to see that a large part of most borrowings from moneylenders was to meet expenditure towards fulfilling social functions that they considered ‘unproductive’ consumption. Metcalf shows how ‘peasants were proverbially improvident and extravagant. Their lavish expenditure on marriage feasts, jewellery, and social ceremonial took them well beyond their means, and involved them in a heavy burden of unproductive debt’.7 In the Wake of Aadhaar 517


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Recent decades have seen policy makers emphasise alternative channels of credit delivery, especially to the poor: and a key focus in this has been on microfinance, despite its structural deficiencies. The growth of microfinance has often gone alongside claims that it is a vital tool in financial inclusion, and it has been showcased as an exemplary instance of market forces supplementing governmental efforts at poverty alleviation. A number of microfinance (MF) companies have claimed that their activities play a critical role in overcoming poverty. Share Microfin Limited (popularly referred to as ‘Share Moolah’ in a number of districts) claims, for example, that it ‘is a regulated Non-Banking Financial Company (NBFC) providing financial and support services to the marginalised sections in society, particularly to poor rural and urban women across India. Through its income generating loans and business development services, Share reaches out to help these women build productive microenterprises, thereby contributing to the development of sustainable communities’.8 Spandana’s Padmaja Reddy, while candidly stating that they have never made any claims for poverty alleviation, nevertheless contends that their activities enable a ‘smoothening in the cash flows of the rural households’, and that they provide an ‘engine of financial inclusion’.9 Despite the evident links between several microfinance procedures and those of moneylending, there have been several major claims that the problems with microfinance are less to do with its own practice and more to do with the government. Immediately following the AP MFI crisis, a collective of eminent economists (Abhijit Banerjee, Pranab Bardhan, Esther Duflo, Erica Field, Dean Karlan, Asim Khwaja, Dilip Mookherjee, Rohini Pande, and Raghuram Rajan) blamed the government for the crisis, claiming that historically ‘default rates in India have been close to zero, reflecting trust built over many years . . . this, in short, is a crisis born of government intervention, not flaws in microfinance itself’.10 Although the authors acknowledge that ‘microfinance also does need better regulation’ they nevertheless assert that the ‘primary focus should (be to) not limit interest rates or profits. Instead, it should reform rules to help microfinance institutions better screen borrowers, thereby lowering costs. Other initiatives can help too, such as new ways to



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investigate client grievance and better enforcement of the code of conduct for credit officers’.

SIZE OF THE MICROFINANCE SEGMENT IN AP

Where AP’s NBFC microfinance companies differ from moneylenders

is in their use of peer-pressure for loan recovery alongside practices that are selfavowedly impersonal in nature. The traditional characteristic of moneylenders was to maintain a low profile, to maintain personal relationships with clients even as they constantly assessed their financial health. Robert Frost sums up this nature of the bankers of bygone eras as providing ‘a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain’. The success of informal moneylenders often lay in their intricate understanding of local economic and social dynamics of communities, characteristics that have been lost to present-day MFIs. It has been pointed out that Andhra Pradesh accounts for nearly 35% of the microfinance lending in India.11 MFIs raise nearly 75%80% of their funding requirements from the banks, about 15% from equity investors and another 10% from other sources. Bank exposure to microfinance companies has been estimated conservatively to be nearly ` 10,000 crores, and by some to be three times that amount. Major banks which have an exposure to the sector in India are Axis Bank (about ` 1,000 crores), Bank of Baroda (` 300 crores), HDFC Bank (` 1,200 crores), ICICI Bank (` 2,500 crores), Punjab National Bank (` 1,000 crores), State Bank of India (` 1,000 crores), and YES Bank (` 700-900 crores). Andhra Bank is believed to have a large exposure, though this has yet to be officially confirmed. The State Bank of India has stated that it has about ` 300 crores of exposure to the sector in Andhra Pradesh (Business Standard, Section II, 19 November 2010). It has been pointed out that if there were to be a 25% cut in the collection of all Andhra Pradesh loans, the earnings of larger banks would decline by 2%-4% while for the smaller banks it could be 5%-8%. A complete In the Wake of Aadhaar 519


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default would be a unmitigated disaster for the banking sector, which has been struggling with a significant rise in non-performing assets over the past six months12—one of the reasons for banks agreeing to a proposal that they, along with MFI industry, establish a ` 1000 crore fund to be utilised by smaller companies to overcome a liquidity crisis caused by a significant decline in loans collection in Andhra Pradesh.

MICROFINANCE AND STATE INTERVENTION

The views of

the economists mentioned above are generally shared by the proponents of the microfinance business, and merit a detailed discussion. This essay reiterates that microfinance (or more precisely micro-credit) can become an effective tool only when three fundamental misconceptions that pervade among its proponents of the business are overcome: (a) That the institution of the State and its intervention in the economy has done no good over the last few decades; (b) That criticism against microfinance is part of a hidden agenda by enemies of free markets; and, (c) that the current crisis is due to politicians instigating innocent rural folk to default. The claims that government intervention prevents smooth functioning of free markets may needs to be seen in the context of a recent observation by the Supreme Court, that ‘Unregulated laissez faire free markets would only lead to massive market failures, even with respect to those aspects in which markets are supposed to function efficiently’. The third misconception is especially disconcerting, given that in stating the government to be the enemy it also discredits several government warnings about the crisis. Indeed, far from being an enemy, the government in the state has shown magnanimity in providing regulatory measures that were reactive to the crisis, rather than proactive in solving the problems that have existed in the business. Perhaps the more pertinent question may therefore be why, before the AP bill of 2010, there was no effort to regulate the sector despite a history of complaints since the Krishna Crisis of 2005.13 This question is important as the RBI had issued a number of circulars (one dating back to 2005 and another master circular in 2009) warning the banks against the problems/issues in the MF business.14 520 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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In recent years there have been several studies that have attempted to assess impact of microenterprise services: e.g. Priya Basu’s study for the World Bank in 2006 raised issues that constrained the MF business in India. Among the major issues that were highlighted by Basu include reducing minimum start up capital requirements to facilitate the transformation of MFIs into NBFCs, encouraging multiple sources of equity for MFIs, and the high cost of the formal banking sector among others.15 Alex Counts’ eulogy of the Grameen model of microfinance may well be significant for revealing the stark differences between the Grameen Model and what the AP business has seen.16 Vijay Mahajan has noted that the requirements of the poor are too large for the government to meet them via subsidy alone, and has thereby presented the role of market players as filling an important vacuum.17 P Satish writing as far back as in 2005 contended that ‘the expansion of the operations of the MFIs has taken place within legal and institutional environments that are not designed to support the expansion and sustainability of these institutions. As a result, MFIs operate in a situation where law and regulation in at present ambivalent’.18 He observed that the growth of microfinance had to necessarily be accompanied by a parallel growth in mainstream rural finance. Tara S Nair also writing in 200519 raises a pertinent issue when she observes that ‘it is not clear whether the non-agricultural activities supported by microcredit are dynamic and growing’, whether they involuntarily promote a pattern of diversification wherein rural households engage in a spectrum of low productivity activities to maintain their incomes, or whether there has taken place a more positive diversification accompanied by growth in productivity and increased consumption levels. In retrospect, an unnoticed aspect of the crisis has been the subsidies that are provided to MFIs with the view that onward lending to the poor would create an entrepreneurial class from among them. Direct government subsidies in the form of benefits availed through ‘priority sector lending’ has had unmatched support among Government policy makers. A subsidy that has gone almost unnoticed is one where registered NBFC MF companies need to maintain a capital adequacy ratio that is almost the same as most of the other finance companies. In the Wake of Aadhaar 521


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CREDIT AND ‘BANKABILITY’ OF BORROWERS

Much of the following section relies on the field research that was

undertaken parallelly with this project.20 MFIs in Andhra Pradesh have had two important characteristic features: (a) an extensive delivery mechanism that spans all the districts; (b) quick disbursal, often bordering on easy credit—provided to anybody who is willing to borrow at high interest rates. MF companies have built a system of ‘loans at the doorstep’. No region of the state was immune. One MFI CEO mentioned that even in a backward district like Adilabad there were 5 MFIs operating by 2010.21

Bade Bi, resident of Gonegandla Village, Gonegandla Mandal of Kurnool district, was one of the most complex borrowers this project interviewed. Her husband sells firewood, and her son sells fried foodstuffs on a pushcart. Herself a typically highly indebted borrower with loans from all the MFIs that operate in her village, apart from loans from informal, high-cost lenders, Bade Bi is herself a central leader of MFIs. She has borrowed from SKS Microfinance, Share Microfin, Spandana and Ashmitha, apart from the local branch of SBI. She is unable to balance her finances due ill-health. Despite her key role in the growth of the MFI business in the Village, she continues to face harassment from the MFIs for her inability to repay the loans. She operates informal chits in the village.

The foundation on which the business is built was lending through a peer group or ‘social reference’, the Joint Liability Group (henceforth JLG). The initiation of borrowers is preceded by a marketing pitch that employees of MFIs make to villages, wherein they approach women, mostly leaders of Self-



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help Groups. The strength of the JLG varies, from 5 members in SKS to 10 in Spandana Spoorthy Financial Services (referred to as Spandana). Once the JLG is formed, the group leader is responsible for not only the smooth conduct of the meetings, but also the collection of dues. The documentation required, which gauges the financial health of the borrower, is claimed to be an exhaustive exercise by company employees. Borrowers however claim that they fill in about 2-4 pages, and invariably none of them ever read the full documentation that they submit - most of which is usually in English. The loans are disbursed only after the husband and wife sign the required documents, and they are always disbursed in the presence of the husband.

Jehangir, physically challenged resident of Jagganguda Village of Shamirpet Mandal of Ranga Reddy district, organises a Person with Disability (PwD) Self-Help Group. He is a micro-entrepreneur and operates a small shop that includes selling kirana items and also has a photocopying unit. The family, like many other BPL households in Shamirpet, has borrowed heavily from various sources including banks, MFIs (Spandana) and informal lenders to create assets for the family. A small land holder, the family has invested in creating various assets including own house, milch animals through debt. The family invests in chit funds. In the video, he elaborates in great detail their debts, cash flows and access to various informal service providers.

The first loans are always small—usually about ` 5,000. Once the borrower pays at least half the loan then the companies offer a higher loan, usually at least ` 10,000. There is a doubling of loan eligibility after the borrower completes each loan cycle. It is a common practice for companies to grant two loans—in local parlance, ‘pedda loan’ (large loan) and ‘chinna loan’ or ‘pilla loan’ (small loan). In the Wake of Aadhaar 523


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In addition to group-based lending, companies provide an array of various other loans for different purposes like agriculture, housing, personal purposes and education. Agricultural loans require collateral, usually in the form of pledge of the land. A pledge usually entails the borrower to sign more documents (borrowers could not specify the exact type of documentation required), surrender original documents attesting poof of title over the land, and at times even supply blank cheques. Crop loans are usually repayable over 12 months in two installments. While repayment schedules of such loans vary, most installments are due monthly. Spandana grants additional loans to those who are able to provide collateral—whether in the nature of agricultural land or of houses. They lend a flat ` 30,000 per person for a single title, irrespective of the acreage of land. The amount lent is not on a peracre basis but is based on the total holdings of the borrower and, as a result, borrowers often end up pledging more than an acre even though they are permitted to borrow only up to ` 30,000. A glance at the utilisation of loans by borrowers provides interesting insights: often in the difference in claims of the MFIs and what this project encountered on the ground. Loans are always ostensibly for incomegenerating activities: loans claim with monotonous frequency that they are for ‘agriculture’ or to buy ‘buffaloes’—sometimes referred to in company application forms as ‘sheep and goat’. These claims are often intentionally wrong and borrowers interviewed were often unaware of the officially stated purpose of their loan. They pointed out that they had clearly mentioned to the MFI employees the cause of their borrowing. One borrower even thought that the ‘saar always hears it wrong in such matters’.

OVERVIEW OF AP ACT

In 2010 the AP Government issued an ordinance officially titled

‘Andhra Pradesh Micro Finance Institutions (regulation of money lending) Ordinance, 2010’, subsequently converted to an Act after approval by the AP 524 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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Legislative Assembly. In many ways it brought to a head several concerns that the AP government had about what it considered the excesses of the microfinance sector. The Act is widespread: it decreed that all MFIs had to be registered with a registering authority in each district, no MFI was to be allowed to grant loans or recover loans without registering, and the registration would have to be renewed annually. Additionally, it put together, more or less for the first time, a mechanism of arbitration, and offered some protection to borrowers from intimidation. Clause 6 of the ordinance additionally states that no member of an SHG shall be a member of more than one SHG; members of more than one had to retain membership of one SHG and terminate their involvement in others. Clause 9(1) states that No MFI shall recover from the borrower towards interest that is in excess of the principal amount. Clause 9(2) states that those who have repaid an amount equal to twice the amount of the principal shall stand discharged and the borrower shall be entitled to a refund. These were important attempts by the government to see that MFIs did not push credit upon people who were unable to repay: a problem that had increased indebtedness and had also been the cause of suicides. Clause 10(1) stated that no MFI should extend further loan to a SHG or its members where the SHG has an outstanding loan from a bank, unless the MFI obtained prior written approval from the registering authority. Clause 10(4) further stated that no MFI shall grant loan to a member of SHG during the subsistence of two previous loans irrespective of the source of the previous two loans. Although there was recognition that covert lending could always bypass these regulations, it was nevertheless widely believed that, if properly implemented, this measure would go some way in restraining excessive borrowing from members. Clause 11 was crucial. Although various clauses had stated that MFIs are expected to maintain clear accounts of their books, and provide clear information about the loans taken, interest rates charged and the repayment schedule as well as actual repayments made, something that is not that common among MFIs, Clause 11(6) went further, stating that all repayments had to be made at the office of the Gram Panchayat only; Clause 11(7) stated In the Wake of Aadhaar 525


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that MFIs could not deploy agents for recovery nor use coercive actions either on their own or through agents for recovery of money from the borrower, and any form of coercive recovery including but not limited to visiting the house of the borrower would, apart being punishable under the provisions of the ordinance, cause the Registering Authority to suspend or cancel the license of the MFI. Clause 12 made it mandatory for an MFI to file a monthly statement to the Registering Authority before the 10th day of every month giving a list of borrowers, the loans given to each, and the interest rate charged on the repayment mode: this made backdating virtually impossible. Clause 13(2) and 13(3) gave the Registering Authority the right to search and seize records as well as to summon and examine officials of the MFI. India’s economic history shows that it was precisely this power vested with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) that had brought about a semblance of order to the wild west of the Indian stock markets in the 1990s. Clause 14 enabled members of all SHGs or indeed any member of the public to file a complaint regarding violation of the provision of the Ordinance by the MFI before a Registering Authority. Clause 15 also provided for the establishment of fast track courts. Clause 16 may well be a landmark in consumer protection. It is comprehensive and clearly explains that all persons connected with an responsible for day-to-day control, business and management of a MFI including partners, directors, and the employees who resort to any type of coercive measures against SHGs or its members of their family members would be liable for punishment of imprisonment which may extend up to a period of three years or with fine which may extend to one lakh rupees or with both. Under this clause MFIs could not obstruct, use violence or insult or intimidate the borrower or his family or persistently follow the borrower or his family member from place to place or interfere with any property owned or used by him or depriving him of, or hindering him in, the use of any such 526 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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property, frequent the house or any other place where the other person resides or works, or carries out business, move or act in a manner which causes or is calculated to cause alarm or danger to the person or property of such other person or seek to remove forcibly any document from the borrower which entitles the borrower to a benefit under any government programme. In case of any violation of these, then not only shall the provisions of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 apply but the proceedings will be before a Fast Track Court. Clause 20(2) provides immunity to those who expose in good faith the violations of the Ordinance by MFIs.

STRUCTURAL ISSUES IN THE MFI BUSINESS

There are a number of issues, largely of a structural nature, that MFIs

have to deal with on a daily basis, and which have altered the dynamics of the MFI business. Broadly, these issues may be divided into issues in the working of JLGs, multiple lending, the nature of high interest rates and changed dynamics of rural money lending. Issues in the Working of the JLGs The core of the MFI business is its ability to work with Joint Liability Groups (JLG). MFIs primarily lend to borrowers who have the ability to form a JLG. The JLG itself operates through the social reference system, wherein borrowers underwrite the loans of other members in the group. Though, in their initial years, JLGs were a good way to improve the creditability of the borrowers, in AP they emerged as coercive appendages of MF companies. JLGs, while being excellent for loan recovery, proved detrimental to social relations as overt social pressure began to be used as the overdetermining strategy. It is common for an employee of MFIs to squat in front of the house of the defaulter until an agreement is reached on repayment. There are eerie historic similarities to practices followed during the colonial era cited by David In the Wake of Aadhaar 527


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Hardiman including dharnas staged to force debtors to pay their dues, hiring persons to sit in front of the house of the defaulter and use of Brahmans given that it was considered harmful to bring suffering to a Brahman.22 A frequent coercive technique adopted by JLGs and Company Employees has been to use members of all the groups in the village to squat and occasionally to use violence at a defaulter’s house. One borrower in Ranga Reddy district pointed out that the pressure from the JLG has soured relations and that people were not on talking terms even to this day. She withdrew from the MFI group, though she was a Central leader (leader of several smaller groups) due to incessant fights that borrowers were having among themselves. A borrower in Kurnool district pointed out that it was common for some companies like SKS and Share Microfin to force all members of the group sit in the hot sun for hours even if one member of the group did not pay the installment. He says that his wife withdrew from that company’s group as waiting for long hours hurt their business.23 Group leaders are often proud of their actions. In Daroor Village, Mahabubnagar district, one group leader (who has five loans from three companies, cumulatively ` 60,000 loans) proudly claimed that she personally thrashed a borrower who could not pay and had fled the village. She claims that she along with other members not only tracked the defaulter to a neighbouring village, thrashed them and literally dragged them back to the their village. These structural problems in the microfinance business are aggravated by the lack of a process for arbitration. Either borrowers pay their debts, or JLG members pay their debts in full, or the company loses money. This is, it appears from our field work, unlike the case of private moneylenders where social pressures and factors often countered their power and played an important role which forced moneylenders to operate within parameters of local acceptability. This becomes all the more important because the microfinance sector operates in the realm of lending to those who work in the informal sector and the only system they apparently can have is one based 528 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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on peer pressure. For example, it would be virtually impossible for private moneylenders to collect their dues from a borrower who is on his death bed because that practice would be frowned upon by the local community, many of whom are moneylenders’ customers and probably part of the same social circle.

THE PROBLEM OF MULTIPLE LOANS

The role of multiple loans was largely overlooked until the AP government

made an issue of it. Multiple loans need to be seen in the context of companies’ claim that their loans are used only for income generation activities. A 2011 study of 1069 households indicated the magnitude of the problem.24 It indicated that out of the total number of 4553 loans (used for multiple purposes) out of which 75% were to those households Below Poverty Line (BPL), 3920 were from MFIs. Borrowers were on an average leveraged to the tune of at least three times their known sources of income. Nearly 89% of the borrowers had more than two loans. The table below is important as it provides an overview of the profile of the borrowers from different MFIs. As we see, a majority of borrowers had loans from more than four companies, indicating that the number of loans was more than six (at the minimum) and could be as high as 9-10 loans.



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Caste Wise Number of Loans from MFIs Caste wise number of loans from All MFIs Caste

Three Four More than Two Loans Loans from Loans four Loans from MFI’s MFI’s from MFI’s from MFI’s

Total

SC

60 (5.6%)

149 (13.9%)

268 (25.1%)

74 (6.9%)

551 (51.5%)

ST

7 (0.7%)

21 (2.0%)

16 (1.5%)

6 (0.6%)

50 (4.7%)

BC

32 (3.0%)

81 (7.6%)

159 (14.9%)

34 (3.2%)

306 (28.6%)

OC

13 (1.2%)

29 (2.7%)

86 (8.0%)

34 (3.2%)

162 (15.2%)

Total

112 (10.47%)

280 (26.19%)

529 (49.48%)

148 (13.84%)

1069

The above table indicates that only a small proportion of borrowers have two loans—the limit prescribed by the new AP law while a majority have accessed four or more loans. The highest number of loans that a borrower has accessed in a single name as per the study is 8 loans. However, the total loans in a household exceed this number (as seen from the picture below from Piler in Chittoor District Period.)



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The family was unable to bring another passbook as it was with the group leader who during the time of our visit was not present in the village. It is pertinent to note that SKS has a system where all the loans are stated in one booklet. Three books usually indicate about six loans.

HIGH INTEREST RATES

A major bone of contention between MFIs and the AP government during

the 2010 crisis centred around high interest rates. Until the RBI notification (2012)25 placed a cap on interest rates, there were no clear guidelines on this question, and interest rates were typically in the broad range of 20%-36% per annum. Lending was on a fixed basis rather than on the diminishing basis that banks used. Real interest rates were often high due to myriad charges that companies collected from poor and often illiterate borrowers. Among the frequently collected charges included insurance, JLG formation charges and thrift charges. Interestingly, collection of thrift was in direct contravention of RBI regulations, which clearly forbade the collection of deposits by unauthorised entities. In the Wake of Aadhaar 531


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The MFIs have claimed that JLG formation charges were introduced in order to cover the cost of creating a network in remote places. However, the fees were not withdrawn even after several companies achieved substantial economies of scale, and were collected even 7-8 years after the formation of the JLGs and the increase in the quantum lent due to the practice of multiple lending. High interest rates often facilitated a net interest rate margin that exceeded 6-8% for the companies. In contrast, banks rarely earned more than 3-4%. Despite the substantial decline in interest rates in the broader economy from 2008-09, there was no corresponding decline in interest rates for MFI borrowers; on the contrary, interest rates charagable to the poor over the past decade have been remarkably inelastic. Borrowers have seen no reduction in interest rates despite completing more than 8-10 loan cycles and accessing multiple loans, and MFIs did not pass any benefits resulting from economies of scale on to their borrowers.

CHANGED DYNAMICS OF RURAL MONEYLENDING

It would be

a mistake to construe that after the rise of MF companies, dependence on non-formal lenders either vanished or even reduced. MF companies have emerged as yet another source of credit, nothing more. A 2011 study26 found that despite the active presence of MFIs, nearly half the borrowers continued to borrow from the moneylenders. Informal lenders were not replaced, as claimed by the MFIs—only the forms and nature of lending may have changed. Indeed, an interesting aspect of the rural lending system is the phenomenon of borrowals from moneylenders at very high interest rates in order to repay the weekly installments to MFIs. In turn, this repayment of installments is primarily to achieve creditworthiness to access new loans. The supposed complete return of the informal lenders following the AP Government intervention is therefore only partly true, because they never disappeared in the first place.



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A consequence of the growth of MFI lending has been the reinvention of several earlier practices of rural money lending. Rural informal moneylenders have exploited short-term high-return opportunities provided by indebted borrowers. The interesting aspect of these arbitrage opportunities is that though they are village-specific, the trends are discernible in most of the villages where a few people with excess cash are willing to lend to those unable to repay the loan installment, but who are eligible to access a new loan within 1-2 weeks. Interest rates are usurious and go as high as 10% per month. The result of such practices is that most of the time those who are unable to repay their loans but are members of JLGs borrow short-term ‘bridge loans’ from informal moneylenders. Borrowers are usually prone to borrowing more than their actual needs. Like most other usurious lending, this works both ways. In a number of villages, people who had provided short-term credit ended losing large amounts when the AP government cracked the whip. An unintended advantage of the MFI lending seems to have been that since credit was so easily available for a period of time, the creditworthiness of the poor increased: not so much with formal institutions but with other non-formal lenders in the village. As long as borrowers could access multiple loans from different companies at short notice, non-formal lenders were assured the practice of ‘ever-greening’ and, therefore, of low probability of default. This increased their confidence in borrowers who in the past were not considered creditworthy. As a result, the growth of the MF business spawned several minor ancillary business opportunities. The term ‘ancillary business opportunity’ connotes attempts by members to earn additional income while serving as intermediaries enabling other members to access loans in their names. These business activities that MFI lending seems to have spawned, while providing short-term commissions, compounds the risks for borrowers in the JLG as well as for the companies. In Kurnool district, some borrowers indulged in large scale borrowing of loans and either disappeared or are unable to pay. These amounts often exceeded more than ` 10 lakhs.27 The system of multiple lending has created risks that affect several companies simultaneously. There several instances where people borrow In the Wake of Aadhaar 533


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money from as many companies as possible and ‘disappear’. A Share Microfinance employee in Vijayawada claimed that nearly every employee would have faced at least one such incident in the past two years.28 Borrowing in another person’s name is also common, based on either familiarity or on business considerations between borrowers. In Kurnool and Guntur districts, it is common for people to access loans in the names of other members of the community by paying a commission, usually about 10% of the loan amount.

BANKING CORRESPONDENTS & BANKING FACILITATORS

Recent policy interventions

have attempted to expand the reach of the formal banking sector through initiatives that encourage the growth of the Business correspondents (herein referred to as BCs) and Business Facilitators (referred to as BFs): in part motivated by the success of BCs in Brazil and Kenya.30,31 In India, the conventional definition for both BCs and ultra-small branches has been to see them as ancillaries to the banking system, providing banking and ATM services where there are no bank branches. Under the RBI guidelines of January 2006, banks are permitted to appoint BCs for an array of banking services including identification of borrowers, collection and preliminary processing of loan applications including verification of primary information/data, creating awareness about savings and other products, education and advice on managing money and debt counselling, processing and submission of applications to banks, promoting, nurturing and monitoring of Self Help Groups/Joint Liability Groups, post-sanction monitoring, and follow-up of recovery. Concurrently, BCs are also allowed to take up collection of small value deposit, disbursal of small value credit, recovery of principal/collection of interest, sale of micro insurance/mutual fund products/pension products/other third party products and receipt and delivery of small value remittances/other payment instruments.32 29



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The suggested scope of activities of BCs includes: (i) identification of borrowers and fitment of activities; (ii) collection and preliminary processing of loan applications including verification of primary information/data; (iii) creating awareness about savings and other products and education and advice on managing money and debt counselling; (iv) processing and submission of applications to banks; (v) promotion and nurturing SHGs/ JLGs; (vi) post-sanction monitoring; (vii) monitoring and handholding of SHGs/JLGs/credit groups/others; and (viii) follow up for recovery.33 The economic reasoning for BCs/BFs seems to be that the limitations to the ability of rural bank branches (estimated at 3,000 to 4,000 families in 12 to 15 villages within a radius of 15 kilometres) to serve a larger population can be overcome through the creation of an additional low cost channel, thereby overcoming the need for fixed investments. The long break-even for a Public Sector Bank (estimated at 5 years)34 makes the ability to develop an alternative channel all the more attractive. Preliminary evidence shows that the model has not yet proved to be profitable, and the advantages of the BC model due to enhanced flexibility and reach are typically being contrasted with negative establishment costs over the first few years of operations. On the other hand, in social terms, individuals who choose to become BCs are showing profitability, partly due to the fact that they often depend on individual or family effort and can always deploy their social and kinship ties in the community. McKinsey has identified four guiding principles to help organisations implement correspondent strategies successfully: (1) move quickly to capture early-entrant advantages; (2) build partner networks rigorously; (3) create diversified product offerings; and (4) conduct pilots that can be rapidly implemented and constantly refined.35 However, it is apparent that early mover advantage has only limited sustainability and long-term viability will depend on the ability of banks and the banking correspondents to attract and provide value added customised services. The success of the BC model for both the banks and BCs may ultimately be based (1) on the ability of the banking system to not merely increase the volumes of low value transactions In the Wake of Aadhaar 535


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that a BC may facilitate, but rather on the ability of BCs to provide customised value-added products to a constantly expanding consumer base; and (2) the ability of BCs to constantly expand the pool of ‘unbanked’ population. The success of banking correspondents (or any other channel used to deliver low cost credit) is directly related to the compensation and incentive structure that banks are able to create.

TECHNOLOGY, AADHAAR, AND FINANCIAL INCLUSION

There has been considerable anticipation in the state on the possible

consequences of an application ecosystem and the potential of unique number, in providing services, especially banking services. On its own, technology adaption is not new to Andhra Pradesh. However, there are some key differences with the Aadhaar project. (1) The biometric data collection is expected to cost ` 8000 crores; (2) Each Aadhaar card is expected to cost ` 50 or more; and (3) Till March 2011 the project was expected to spend about ` 3,088 crores. The Minister for Civil Supplies, Government of Andhra Pradesh has assured that: ‘We will soon introduce ‘anywhere-ration facility’ to facilitate even the families who have migrated from their native places to draw rations. As the Smart card would have encrypted iris and biometric data of all members of the family, any member can claim the benefits’. Further, it has been anticipated that these cards would serve as ID proof for all purposes, and could then be used for multi-utility purposes, replacing ration cards and enabling people to avail of benefits under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), Arogyasri, scholarships, pensions, housing, and self-help group schemes, and even cooking gas, besides the regular monthly quota of essential commodities under the Public Distribution System. The AP government already uses technology in almost all its departments to check leakages. The Social Welfare Department is the latest to have announced new measures. A cursory glance at some of the databases in place in Andhra Pradesh indicates that a large part of the identity of the citizens is 536 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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digitised and accessible to various institutions of the State in varied forms. The greater the number of welfare services accessed, the greater the amount of information at the disposal of the government, although it is currently not de-duplicated and not available in a single database. The ration cards are often the connecting thread to various databases. Already Mapped: Government Databases in AP S. No

Particulars of Database

Citizens/ Households Mapped

Date/Status/ Nature

1.

Self Help Groups

1.14 crores Individuals

Work in Progress

2.

NREGA

1.2 crore job cards

Daily Updation

3.

Pensions

68 lakhs

Completed, Exhaustive

4.

MFI Borrowers

All the 1.1 crore borrowers

Completed

5.

Community Based Insurance36

90 lakhs

Existing, Exhaustive

6.

Student scholarships

Nearly 4 lakhs

April 2012

7.

Health Insurance (Aryogyasri)

52 lakh patients

April 2011

8.

Co-contributory Pension Scheme

48.93 lakhs

April 2012

9.

Disability37

9.75 lakhs

9.75 of 13 lakh collected



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10.

Community Managed Sustainable Agriculture

11.89 lakh small farmers

Exhaustive, GPS

11.

Employment Guarantee and Marketing Mission

4 lakhs

March 2012

A number of these databases, like Aryogyasri and CMSA appear to be extremely efficient. But there is one practical issue that affects all these databases: they are not interoperable. Administrators with AP are hoping that Aadhaar will fill this specific gap. The impact of some of these databases has already been substantial, both on scale and savings for the government. AP has created an Electronic Payment and Application System of Scholarships (ePass) to track bill payments to students. It claims to have blocked 4,350 minority students for duplication as they were claiming scholarships under minority as well as under BC, SC and ST status. Similarly while 11,709 institutions were registered for fee-reimbursement scheme, only 11,195 were authenticated because they fulfilled the required criterion.38 The Department of Rural Development has already created a database of its 1.2 crore borrowers from microfinance in order to track and weed out multiple loans. Although Aadhaar will serve as a tool to check leakage, it is interesting that this has not been made into a unique selling point, apparently for the simple reason that if people claiming multiple benefits realise that duplication will not work, then they may simply not give their details to the government. The government has decided to make it mandatory for those who would like to benefit from government programmes.



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NOTES 1

http://indiamicrofinance.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Andhra-MFI-Ordinance.pdf.

2

http://www.sify.com/news/micro-finance-institutions-must-be-regulated-kaushik-basu-newsnational-kl0rEofbffj.html.

3

Vera Anstey, The Economic Development of India, Longmans, Green and Co., London, 1929, p.185.

4

F.A.Nicholson (1895), Report Regarding the Possibility of Introducing Land and Agricultural banks into the Madras Presidency’, Government of Madras, p. 232.

5

Gilbert Slater in his introduction to L.C.Jain, Indigenous Banking In India, Macmillan, London, 1929, p. xiii.

6

V.Krishnan, Indigenous Banking in South India, The Bombay State Co-operative Union, Bombay, 1959, p.73.

7

Metcalf, ‘The British and the Moneylender in Nineteenth Century India’, The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 34, No. 4 (December 1962), p. 391.

8

http://www.sharemicrofin.com/

9

Personal Interview, 24 May 2011.

10 ‘Microcredit is not the enemy’, Financial Times, December 12, 2010, http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/ s/0/53e4724c-06f3-11e0-8c29-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2Jk3vqnmm. 11 Report of the Sub-Committee of the Central Board of Directors of Reserve Bank of India to Study Issues and Concerns in the MFI sector, Reserve Bank of India, January 2011. 12 Business Standard, Hyderabad Edition, Section II, 19 November 2010. 13 The rapid spread of MFIs in Krishna district led to large scale borrowings and unable to repay the loans, and unable to bear the humiliation due to coercive recovery methods of the agents of MFIs, more than 70 people committed suicides, of which the four districts of Krishna, Guntur, and Prakasam accounted for about 50 suicides. By the end of March 2006, the Krishna District accounted for about 19 deaths. The Collector immediately ordered the MFIs to stop collecting their loans. 14 RBI/2005-06/84, RPCD. No. Plan. BC.24/04.09.22/ 2005-06 dated July 30,2005, http://rbidocs. rbi.org.in/rdocs/notification/PDFs/40MCMC010709_F.pdf. 15 Priya Basu, ‘Improving Access to Finance for India’s Rural Poor’, World Bank, 2006 (http://unpan1. un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/apcity/unpan024234.pdf). 16 Alex Counts, Small Loans, Big Dreams: How Nobel Prize Winner Muhammad Yunus and Microfinance are Changing the World, John Wiley and Sons, New Jersey, 2008. 17 Personal Interview, 9 June 2011. 18 P. Satish, ‘Mainstreaming of Indian Microfinance’, Economic and Political Weekly, 23 April 2005, p.1735-1738. 19 Tara S Nair, ‘The Transforming World of Indian Microfinance’, Economic and Political Weekly, 23 April 2005, p.1696. 20 S. Ananth, An In-Depth Study of the Issues and Challenges in the Microfinance Sector in Andhra Pradesh, Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty, Hyderabad, 2011. 21 Kishore Kumar Puli, CEO, Trident Microfinance, Hyderabad, Personal Interview, May 2011. 22 David Hardiman, Feeding the Baniya: Peasants and Usurers in Western India, Oxford University Press, (Paperback Edition), New Delhi, 2000, p.51. 23 Noor Ahmed, Personal Interview 14 April 2011.



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24 Ananth, S, ‘An In-Depth Study of Issues and Challenges in Microfinance Sector in Andhra Pradesh’, (Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty: Hyderabad, 2011). 25 http://www.rbi.org.in/scripts/NotificationUser.aspx?Id=7493&Mode=0. 26 Ibid. 27 Ibid. 28 Ashok, Personal Interview, June 2012 (Name of Employee Changed). 29 Cited in RBI Discussion Paper on Engagement of ‘for-profit’ Companies as Business Correspondents (the paper may be accessed at: http://www.rbi.org.in/scripts/bs_viewcontent.aspx?Id=2234. Website last accessed 22 May 2011). 30 CGAP pointed out in 2007 that at least 75% of Brazilians used branchless banking agents, compared to 43 per cent who have a bank account http://www.cgap.org/gm/document-1.9.47614/FN66_ Rev1.pdf. 31 McKinsey points out that nearly about 1600 municipalities, about one-third of the total, are serviced by banking correspondents https://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/A_new_idea_in_banking_for_the_ poor_2703. 32 http://rbidocs.rbi.org.in/rdocs/Content/PDFs/DIPBC020810.pdf. 33 http://www.rbi.org.in/Scripts/BS_CircularIndexDisplay.aspx?Id=2718. 34 Business Correspondents and Facilitators: Pathway to Financial Inclusion?, CGAP Report, The Report may also be accessed at: http://cab.org.in/CAB%20Calling%20Content/Business%20 Correspondents%20and%20Facilitators%20-%20The%20Story%20So%20Far/Business%20 Correspondents%20and%20Facilitators-The%20Story%20So%20Far.pdf_. 35 https://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/A_new_idea_in_banking_for_the_poor_2703. 36 Including Aam Admi Bhima Yojana and Janashree Bhima Yojana. 37 A specialised technology platform has been created by TCS for the Department of Rural Development, called Software for the Assessment of Disability for Access Rehabilitation and Empowerment (SADAREM) 38 ‘ePass to track scholarship payment online’, The Hindu, 11 February 2011, p. 6.



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Faction Wars S.V. Srinivas Senior Fellow, CSCS

Among the social contexts within which development is taking place in the Kurnool district is the famous legacy of faction wars in the state. An intricate set of social networks and contests that often lead to exclusion and violence that people there are reluctant to discuss, this brief essay speculates on whether digital identities could change this legacy. Aiyappa Reddy, faction leader in Allagadda. He claims that he is only an agriculturalist. His father was also a Sarpanch and their forefathers were agriculturalists. He entered politics when he was 22-23. He is now 75 years. One of his son was murdered due to factional violence. He was initially with the TDP because of the person to whom he owed his loyalty was with the TDP but then switched to PRP and is now with the YSR Congress. In the past, when he joined politics the labour cost was ` 10 or so. Now it has jumped to ` 200 per day. In contrast, it is difficult to find labour to work on the fields in the present day. If at all they come to work, they demand a lot. For full interview see: https://pad.ma/CCN Ramakrishna: Boya leader. The Tribal village in Kurnool district village has a history of factional violence. The violence started in 1973. The last time there was a murder in the village, it was in the year 2000. Some of the relatives had to go to jail for violence that took place in the 1990s. The families that were involved in the crime have left the village. The influence of factions has declined over the last few years. There is now a growing emphasis on sending their children to schools. His son studies in Vijayawada. For full interview see: https://pad.ma/CCD



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Political factions of Rayalaseema have been the subject of a series of journalistic and filmic representations since the 1990s. In our effort to understand the socio-political contexts of the state and central governments’ digitisation efforts we interviewed a cross-section of people who were either directly linked to factions or had the opportunity to observe them at close quarters. Understandably, those who were active participants in faction activities denied any involvement. For instance, Aiyappa Reddy, active in village politics for 57 years, denied the existence of factions, saying there were only ‘disagreements between farmers’. Notwithstanding the outright denial, the villages were marked by abandoned and destroyed houses—belonging to those who had fled after attacks or fearing reprisals. Aiyappa Reddy himself lost a son in faction violence and those accused of the murder had fled the village, never to return. Village politics became more competitive, partly due to the mobilisation of lower castes. There are now aspirants for elected positions from different castes and alliances among them. There is far more wealth in the villages than before. Dairy farming and rising commodity prices increased incomes in villages. Education of children is a priority across class and caste divides. Education related costs, according to one local observer, account for a substantial chunk of the annual expenditure of rural households. Children are being sent to private boarding schools in nearby towns but also to far away Vijayawada. While the quantum of disposable income varied, and thus the kind of education that children actually received, there is virtually no difference in the future that was being imagined for the next generation: investment in education would enable them to access opportunities beyond the village. Very few people expect their children to carry on their parents’ occupations. Among those we interviewed there was a broad consensus that faction violence was on the wane. Members of the scheduled tribe Boya community— key players in faction politics for generations now—said that they had seen 542 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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too much suffering caused by court cases and jail terms and were in any case focussed on educating their children to be actively involved in faction politics. Has there been a change? What is the nature of the change? In present day Kurnool we notice that welfare schemes of the state and central government have emerged as a critical factor in local politics. Virtually everyone in the villages we visited, from the factionist to Dalit jeetagadu, the most immobile of labourers who is contracted for a whole year at a time, have ‘White’ ration cards. Moreover, even the wealthiest Boya cultivators had enrolled for NREGA and also worked for a wage. Among the schemes to which the White ration card give access to are Arogyasri and the ‘Indiramma’ house.

Interview with Mekala Kundalala, labourer, Allur Village, Kurnool District, who elaborates an aspect of the labour market, where labourers borrow money in advance from a landlord in exchange for their labour for a certain period of time. These borrowings are linked mostly to their consumption needs. This is often referred to as bonded labour in the region.

Enrollment of adolescents and youth in educational institutions and migration to urban centres for employment contribute to the bargaining power of rural labourers. Government scholarships play no small role in keeping students in schools and colleges. We met a Dalit jeetagadu, who was incorrectly introduced to us a ‘bonded labourer’. He was ‘unfree’ in a sense because he had entered into an annual contract and also taken an advance from his employer. However, he was certain that he could leave after the year. His wife did not work for the same employer and his two children were being educated. In the Wake of Aadhaar 543


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Against the backdrop of changing village economy, and one in which the welfarist function of the state is always in the foreground, faction politics too have undergone a transformation. Intense competition and bitter rivalries continue to mark election campaigns but these are increasingly seen as exceptional moments. Village life is centred on accessing government schemes and other everyday survival struggles. Competing factions mark their presence by facilitating access to the services of the state or even augmenting them. Visitors to Aiyappa Reddy’s village are greeted by two water filtration plants standing side by side, each offering a supply of ‘free mineral water’ to all and sundry. They have been set up by rival factionists.

A very brief video about two water purification plants in the villages that cater to the supporters of different factions. The supporters of a faction utilise water from only from a particular purification plant.

It is useful to recall here K. Balagopal’s (2004) argument on Rayalaseema’s factions: traceable to the polegars of the Vijayanagara Empire who had 544 In the Wake of Aadhaar


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administrative and military control over territories, the faction underwent several transformations over the years. The British pacified polegars but found that ‘village factions’ led by landed castes had sprouted instead. In the post-independence period, these factions grew stronger with faction leaders consolidating their power through local body elections. There was a further transformation in the 1980s and 1990s when leaders like YS Rajasekhar Reddy creating elaborate networks that linked village level factions with state-level leadership. Bankrolling this transformation were mining permits and government contracts, which resulted in huge cash inflows to factionists. Balagopal’s thesis is that factionism is not so much about the absence of social and economic change but the form it takes: older structures and relations of power are retained and indeed strengthened by relatively new players who have little in common with earlier generations of factionists. Indeed, economic opportunities opened by access to state controlled or owned wealth play a critical role in sustaining factions. Evidently, Andhra Pradesh’s IT revolution, with its emphasis on digitisation, has done little to prevent the rural rich from accessing welfare schemes meant for much poorer sections of society. There is no sign that incremental digitisation as also the adoption of biometric authentication in the state has come in the way of a dubious kind of universalisation of the government’s welfare schemes. The wealthier ‘White’ ration card holders did not come across as being particularly anxious about losing the benefits that were not meant for them. Any claims about the capacity of technology to root ou t embedded social and political practices therefore have to be seriously discounted. However, it is likely that the ongoing digitisation efforts, issuing UID numbers included, will quicken the pace of labour mobility. Furthermore, like other state initiatives that have had lasting if unintended consequence on faction politics, this time too we might see the emergence of new players and forms of exercising political dominance.

REFERENCES Balagopal, K. 2004. “Andhra Pradesh: Beyond Media Images.” Economic and Political Weekly. Vol. 39, No. 24 (June 12). pp. 2425-2429.



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Bibliography

Extended Bibliography and Further Reading Compiled by Arun Menon, Doctoral Student, CSCS

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Finance Ministry, and Government of India. 2011. Interim Report of the Task Force on Direct Transfer of Subsidies on Kerosene, LPG, and Fertiliser.http://eprints. cscsarchive.org/178/1/Interim_report_Task_Force_DTS.pdf. Finofintech foundation. 2012. Financial literacy project. http://eprints.cscsarchive.org. Fizbein, Ariel, and Norbert Schady. 2009. “The Economic Rationale for Conditional Cash Transfers.” In Conditional Cash Transfers: Reducing Present And Future Poverty, 45–66. WorldBank.http://eprints.cscsarchive.org/224/1/045%2D066_ PRR%2DCCT_ch02.pdf. Glassman, Amanda, Jessica Todd, and Marie Gaarder. 2009. “Latin America: Cash Transfers to Support Better Household Decisions.” In Performance Incentives for Global Health : Potential and Pitfalls, ed. Rena Eichler, 89–121. East Peoria, Illinois: Versa Press. http://cgdev.org/doc/books/PBI/06_CGD_Eichler_LevineCh6.pdf. Handa, Sudhanshu, and Benjamin Davis. 2006. “The Experience of Conditional Cash Transfers in Latin America and the Caribbean.” http://eprints.cscsarchive. org/238/1/ag429e00.pdf. Janvry, Alain De, and Elisabeth Sadoulet. 2004. “Conditional Cash Transfer Programs: Are They Really Magic Bullets?” 1–5.http://eprints.cscsarchive.org/243/1/ ARE%2DCCTPrograms.pdf. Jones, Nicola, Rosana Vargas, and ElianaVillar. 2007. “Conditional Cash Transfers in Peru: Tackling the Multi-dimensionality of Childhood Poverty and Vulnerability.” In Social Protection Initiatives for Families, Women and Children: An Analysis of Recent Experiences, 1–23. New York: New School and Unicef. http://eprints. cscsarchive.org/381/1/UNICEFpaperFebFinal.pdf. Kalaiselvi, K. T., and D. Muruganandam.“A Study of a Micro Credit Programme Run by Self-Help Groups in Tamilnadu State, India.”Journal of Finance and Management in Public Services 9 (2): 25–38. http://eprints.cscsarchive.org/314/1/ kalaiselvi92.pdf. Khan, H R, and R N Dash. 2007. “Financial Inclusion: A Study of Business Correspondents in Orissa.” CAB Calling: 8–12. http://eprints.cscsarchive.org/276/1/Financial_ Inclusion_%2D_A_Study_of_Business_Correspondents_in_Orissa.pdf. Kothari, Vinod, and Neha Gupta. 2007. Micro Credit in India: Overview of Regulatory Scenario. http://eprints.cscsarchive.org/317/1/Micro_Credit_in_ India%2DOverview_of_the_Regulatory_Scenario.pdf. Ledgerwood, Joanna, Julie Earne, and Candace Nelson. 2012. The New Microfinance Handbook: A Financial Market System Perspective. Washington, D. C: The World Bank. http://eprints.cscsarchive.org/231/1/751830PUB0EPI00icrofinance0ha ndbook.pdf.



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