 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. The national population register of census 2011 is not going to collect only the basic information about the citizens of the country the way it was done till 2001. But it is also going to collect the biometric data of the population. Biometrics is essentially an identification of an individual on the basis of his or her unique human characteristics for example facial recognition, fingerprints, iris patterns etc. There is a lot of debate going on among the intellectuals within the people who are related to law etc to understand the nuances within this. Today I have with me eminent law researcher and activist Usha Ramanath to talk to us about the implications of biometrics and individual profiling of the population of a country. Welcome to our show Usha. So biometrics has been used for a long time in forensing sciences, in banking etc and a lot of other purposes. How the implication now has changed when we talk about public policy and when it gets related to UID and net grid? While I am answering your question the first is that I think it's important to recognize that the national population register and the census are actually two completely different exercises. What is being done is to use the opportunity of the census to see if it is possible to load the exercise of the national population register on to the census exercise. That's all. Now the census as you know has been there for you know for many many for over over a century. The idea being that it should be possible for us to understand the composition of a population and its requirements so that the state can figure out how it needs to function. The national population register has a completely different take. There's one fundamental difference between these two that we need to understand that the census is confidential whereas the national population register very clearly is not. So when you ask me about biometrics the fact that biometrics is a part of the national population register exercise is significant also because it means that that information can be widely used it can be handed over to different agencies. There is no sanctity in the NPR collecting the biometrics because they can in fact in fact the intention is that they want you know the idea was to link up the NPR with the UID exercise so that they can hand information that they collect over as a protocol of data to the UID for the UID to be able to deliver numbers. So that's an important distinction that we need to understand. I think one of the you know one of the ironies of the situation is that you know when you look at the Constitution of India the Constitution of India sees us as citizens it doesn't see us as subjects and as citizens we are entitled to certain rights. So you find that when a person is accused of an offense they have what is called a right of silence. They also have a right to their bodily integrity. So to tell people that you have to part with information about yourself to a law-enforcing agency there are limits to that that are placed by the Constitution. It is almost as if the government today believes that that is only for people who are accused of crimes but the ordinary citizen doesn't have any of these protections. So today we are being asked to divulge all manner of information about ourselves and it's being converted into a coercive exercise where biometrics will have to be given and the government in its various databases and private agencies in various databases will be holding on to information about us which includes biometrics. Now I have there's one challenge that I want to make to the statement that you made which I know is not just something that you are saying but it's being said is that biometrics are unique and I don't know that there is any thing to guarantee to us that it is because from what we've heard for instance fingerprints the maximum number of people over whom this has gone you know where it has been taken is over 50 million people and that's even by what the biometrics committee itself says of the UIDAI which is trying to push biometrics. I think it's important to place biometrics in context. See biometrics is basically using the body as a marker and there are various ways in which this has been done I mean you like you said there is facial recognition technique there is iris scan there is fingerprints there have been various kinds through the years the difference now is that it is becoming the one marker of identity that they want to impose on us. So it should be possible for us to identify ourselves not through the variety of ways in which our identities are constructed but through body as marker which is seen as having a determinative ability for one thing it is unproven for another there is a certain violation of bodily integrity that happens when you're going to use the body as a marker. Thirdly remember that every time if they're going to use this as a marker for instance the it's now being said that the petroleum ministry is going to insist that to have a LPG connection you need to have a UID and that the guy who comes to deliver the you know deliver the cylinder in your house will come with a handheld device and you've got to give you a fingerprint every time before you get your LPG. So it's like they're linking up every activity with your body being capable of being a marker. If you look at the proof of concept that the UID AI conducted it's about the most unscientific study that I have seen and its representation is really pathetic. Its sample is very small they actually admit in that that they did not want to complicate the sample that was in the intention so they did not take areca networkers and tea workers for instance into this because it would complicate the sample that should tell you how much we know already about biometrics we don't know enough about biometrics. So on the one hand if we did and biometrics actually work it's a violation of bodily integrity and it's a violation of the kind of relationships that people have with us with their state. I mean unless I'm accused of an offense and there is an investigation against me to demand that I should be giving up information about myself to whatever agency it may be is an unacceptable phenomenon but biometrics is being made to seem as if it is an answer to a solution instead of it itself being a problem in the guise of answers. You talked about citizens and the rights of citizens in the country how do you look at this issue vis-a-vis census act of 1948 and citizenship act of 1955 and the further the rules which came up in 2003 so a little in terms of law legality etc. See like I said in the beginning the fundamental difference between these two is that the census is confidential they're not supposed to give any information to anyone whereas the national population register which is under the citizenship rules is not that that's a very very fundamental difference. The one thing to remember in both circumstances is that the idea of privacy and the idea of personal security you know that there is there is a misconception that privacy is only about people peering into my house and figuring out what I'm doing it's actually a lot to do with personal security. If I have to go to a cyber cafe for instance and I have to give my biometrics every time or you know give an ID or give my UID number every time I'm going to use the cyber cafe which is what they're trying to bring it down to then a young girl who goes there for instance who's got to give her name her address leave her photograph there you know and leave her tell them what their what her ID is is far less secure so this is not just about privacy as in you know my person and I don't want to tell anyone who I am it's about personal security all that is getting jeopardized and what is increasingly happening is it's not just the NPR and the census there are various ways in which the state is saying I want information about the individual biometrics is one element of this now why biometrics is a particular problem is also because of the various ways in which it can be used for instance many people who are in criminal law have been telling us that if you have sets of fingerprints that are available as databases to have them planted in different places is really no problem at all. So the government has repeatedly said that biometrics is needed to check corruption say for example by guarding against attempts for against attempts of creating multiple identities it is also saying that it will be used to ensure that the welfare schemes the fruits will reach the targeted for example the whole in the NREGA in National Rural Employment Guarantee Act the government will be able to give wages proper wages to the people who are working so how would you like to respond to these arguments which are being. Can I start with the last first with your NREGA issue first it's very interesting what's happening now they are talking about you know if you look at the past two years you'll find that every change that is being suggested in the system is being used to leverage the UID that is if we say that PDS will be delivered if you have a UID then that will help UID enrollment grow if you say NREGA everybody will be given a bank account and that can only be done if the UID is there then it will help in the enrollment for UID now they say pet you know for you to get yourself a gas cylinder I mean all of us know that very often gas cylinders come at a lower weight than they should be because for a day it has been handed over to someone who's running a commercial enterprise and then it comes to your house that's the way in which gas leaks out of your system but what you're now being asked to do is that to get that reduced gas you have to give your fingerprint like that deals with the corruption what you realize when you look at what's been happening over the past two years is that you know if this is there is a concerted effort to market the idea of the UID for purposes of enrollment let me just clarify at this point I mean this is what end of June 2011 we don't yet have a study from the UID AI on authentication which means that they have done even however shoddy or you know however preliminary year study they've done something on enrollment we don't yet have a report on authentication so you don't even know that the authentication is going to happen so what we are in effect seeing is a technology that is rolling out not a solution so on NREGA the they tried with working on PDS but the right to food people got on to their case very quickly and found that it is really no answer to the to the kind of problems that there are and that actually all it might help is to dismantle the PDS system which many people you know felt was wrong and so now they've shifted out of that kind of rhetoric into the rhetoric of financial inclusion that's how in the NREGA they said of everybody will have a bank account and what do you find in the financial inclusion debate actually is that banks don't want to take their infrastructure to any place they want to be they don't want the poor either so they're saying poor don't come to us we won't come to you in the rural banking sector for instance there's actually been over a 10% reduction which means that it's about 57-58% of the banking sector was in rural areas now it's about 47% that's in rural areas so yeah so which means they've backed off from the rural area but they're talking financial inclusion what does it mean so they're saying we don't want you but we'll use business correspondence banking correspondent model that is we will farm people out the banking correspondent model is a model that has not taken off in 2009 there's an RBI report that clearly shows that this is not taken off and the probability of it happening is really marginal so these are not solutions I just want you to remember that I think even when we start asking these questions one of the questions that we ask if we have to ask is who is going to benefit the most from the pushing of biometrics is it really going to be a people is it going to be this topic because corruption is not happening because the poor man in the street is corrupt corruption is happening because there is no governance there is no regulation our criminal justice systems have collapsed you know there is no seriousness within government that they should be a law or not that they should be a law abiding state if you look at it all agencies of state are acting like they are exceptions to the law it's only the ordinary person so how are you going to catch them through get taking my biometrics you know what they're trying to say is that oh you know if they are supposed to deliver it to you your fingerprints have to be there for you to receive it but you're still retaining the power and that control with that same person who is corrupt