Inclusive Surveillance and Privacy: India's Unique Identity Project. Conceptual and Empirical Perspectives

• In Event: 445 - Section on Science, Knowledge, and Technology Paper Session. The Sociology of Big Data: Knowledge, Technology, Security and Privacy

Abstract

Three national database projects are currently underway in the world’s largest democracy, India. Of these, the most ambitious, controversial, celebrated and critiqued is India’s Unique Identity Number Project (UID) instituted by the State in 2009. The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) aims to grant India’s 1.2 billion, a unique, de-duplicable, identity number, using biometrics—fingerprints and iris scans—to enable financial and social inclusion for the poor, improve governance, and generate economic growth. In September 2013, the Supreme Court of India, in an interim order, stayed the linking of these identity numbers to various welfare schemes and services, an outcome of a long protracted battle between civil liberties activists and the state. India lacks adequate privacy legislations to manage complex governance projects of this scale, and the storage of identities in a centralized database accessible to agencies for verification brings contentious issue of security and privacy to the forefront. Yet the UID rollout continues with media reports citing a quarter of the population enrolled, and a million being issued UIDs everyday. In this paper, I trace the complex interconnections between technology, welfare, and surveillance that create database states. Drawing upon data collected in the field, in India, from 2012-2014, I suggest the UID not only generates anxieties on privacy issues, but also shapes new knowledge formations on identity, and citizens and state relations.

Author

• Parul Baxi, University of California-Davis