Indian Identity Cards: nothing to hide, nothing to fear?

Even for those battle-hardened by arguing against the authoritarian instincts of successive governments in the US and UK, the complexity and scale of the civil liberties debate in India can take you aback. The trial of a new biometric ID card system in rural Maharashtra from last September – administered by the government’s Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) – which will (it is planned) eventually extend to every citizen, has ignited fierce debate in Indian society about the relationship between state authority and individual freedom. It is a debate that will be familiar to many in the West but, in a fragmented country of 1.2 billion citizens, one which evades easy answers or recycled rhetoric.

On the face of it, UIDAI seems a legitimate method of organisation in a vastly populated, rapidly modernising nation noted for its many layers of wasteful bureaucracy and weak civil institutions. Led by IT star Nandan Nilekani, listed as one of the world’s most influential people in the 2009 TIME 100, and branded as “Aadhaar” (meaning “foundation” in several of India’s many languages), the scheme provides every citizen with a 12-digit unique number, which will be stored in a central database along with photographs, fingerprints and iris scans. If it manages to be incorporated on a national level, it will become the largest database of its kind ever created.

Its advocates point to the many advantages offered to ordinary Indians who will be officially recognised, many for the first time, as citizens by the state. The notorious levels of corruption and inefficiency within Indian civil society could be bypassed by offering direct access to state benefits and hand-outs; millions of poor and migrant workers, currently without any form of identification at all could finally open bank accounts (rather than keep their wages stuffed under the mattress or in the “safekeeping” of their landlords). For a country with a fraught political history and the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai still fresh in the mind, the prospect of enhanced security is perhaps more readily understandable than in a paranoid West, even if this is kept notably low-key in favour of the arguments emphasising modern convenience.

Yet across India’s growing middle class, spearheaded by a coalition of over 100 NGOs, UIDAI has proven deeply controversial. Aside from the familiar rumblings about the cost and viability of such an ambitious project in the wake of the perceived humiliation of the Commonwealth Games, many are not convinced by the sudden transformation of the Indian state into a benevolent parent. Sceptics counter that, rather than improving the lot of the poor, such a system would make it easier to persecute the unregulated and low-paid migrant workers who keep India’s economic miracle thriving: 83% of the welfare claimants that UIDAI insists the ID scheme will benefit already have bank accounts. Also, accusations that the ID cards would also log a citizen’s caste – using data drawn from the equally contentious 2010 census – provoke unease over how willing modern India is to embrace social mobility.

Furthermore, there is the spectre of the “encounter killing” – non-judicial executions by the police force – which the National Human Rights Commission conservatively estimates accounts for nearly 100 suspects a year. Even without this, the widely accepted brutality of Indian police and security services means that suspicion of the state’s motives cannot easily be dismissed as Orwellian paranoia or cocktail party chatter. If this is really just about producing a ‘turbocharged social security number’, as is claimed, then why are so many personal details required?

Perhaps, most strikingly, those on both sides are starting to question what privacy means to the citizens of the world’s largest democracy. In a Bollywood-obsessed land, film and music stars have started to take zealous steps to guard their privacy, contesting the free speech of a vibrant – if disorganised – new media-dominated public sphere. Campaigners, politicians and lawyers scour the Indian constitution for a ruling on the right to privacy but have found little clarity. UIDAI’s defenders argue that for India’s poor, easy access to state resources and official recognition of themselves as citizens comes before any concern about privacy; critics counter that it only offers a corrupt state more power over the individual with no added accountability. It is maintained that UIDAI remains unclear as to how a centralised database containing huge amounts of sensitive and valuable personal data will remain secure – a problem which has proven difficult to solve for the leading Western powers – and contribute towards efficient allocation of benefits, when so many of the existing flaws come from within the system itself.

If UIDAI’s potential is realised, as one intelligence official was quoted as saying, ‘there really will not be any secrets from the state.’ The willingness of UIDAI’s supporters to dismiss the privacy concerns of its poor citizens, under the assumption they’d rather have material benefits afforded by the scheme, reveals much about the elite’s attitude to more abstract rights. Yet, as the recent controversy over the privacy offered by Blackberry smartphones showed, it can be difficult to balance complete state authority with the demands of much-needed private sector investment, especially from Western companies. How much value modern Indians are willing to place on their secrets will be very much at the forefront of what many economic commentators claim may be “India’s decade”.

Throughout October and November, The Independent Online is partnering with the Battle of Ideas festival to present a series of guest blogs from festival speakers on the key questions of our time.

David Bowden is the co-ordinator of the 2010 Battle Satellite programme. The Battle Satellite event Bollywood hide-and-seek: privacy, disclosure and the media, organised in partnership with Landmark bookshops, takes place on Wednesday 24 November at Landmark, Lower Level, Palladium High Street, Phoenix Mills, Lower Parel, Mumbai, India.

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