“One of the fundamental contrasts between free democratic societies and totalitarian regimes is that the totalitarian governments rely on secrecy for the regime and disclosure for all other people, where as in the civic culture of liberal democracy, the position is approximately the reverse.”
- Geoffrey De Q Walker
The new national ID card scheme sought to be introduced by the Government marks a movement towards this totalitarian regime referred to above. Picture ‘Enemy of the State’ and at the least harmful level, “the government knowing where youa re and what you are doing at every point of time” and then ask yourself if its allright that this be the case?
Hopefully, the answer should be a ‘no’;else you are one of those sitting in the chairs attempting to be the very puppet the state wants you to be, and not paying any heed to rights and constitutional protections.
The greatest threat posed by this scheme is that to privacy and individual liberty as a whole. That an individual can exercise his option of free will within a certain space to himself without the state knowing what he or she is doing. This also being perhaps the greatest advantages of a civil democratic society. On the other hand is the dystopic vision of a Orwellian society with the state playing the role of a “Big Brother” and watching everybody’s move. In fact, the Indian Supreme Court has said in as early as in 1964 in Kharak Singh v. State of UP, that nothing is more deleterious to a man’s physical happiness and health than a calculated interference with his privacy.
While there may be some doubts as to the prevalence of this right under the Constitution, the movement on the other hand to legitimize other modes of surveillance and collection of evidence is also disheartening. We are one of the few democratic countries where illegally obtained evidence is still admissible and narco analysis and brain mapping practiced ‘circumstances galore’. All this is done under the garb of state security. That this is the solution for ending the search for terrorists, the problem of illegal immigrants, state enemies and the like. You sell this to the common man and Voila! You get them to sign up for a national ID card program/ scheme. Ofcourse, there are the benefits of easy distribution of ration, programmes for the poor etc… that come along; but they surely don’t mandate a card for every citizen.
It is not just an ID card, but there’s also an angle of biometrics involved. Thus, every citizen would have a number tag, his personal details and biometric descriptions like finger prints, DNA etc… attached. I couldn’t help amusing myself with this thought the moment I saw the IDEA advertisement on the issue. The one where everybody is referred to by their phone numbers and the new government policy is highlighted in the background.
Sadly unlike the United States and the European Union, the law on privacy in India has one limitation as observed by the Court in PUCL v. Union of India,
“The Right to Privacy is subservient to the interests of the state.”
That’s how easy it is to introduce and prepare a defense around the national ID card scheme. And that’s why it would succeed and my/our concerns wouldn’t be addressed. But if there is any semblance and place for rights being used as trumps against Government power, that rights can simply not be stashed away merely because a certain section would be better off it they were; then there is some hope.
It must be remembered that what is at stake is nothing less that the nature of our society and the power and authority of the state over the individual; something that we cannot afford to lose in a democracy.
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You seem to be jumping the gun a little bit, don’t you? `National ID card’ does not translate to `authoritarian, big daddy state’. The main reason for a National ID is to streamline benefits.
Today, the blow to democracy that you refer to is dealt by corruption. Every subsidy / benefit system in India is plagued with venal officials eager to make a quick buck. What this means is that food, money and other subsidies rarely reach their intended beneficiaries while smug officials pocket large quantities. The National ID system is directed towards solving that.
The other big impediment we face is the problem of just keeping track. It’s debatable whether even base-line figures or population are accurate in India. Over the past two decades, the quantity of ‘numbers’ that keep track of overlapping sections of Indian society have grown to the point where regulating and monitoring agencies have conflicting figures. A National ID would unify all those numbers into one. The practical significance of that is that out-tricking the system becomes tougher. With a National ID, entries in part of the system are measured against another. For example, the system will throw up warnings when it sees someone with a ration card whose tax returns show that he’s above the poverty line.
Thus, your gains from this system are (1) greater transparency, (2) less corruption and (3) unification across regulating agencies. This translates into more money for the government to spend on development rather than subsidies and populist policies.
I agree that the privacy angle can be a very real threat. It provided the subject matter for several filibusters against a National ID in Britain (though its eventual demise was for other reasons). But if one were to dissect that problem as you’ve put it, there seems to be little to shout about. The National ID system is a one stop database of numbers. It envisions harmonizing many data streams rather than creating drastically new parameters of surveillance. Even with a National ID, what privacy do you lose? Have you lost your right to move? Does the government ask you who you sleep with or who you vote for? You claim that the government will “know where you are” and what “you are doing at every point in time”. That isn’t what the National ID system is evenly remotely concerned with. Your movement and actions are tracked more by your ATM / Credit Card transactions (why don’t you sue them for breach of privacy) than a National ID card.
To quote you again, “The greatest threat posed by this scheme is that to privacy and individual liberty as a whole. That an individual can exercise his option of free will within a certain space to himself without the state knowing what he or she is doing”. Beyond making this claim, you do little in supporting it by way of suggesting how a Big Brother government could do so. Similarly your trenchant attack on biometrics seems to lack a reason for *why* it is bad.
While I am sure that you raise an important concern (to be sure, it seems to be the central force of attack against National ID systems anywhere in the world), perhaps a follow up to this would include reasons for some of your positions.