tsubba - 30 October, 2007 | Bangalore | egovernance | JNNURM

... but the past wont let go.

In the land of benaami khatas, multiple registrations, school certificates, drivers licences and other sundry scandals, a government initiative to use biometrics to pin a person to his identity, has stirred the shackles of citizen groups and raises important questions about identity and the sanctity of personal space.

As a part of the Basic Services for the Urban Poor (BSUP), NURM mandates use of biometric identification system for slum-dwellers. Under this system, a person’s fingerprints and some other physiological characteristic, usually the retina of the eye, is recorded and in a database for future reference.

Jawaid Akthar, MD of KUIDFC-the nodal agency for JNNURM projects in Karnataka, says:
Biometric identification was recommended as a fool-proof measure to ensure that only beneficiaries gain from the housing projects.
This was also to ensure that the urban poor did not sell their houses before the lock-in period of 20 years ended.

Now let us look at the reactions this has generated:
Isaac Arul Selva of Slum Jagatthu likens it to the practice of the British identifying and branding certain tribes as criminal during the British times and asks:
Why is it important to create a database of only slum-dwellers?, When there are other identification mechanisms such as voter identity card and ration card, why are people living in slums being subjected to this?

R. Padmini, Civic Bangalore.
Why should the urban poor not sell their houses? If they get a better job in some other city, why should they hold onto this property? When other sections of the society can sell their property when they want to, why should the urban poor be restrained?

Kshithij Urs of Action Aid.
We do not yet have a law that protects the information created in such a database. It could be dangerous if misused. (Misuse of information has been one of the most important sociological concerns raised worldwide about the use of biometric strategies.)

What the actual people at the receiving end of this had to say is not known. Nevertheless, I think the questions raised are important and concern us all.

If we were one of the subjects of this, what would we do? Would we accept a 20 year restriction on reselling, say, our severly subsidized BDA sites? Would we give up our biometric markers to an unsecure data bank?

Or, is all this a big ho-hum about nothing - in a land where even foreign terroists have a ration card and IDs are faked and cross referencing and verification non-existant, if made universal, is this, - a completely digitized, unique marker, the only workable way forward that could revolutionize citizenship and perhaps governance?

Source: The Hindu

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