 Good afternoon or good day or greetings appropriate for the time of the day for wherever you are logged in. Welcome to another masterclass which is organized as part of our project in Karana which examines the proposal of introduction of blockchain technology in Indian elections. This election tech project at Karana was initiated to focus on how technology could work for people and society. And we intend to undertake public deliberations and studies and produce reports that will help stimulate a lively discussion around the topic of introduction of blockchains and any other subsequent technology. We believe that this change, which is a significantly large one. Since the introduction of the EVM-VVPAT system should not have uncritical acceptance. This project resorted to Karana. Karana is a collection of independent critiques of various aspects of digital India. My name is Sankarshan. I'm a member of the Karana Collective and I'm also the curator and promoter of this project. The project is supported by Hasgig.com, a platform which has for over a decade now provided collaborations across practices around the technology, design, law policy systems, data among others. Hasgig believes that collaborations take place via user-generated content shared with practitioners leading to discovery and elevation of ideas and individuals. Our masterclasses are created and designed to enable participants to acquire foundational knowledge and perspectives required to evaluate the intended and unintended consequences of technology interventions. Before I go on to introducing our speaker and I must say that I'm very excited about today's class because primarily I'm excited about the fact that our speaker has finally found time to participate in this. How's keeping notes? One, this masterclass is also being streamed on YouTube. So we will be keeping an eye on the chat box at YouTube for questions and clarifications and then pass them on to Zoom over here to be discussed and answered. Usually we prefer that all questions and discussions get lined up for the end and get queued using the raise hand systems in Zoom. The raising of hand in a Zoom software application is generally available under the reactions menu item. Depending on the operating system you are using and the Zoom bill, it may be somewhere else so you have to figure that one out. And if you cannot and you still want to have that question and conversation, please put that in the Zoom chat and we'll take it from there. If you are not speaking, we would like you to keep your mic on mute so that the sound quality of this recording is better. The last thing is that if you do want to have a particular point during the presentation clarify, please put it on Zoom chat. We will bring it up so that the speaker can provide clarification on that particular point. And this is something that we have been anticipating will happen, especially in today's talk. So let's use that judiciously and figure out as to how best we can have the conversations. Now, to introduce our speaker, Tarangirin Sridhama. Tarangirin teaches politics and history at the School of Liberal Studies and as in French University at Bangalore. Her recently published book in pursuit of proof of history of identification documents in India, we've together the Hedito on an unattempted history of making and verifying identification documents in the urban miles in South India. She's been a prolific and regular contributor of articles and has written for various popular publications such as the Hindu, the news minute, the New India network, the friend, the wire. She's also featured in journals such as the economic and political weekly contributions to the Indian sociology, Indian economic and social history review, and so on. She's currently working on something that's exceedingly exciting. It's a new project that looks at how cast structures and medical discourses on alcohol and a various dissenting publics are formed around alcohol regulation in colonial and post colonial India. Before I hand it over to Tarangirin for her masterclass and discussion. I just like to put this in context that any conversation around elections in India eventually touch upon the topic of electoral roles and in slowly and surely we touch upon the topic of uniquely identifying Indian citizens and how they how it affects various outcomes in an election. The fun part is, and I deliberately choose the word fun, is that the search for uniqueness is not something that has happened recently. The search for uniqueness has been happening for a while and Tarangini has been working on this topic, and is an expert for us to be able to provide that window into realizing that the search continues, and that a consequence of how various elections have created over the period of time so with that I'll stop my spiel and hand it over to our speaker Tarangirin Alliyas. Thanks Sankarshan. In fact I'd like to start by thanking Sankarshan, Zainab and Hasgeek for this very generous invitation to partake of the masterclass series, which is an excellent series and I have been watching some of the other masterclasses and what I'm going to be doing today is mostly just going to compliment what has already been said and of course I hope to be able to also make a few distinctive arguments in the process. But yeah, I'm looking forward to this. Okay, I, let me start by actually sharing my screen. You're able to see right. Okay, so I have changed the title of the presentation a little bit. I hope the listeners, the audience here does not mind. So it's right now how I have titled and framed the presentation for today, the masterclass for today is around constructing uniqueness before and after Adhar, right, and the subtitle being histories of authentication in India. Okay, let's start by actually defining the term authentication and seeing what it means right so the Cambridge English Dictionary provides a certain definition of the term authentication, where it says authentication is a process of proving that something or someone is real true or what people say it is or who they are right. So, you know, by this token by this definition, a lot of things are covered under the term come under the term authentication right so it could be authentication by password. As for instance, authentication that your laptop, for instance may require for you to be able to access it right but you have set up right or it could be biometric authentication as for instance, when you ensure that when you want to ensure that your phone is not easily hackable. Right, so you set up a biometric authentication to open and to lock your phone right so so then you also use authentication I mean you can also use the term authentication and other context right like for instance, there's barcode authentication authentication using RFID tags right and so so you have a whole range of modes or modalities of authentic right so what we are however going to be touching on is the most and the more contemporary and the more topical. And the more, you know, now, the of having to do with the here and the now modality of authentication or discussion of authentication right which has to do with a certain type of authentication that other goes by. And here if you to look at other and I'm not going to go into a vast elaborate introduction of other I will be saying a few things along the way about it. Later on, also, but let's start by talking about how other being a cloud based biometric authentication process is something that relies on like, for instance, the authentication of person as well as authentication of process right so other authentication these implications. So if you were to talk about authentication of person via the UI DEI the unique identification authority of India again there are multiple ways of going about it right so there is the verification of demographic details with something called the central identities data repository which is the database so to speak right and then there is the OTP based authentication. So, sometimes when, for instance, you want to change your address, or when you're carrying out some other function like, for instance, you're trying to file a tax return using your heart. There is OTP based authentication that also happens right which has limited viability, and which is to be used then and then, and then there is multi factor authentication as well, which implies, which means that the UI DEI recognizes the fingerprint, the iris as well as the photograph as three different types of biometrics that it can use to authenticate a person right so the, so while there are all these modalities of authentication, even as far as Adhar is concerned, we must remember that of course the UI DEI prioritizes certain kinds of authentication over others, like multi factor authentication OTP authentication are seen to be much more reliable than say the verification of demographic details alone right. So this is something to be kept in mind and of course Adhar is something that also entails a unique number identifier right. So, so the, the number is also something that is supposed to be there in the cloud, and, and, and cloud based authentication is also a concept that we should be wrapping our heads around and which, of course is not removed from all the other things that I've been speaking about. And then there is the authentication of process itself. So it's, it's not just enough to authenticate a person. The process through which you are doing this, you're carrying this out is also to be legitimate. Right. So someone other than data operator registered by the UI DEI is is not qualified really to carry out authentication of person. So this is something to be kept in mind. Apologies for the background noise. So I just wanted to clarify here that, for instance, there are certain enrollment centers, which are authorized and which are which feature for instance, certain data operators who have the authority to carry out authentication, other based authentication. Right. So now let's take a look at the ways in which this may have gone right. Right. So this are the sites of other authentication do they really hold up right. So, whether you're talking about authentication of person or you're talking about authentication of process right. So, if you were to look at the picture to your right the image to your right this is the, this is an other that is issue to the deity Hanuman right. So, if authentication is supposed to imply, that you are making sure that a person is who they say it is right, then this does not really hold up, right. This kind of authentication does not hold up, because you have, you have an other that is being issued to a deity instead of a person, right. There are other examples also of which I will give you of authentication of person which have gone right. But apart from this, if you to look at authentication of process, there to there have been multiple issues, right. If it is only authorized operators who supposed to be able to access the database and issue another that has also not really held up in certain cases, like for instance, Gurgaon especially has seen a whole bunch of quote unquote fake other centers, right. Where it has been commonplace to get the rubber stamps of the thumb prints or the fingerprints of these authorized operators and then access the database without authorize access the database without authorization right and so in that sense it is regarded as a fake other center. So, you also have other, like other sites also, for instance, of how the duplication has not really happened, right. Like for instance, if you to look at the, the controller and auditor general, who, who came up with this report in 2016, and he, and the, and the CAG is office has come up with this report, which documents how the process for seeding the other with the, the provision of gas cylinders is again a process that has been mismanaged right and so if you to look at the underlying parts right. So there have been very many duplicate connections that have been connections varying the same name same address, right and the audit also verified existence of connections with same name same date of birth and same registered mobile number. Same number, same bank IFC, same bank account number so so there is absolutely no guarantee that seeding with other is going to remove duplicates right in that sense. Okay, so I wanted us to wrap our heads around this whole. This, this whole concept of what are her authentication is before we move forward because I want to trace my steps backwards right and take us as far back as possible within colonial India. And I want to also in the, I want to also talk about how, you know, her authentication is is of course a part of this whole discourse where there is a certain claim of uniqueness that is being made, there's a certain claim of unique that is being created, right and there's a certain claim of cutting edge technology behind it. And, and how this, this is like a vast leap forward in terms of where we are at within the history of something like authentication though that same term may not have been used earlier on. So, while assessing this claim, we need to also be able to discern or identify whether such similar arguments have been made in the past, right, and whether these kinds of claims of innovativeness have also been made in the past, right. Apologies. But while assessing these claims, we also should be keeping in mind certain other things right. Whether or not this claim has been made that certain technologies are way more advanced and are able to produce certain effects of infallibility of truthfulness of reliability of scalability, all of which are being made for instance in the case of her right. While assessing these claims, we need to also keep in mind certain other things. And these are the, these are the things that I want to showcase through this master class right and and these are presenting the form of arguments. And of course goes by different names in the 19th and 20th centuries and we're going to be looking at that. But the other thing that I'm also going to be talking about is that all technologies prior to otherness far back as mid 19th century are all making a claim to universality and scientificity, right, they're just saying that. Not all of them but certain technologies are doing it more than others, let's put it that way. Right. The other thing is making that claim much more than say photography is right, and they're all making this claim to some form of scientificity some some semblance of reliability right much more than what came before right. But even as they are making these universalistic claims all these technologies are tied to surveillance of marginalized groups and this what might appear to be a paradox but may not necessarily be one. This particular conjunction of things is something we need to closely dwell on right that certain technologies are making the universalistic claim, and that they're also tied to surveillance of marginalized groups is something that we need to closely examine. Before I move to the next argument I also wanted to mention this. I'm also going to be relying on arguments made by other scholars. Right, like this for instance this is one scholar called Karen Weitzberg, who is also saying that a certain technology may have also started off as somewhat narrowed right narrow in its in its in terms of who it is targeted at. Then it may have become much more universal but even after becoming universal it retains certain biases right towards much marginal groups and towards marginalized groups that's again something to be kept in mind. Then we need to also talk about how whether it is pitched as universal or whether it is pitched as something more narrow right. These technologies have ended up raising the stakes for these groups right have raising the stakes for marginalized groups and associate with this. Remember that whether we're talking about fingerprinting anthropometry photography, right, or other, other security measures innovations that have been brought in, which I'm going to be laying out for you. The metrics right and the yardsticks of uniqueness of what is unique right using this technology are different for different people right that's again something that we're going to be looking at. Then we're going to be also talking about how post 2010 you also have authentication that spawns techno utopias right. I'm going to be a sister I'm going to call them sister and cousin concerns, right, such as purification and purity, and that's again something that we'll be looking at I'm going to come up with certain examples, by looking as far back as the mid to late 19th century, right. And here I want to be. I want to talk about the various other terms of course that fingerprint various other terms of uniqueness for instance is a uniqueness and authentic authentication go by but before we do that I just wanted to flag your connection to one thing, which is that if you were to look at the history of fingerprinting especially whether it is a Kenyan historian, whether it is a South African historian, a British historian, or an Indian historian who's writing about this. What's so common across all of this is that that fingerprinting has the history fingerprinting has strong affinities to what was happening both in England and in India. Right. And, of course, these histories are like global in the sense that there's something that something that connects fingerprinting and and its story across these various centers, the ones that I mentioned, but there are, there are a few developments that are in England and India that are particularly important to take note of, right, and we'll start from there. So if you to look at the roots of fingerprinting. One of the cases that rivets the attention of several of the pioneers, right, or the several of the pioneering figures, whether we're talking about Henry falls, who is, who is a Scottish physician, William hersher, who is a British civil servant as well as a servant serving at some point in Bengal, or whether you're talking about Edward Henry police official, right, or we are talking about Francis Galton, right, who is a scientist and also the cousin of Charles Devon, like all these pioneering figures of fingerprinting, right, are all riveted with one case that happens. And here I am relying on the scholarship of Edward Higgs, the historian, the British historian who tells us that all these pioneers in some way or the other explicitly implicitly cite the case of what happened with Sir Roger Titchbone, right. Now, this, so Roger Titchbone, a knighted personality. So he leaves. So he leaves on a journey, and he's supposed to have gotten shipwrecked, right, essentially he takes off on a journey and then he has his ship, kind of like drops off somewhere and he goes missing. And, and in the aftermath of this incident, someone who is later pronounced to be a butcher, right, comes forward and claims to be the one and only Sir Roger Titchbone, right. Now caught up with this case is a story of what is believed to be theft of private property impersonation, right, because the court trial that unfolded in the 1870s, and it's a long court trial a colorful spectacular one. The, the identity of this person of course is in question there are mobilizations on all sides right. But what these pioneers of fingerprinting are pointing out is that had there been a certain established well established system of fingerprinting then this would not have happened. So remember the paranoia at this point in time is one of ensuring protection of private property, and also of fortifying British capitalist society against these kinds of petty thefts and impersonations by the riffraff right so to speak right because if a butcher can dream of it then what next. So, so the other thing that I want to mention is, is that, while of course that are these kinds of narrow of fears and anxieties. There's also a universalizing claim universalistic claim that is being made by many of these figures. So let me just move forward and I'll come back to this slide. So Henry falls for instance, talks about how, like, when he writes, and he's one of the first men to write the Scottish physician is one of the first men to write about fingerprinting. So he comes up with this book called the guide to fingerprint identification, where among other things he's talking about how if you to look at our fingerprints. And you will see if you look at fingers sorry I mean to say if you to look at our finger fingertips, right, what you will notice is that it is made up of ridges and furrows right and he says that it resembles a cloud field. So I think more helpfully also if you were to apply some ink or if you to dip your finger in ink, and then look at it. Examine it properly that you will see ridges and furrows now the ridges are the appraised parts the elevated parts while the furrows are the white or depressed parts. The furrows of course are can can form into different patterns right. So then he is also interested in looking at what those patterns look like like for instance if you to look at this image. He's looking at how you know the the the the the the furrows for instance would would resemble walls, arches, loops, right hooks, junctions. And he's also interested in looking at various patterns like for instance, among the arches you have different types that and again among the walls you have different types he's interested then in like classifying these patterns as well. So, so of course, he is also invested in in establishing the scientificity of fingerprinting and its truthfulness over time. Right. Now William Herschel has interesting ways of doing this like for instance what he does is he he collects the fingerprints of the many of the functionaries who passed through bank who passed through Bengal while he's serving there as a magister. In one of the districts and what he does is he he takes these fingerprints of these functionaries right whoever they may be magistrates collectors etc. And then he asked them request them to send him their fingerprints after 30 years. He does the same for his own son. Notice is then is a permanence of patterns persistency of prints and these are again terms that one can one can associate right early on like for instance. These are the terms that also I mean they may not be synonymous exactly with uniqueness, but uniqueness is is something that is uniqueness is a claim that is made out of these kinds of assertions right so so he also William Herschel is also interested simultaneously in using fingerprinting as a technology to determine pension fraud and to hold riots or peasants to indentured contracts such that they cannot flee and abscond and and and you know abdicate their responsibilities towards the Zamen there. So, these are all things to keep in mind. Of course, both falls and Herschel also recommended for a recommend fingerprinting for convicts and criminal tribes. What are the implications of this. The implications of recommending fingerprinting for convicts and criminal tribes, and if it especially consider criminal tribes. But now in the late 19th century, when you have criminal tribes who are being held responsible for various crimes right. The laws were also such that if a certain crime had happened in the vicinity and there's someone who belonging from a criminal tribe in the law pretty much stated that you would have to hold that person guilty. And so fingerprinting then did not have so much forensic value in terms of like, you know, inquiring into the facticity into the truthfulness of whether that person had really committed the crime but rather it was sometimes used to justify these So that's again something to keep in mind. Okay. Just give me a second. Now we move on to the history of photography. Right. So here both Radhika singer and Claire Anderson right that now that photography was much more accurate than descriptive rules. Now, before I move forward I want to also mention that of course when compared to something like fingerprinting photography was seen to be much less reliable. And like especially if you had, you know, a large collection of photographic prints, then using that collection to narrow down who your suspects were was going to be somewhat difficult to manage, right. Especially if you're looking for one guilty person, right, who whom you have a certain, you know, graphic visual image off, right. So, but at the same time, while of course photography was seen to be less reliable than fingerprinting in that sense and you didn't have those many yes men who are who are, you know, pushing the case of photography forward in terms of its and fallibility and uniqueness, etc. It is still to be kept in mind that photography was, however, up head as being very useful as a supplemental device right now what do I mean by that. If you look at the scholarship of historians like Radhika Singh and Claire Anderson, they are writing about descriptive roles being used, for instance, to identify convicts who are being sent to Andaman and Nicobar islands. And in this regard, if you were to look at what these descriptive roles contained, then they had this visual descriptions, like when I say visual I mean to say they had like descriptions, not not in terms of photographs, they had descriptions like, you know, what a person's complexion was all written, right, textual description of what a person's what a person's complexion was textual description. Also, of, you know, the size of a person's year loop, or the size of a person's forehead, or distinguishing marks tattoos maybe moles maybe right. So, it was believed Radhika Singh, for instance, writes about how photography was seen to be a useful supplement to this if the descriptive role were to have this kind of textual description and the photograph then that would make it much more much more useful in terms of identifying the convict, right. But the other thing to also keep in mind is that photography was also being used to draw profiles of certain persons that certain people sorry not persons but people are groups right. So, more than its forensic use, right in terms of being able to tell who a convict was, or in terms of being able to tell who a criminal was it was used much more to capture certain profiles of people together. So, dying races, right, thugs, maybe, right. When they were photographed collectively it also conveyed a certain scientific picture of objective picture of what they looked like. So, you have to also remember that photography was caught up with this kind of agenda. Now, as far as various administrators were concerned, they of course believed and here again Radhika Singh is telling us that they believe that photography was useful, especially when you had like photographs, photographic prints being circulated through post, right. And so, where for instance police stations received certain prints and then put it up it was convenient for them already recognized for them, right in terms of being able to identify criminals. So, so of course it was less universal than fingerprinting, however useful for collecting capturing collective trades, but also useful in the sense that it was a good supplemental device and was definitely an improvement over a mere textual description of say a criminal. But here again just remember that photography was also caught up with profiling certain groups. Okay. So, so yeah I think I've kind of more or less talked about all this. So I'm going to move on. So all of this, of course, throws up all kinds of resonances with the histories of biometrics in other parts of the world right like especially if you're to take Kenya and South Africa and I'm going to want to briefly touch on that as well. So to start with let's, let's look at what a scholar like Aaron Weitzberg is telling us right. So, so she writes and tells us about the narrow origins of what is called the Kipande or the moving past system in Kenya right now the Kipande or the moving past system is supposed to be a comprehensive history of the mobility of the transactions of the employment of the black laboring person right in Kenya, in Kenya, right. And so this is very much a feature of white settler capitalism, right and colonial history of Kenya right. So we're going to be looking at how the Kipande system was caught up with black surveillance of a labor of labor within a capitalist colonial system right. So what Weitzberg how it tells us is that even after universalization of fingerprinting the ID system is something that retains its biases right and it retains its biases in the sense that even though white persons were also supposed to be fingerprinted at a certain moment in time, there's a way in which it's it's mandate for surveilling and for profiling black people as such not just black labor but black people as such remains is what she talks about. So we're going to move much forward, and here we know both Nandjala Nibola who spoke in one of the previous master classes, as well as Abhidhi Latif Lahari, both of them also write extensively on the more contemporary ID digital ID system of Kenya, which is run by Huduma number, or which just translates into service number in Swahili, right and so there, if you do look at the digital ID system, here it's supposed to be universal, it is, it is the government is also run by black people, right off of Kenya right. And yet even here you see that it retains several discriminatory potentials, and it retains all kinds of profiling impulses right. Now what do I mean by this, so Kenyans of Nubian descent, Nubian descent meaning people from Sudan who are brought over into Kenya as soldiers by the British. So Kenyans of Nubian descent, Somalis, Masais all experience the Huduma number differently, right. So, so again, what is being written here and said here is that, look, the, it is a universal biometric ID but the metrics and the yardsticks of what uniqueness are going to be interpreted differently, right. And what we mean by this here, what we mean by this is that you know there are vetting committees, for instance, that look into the eligibility of some of these groups, and the bar is quite unsurprisingly, ridiculously absurdly high, right, for some of these groups and some of these people. It's so, you know, in terms of what time of the day they're supposed to be present in terms of what times of the season that they're supposed to come and present their application form. In, in terms of like the land deeds that they present in terms of their ability to prove a paternal descent. In this case, the metrics are much more harsh than it comes to some of these groups, right. And so, so you're, you're kind of not just raising the bar and stakes for select groups, but you're also coming up with shifting goalposts, which I think I won't speak, speak about for this particular and actually talk about that moving forward, right. So this is, this is again something for us to keep in mind. But having said this I also want to want us to take note of one heartening feature in all this, which is that you have had organized descent against these past systems whether you're talking about the apartheid past system which goes by the name of right in South Africa in the 50s in the 60s, or they're talking about more contemporary organized descent against organized descent or may also organize forms of collaboration to ensure that nobians, for instance, people of nobien descent do not get left behind, right. So there's, there's been a lot of instances of that as well. So the image to your left is sourced from the Facebook page of the nobien rights forum. And this, this gives you an illustration of the, this image gives you an illustration of how the nobien rights forum has been mobilizing around very many important things, like including if a person has been rejected by vetting committee. Then, the nobien rights forum finds a way of putting that person in touch with others who've also been rejected, and then have, and then having a conversation happen within them, right, such that they can mobilize better. And such that they can anticipate what the vetting committee will say the next time they appear. And the image to your right is from the march by South African women against the apartheid past system in the 50s and the 60s, right. Okay. So now I'm going to come back to India. And why am I segueing from a discussion of the history of fingerprinting in Kenya and South Africa to discussion of ration cards. So, what I want to say is that, just as I discussed in the case of Kenya and South Africa, where you have different metrics and yardsticks that are being used for the same thing for the same claim of uniqueness, right. Here to in India to that has happened, right. Now if you to look at the history of ration cards, right, and rationing identification practices. Then what you see is that during the 1940s, especially during the world war you have the ration card that comes in in a big way. So of course there are several prototypes of the ration card is a family ration card is individual ration card and other documents, right. The ration card for the man heavy manual labor or the application form for extra rations for the pregnant woman so on so forth. And the family ration card sort of materializes and it kind of gets consolidated right as the standard by the early 1950s right. But even before that if you to look at some of the conversations that happened around how to fortify and how to strengthen the ration card right. There were conversations that happened during the world war around how to bring a lot of security measures, right, and these security measures were proposed especially by the governor of Bombay someone called a D. Govala in the 1940s in, and he proposes certain security measures which are then you know popularized across the colony, right, by different provinces and states, and he proposes that there should be color that that the ID should have right, which are distinctive which stand out. And there should be certain kinds of printing paper that is used right or some number denominations indents, indents to the ration card the serial numbers right. The serial numbers again, which correspond right like whether you're talking about the serial number of this, the register that is kept in the circle office and the serial number of the ration card itself they should correspond right and counter foils right of application forms that officials can retains the counter foil and and then give another to the applicant right. So, also remember that it is only when the security measures keep changing that the document also supposed to be stronger supposed to become stronger so one way to make vulnerable documents and quote unquote vulnerable documents because this is this is colonial jargon right. So one way to make vulnerable documents less vulnerable is to also keep changing the security measures that you're using. And what we also need to remember is that, as I was telling you the family ration card pretty much becomes standardized and emerges as what is termed a fact of residence right by the 1950s. And this is something that we notice, for instance, with the daily ration cut since I did my fieldwork in Delhi I can speak much more confidently about this particular region. So if you look at the, the period around which time the standardization happens and the standardization happens, mainly by this, this triangulation that emerges between the ration card holder, and then the circle office, but also the person who's called the authorized retail distributor who later becomes the fair price shop dealer right. So, this triangulation was very important right and the various details in the ration card was supposed to be maintained by all three persons right and the serial number was a particularly important. The serial number that connected all these three sites, all these three points right. Now, of course, while all this innovation was happening right in a big way. What we need to remember is that around the same time you also had the partition that occurred, and post partition, you had, you of course had all kinds of all kinds of attempts by refugees to claim housing, right. In this regard we should keep in mind that the ration card played a significant role right and because refugees were being told that they should leave behind their ration card in Pakistan, and then apply for a new ration card when they came to India. And in this regard you had Punjabi Sikh and Hindu refugees and I look mainly at these refugees, of course there are Bengali refugees, but I don't look at that. I don't look at them in my book, and because Mary, as I said my region has been Delhi. Using those case studies, what I can tell you is that, while of course several refugees experience all manner of difficulties in terms of using ration cards, applying for ration cards, presenting them. Dalit refugees and women refugees experienced ration cards differently. What I mean by this is that when a Dalit refugee for instance was given a ration card, and when a Dalit refugee possessed a ration card for her, his family as a whole, what happened is that when they went and presented this ration card, they were often told by the person giving them the rations that look as a Dalit you should not really be asking for sugar rations. So they were denied sugar rations even though their ration card was supposed to be giving them the same entitlements as others. And there are other stories as well. So women refugees, for instance, again, experienced ration cards differently because remember that at this point in time, woman was never supposed to be a de facto refugee, nor was a woman really supposed to have a ration card issued in her name. And when it happened, there was a lot of suspicion about why it had happened. So women refugees who are submitting application forms, right, for housing compensation, when they attached ration cards as part of their application, they were often viewed with suspicion by rehabilitation housing and rehabilitation authorities who were like, her ration card probably looked pretty much the same as any other ration card did, and she was also able to show that she had been like, she'd been claiming rations regularly. However, the, the cloud of suspicion was over the fact that her that the ration card was not issued in her husband's name. Also, where was her husband through all this. Was he going in and out. In that case, should she really should be really be recognizing her claim alone for the purposes of giving her housing compensation. Right, so these are again examples I wanted to give. Now I want to move of course it's a huge leap forward, but I still thought that I would make that leap. If you look at the move towards digital document digital documentation, I mean maybe that the term documentation is not as as ideal as perhaps digital authentication, right. So, of course, the idea and our image as novel centerpieces of an electronic era, and the move towards it is dictated by many things there is a certain specter of fraud of duplicates, and of a certain sense of what is regarded as a strenuous of the, the ID ecosystem, right because it's still because people are stuck where they are, right, people are not able to enjoy a certain free mobility. And often the, the figure of the migrant worker is very readily cited to support this claim of suppressed mobility, right. And, and in all these senses there is us, there is urgent case that is being made. And of course, the, the, the mascot of that is Nanda Neelakani, who makes a certain claim that in order for there to be foolproof and unassailable identity mechanism, we need something that cannot be tied down to a piece of paper, we need something that is out there in the cloud and something that can be accessed without, without, you know, without mediation that is suspect suspicious right without intermediaries and all kinds of suspect mediation, right. And, and what he also calls intermediation, right. So, there's also a certain necessity that he carves out, he makes a special case also for the need for a centralized databases. So, of course, the UID AI as such has been entirely comfortable with the edifice of both state and privatized information gathering. So, so the virtues of the new identity authentication mechanisms are of course, number portability deduplication, a certain directness of transaction that these are some of the virtues and, and of course scalability, right more than anything a scalability scalability in terms of like accessing goods services commodities that in terms of what insurance companies banks, government departments, among others can accomplish, right. And, and of course it is set up by design to enable convergence, right. And, and though maybe they will never admit it also the cross working off databases, right. Now, this is something that we know, so I'm not spending much time on it. What I am however going to be talking about is, you know, the kind of sister and cousin concerns that authentication has spawned, right. And we can talk about a certain cascading effect that authentication has had with other rollout right, and it has definitely played a role in incubating techno utopic agendas. And we can talk about purification has been a sister concern of authentication. Now, we know what authentication implies what does purification imply. Now, in order to talk about this we need to also look at what was happening around the time of 2015, when the election commission was interested in embarking on this ambitious exercise of using its own database and comparing it with the UIDI database and weeding out not just duplicates but people whose names don't match in both these databases across these databases, right. And that is what purification was, right, it was about cleaning and existing database that is the database that was with the election commission and it was about removing the names of people who do not exist in both these databases. And so how to how to go about doing this right and how how is it that the election commission went forward right and remember that this exercise went on for a while until the Supreme Court put an end to it right and by and in the case of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh the project had picked up a lot of pace right and one day the people of Telangana woke up to see many of them woke up to see that their names were missing so around somewhere between 25 and 30 lakh voters names were reported to have been missing in Telangana. Of course the the state electoral officer of Telangana claimed that this may have been because of bifurcation of the states, but there was no corresponding rise in the voters names in Andhra Pradesh right so so of course that claim was a very suspect one. Now, what we need to keep in mind is that by this time it is, it is argued that this electoral role purification could have happened, and though that's a certain exercise of cross comparing across matching electoral roles with the idea database may have happened by this time. So, and here, we're talking about 2018, which is the time that the 30 lakh voters names have gone missing right so between 2015 and 2018 this may have happened right. And what we also notice is that if you if you look at exactly how this process of purification unfolded, then they were at if I'm not mistaken there were three categories. There was a name there was a date of birth and then there was the name data date of birth and also the pin code, right. So, these three categories across both databases were compared. Then a score was assigned right based on the match right off of these categories across both the databases score was assigned to each voter right and and of course if if the score was high then the water was in if the score was low then the water may have been out right. So, of course, none of this is possible to state vehemently as as having absolutely happened because we have a lot of denials that that happened, by the way talking about the election commission or other authorities, right that's something to keep in mind. This is not this is this is of course not all that happens, right, but before we get to the srdh point I want to also show you, like for instance, this is what the algorithms me the matching algorithms may have looked like. I am not in a position to comment on these algorithms and how they work. It looks like they were configured to work phonetically and to come up with phonetic match matches and then there's also spelling us. And and and of course long strings and short strings and all of that I'm not going to be able to comment on any of that. However, what I can comment on is this. Let us look at what the enabling conditions of authentication are right. So if you to look at what the enabling conditions of authentication are one. I mean that when I say enabling conditions I mean that authentication would not have been possible. Had it not been for certain things right, which is that you are taking for granted data sharing without consent, right, you're also okay with carrying out algorithmic decision making or enabling algorithmic algorithmic decision making, because if you're pretty much leaving it to set of algorithms to decide whether a voter should be in the electoral role or not. Right. And of course is a question of suppressing democracy. Here I want to read out to you. There's a quote by Steven Vasco Dali who tweets about disease, and he tweets especially about the missing votes and telangana he says, Democrat democracy is not only about voting. I express it with every complaint I make and every judicial method I use. Today I can't vote because I'm not in water list the entire preparation and deletions of water list has become non transparent. The election commission has conducted itself on ethically. I want to also talk about how, you know, just as he is writing about its democracy is not simply about voting the right to vote but it's also about having certain information based on which you can make a decision about how you want to vote right and unfortunately that information also is wielded by to a great extent by authorities like the election commission. Right. Okay, I also want to point your attention to something else which happened. Right. Around this around this time, which is that it is not just a question of what does names that went missing. You also need to keep in mind the existence of something called a state resident data hub, right, and the state resident data hub of course has access to different data sets and, and if you look at it, the state resident data hub is like this vast server right which has like all kinds of demographic details but it also has in particular our details, voter ID or epic details, and also it has other other demographic details. Now, this now this is this in itself is dangerous. And of course, outside what the idea claimed was legitimate right, allowing for another database which also contains other information is in itself supposedly supposed to be wrong right but this is something that is that that has happened right. And so it is also reported by this report especially in half poor about this about how they could have been potential voter profiling by a party and on the probation and this happened. So, a particular company developed or the particular company developed this Apple Seva Mitra app and the Seva Mitra app was also used to access access the data sets in sRDH, and especially the data sets pertaining to the voter IDs, the epics, and, and this particular information this but this particular information pertaining to voters profiles fell into the hands of a party. Now, of course, the party in power, and the party that is planning to go to election that the line between this is very slim right the line between the party in power and the, the, and the party that is planning to go to election is very slim right. So, again, you can think of the dangerous implications of something like this right dangerous implications of having an sRDH which has these kinds of like demographic and biometric details and and how easily how easily it can procure the procure and access sRDH to carry out all kinds of manipulations of voters choices right that's again something to keep in mind. So, in all these senses what I am trying to argue is that authentication is spawning, not just techno utopias in the form of sister cousin sister concerns like authentication but authentication is also enabling all kinds of political engineering in this case of voters choices right. Whether or not it has happened and we're not going to really get into that the fact that this is a possibility is still extremely dangerous. I want to speaking about the national register of citizens. If I spoke of authentication as having a cascading effect and has as having certain effects of, for instance, enabling purification, then something else that it has also enabled is certain various projects and in particular it has also enabled certain kinds of certain kinds of political engineering around indigeneity or around the question of purity or pure indigeneity right. It is to be noted here by the way that the national register of citizens is a document based register of course I mean document based when I say document based I mean that certain documents are seen to be extremely valuable in terms of like determining those who doesn't right so document based pure ethnic identity is something that is being determined right as against a biometric cloud based identity and that is one intrinsic important distinction to be making between the NRC and something like the other. What I have as a hybrid entity of pure indigeneity or purity of ethnic belonging that has now emerged. Now what I also want to be arguing at this point in time is that of course if you to look at the origins of the NRC. It's far back as say the 1950s, right with a register of citizens emerging Assam even back 1951. And of course there have been several kinds of developments, right, whether it is the Assam Accord, whether it is the rise of certain regional parties, student parties and other parties in Assam. And you can and you can talk about all kinds of other actors like whether you're talking about the election commission or talking about the courts right all entering the fray and insisting on the need to remove quote unquote illegal immigrants right and to remove those who are also not indigenous to Assam these these assertions and demands have come from different quarters and this is not the space to get into a long history of that. However, what I will say is that if you to look at the actual implementation of the NRC, which takes off around 2013 2014 right. I would like to argue that had it not been for the massive rollout of other that that a certain strong conviction in being able to pull off the NRC and scale it up would not have perhaps emerged right this this kind of conviction would not have perhaps taken off I did not for the massive rollout of the other that is something that I want to conjecture here. But apart from this what I would also like to point out is that when I told you that it also wanted to speak about shifting goal post. I think that I think is very true of the NRC NRC project. So, if you to look at the application form for the NRC and which is something that I was looking at closely yesterday. Right, and if you were to first, if you to look at the application form, you would notice that there is of course an emphasis on legacy data, and the legacy data can be many things. There is a there is a constantly the sense that one gets that it's not enough to produce any one of the legacy data documents right in addition, you have to also provide provide documentation of say the electoral role of before 1971 right. So, of course, electoral role figures also as one of the possible legacy data documents but if if you provide if you're able to provide the electoral role as if you're able to provide a certain documentation that you your name figured in the electoral rules before 1971. That may be enough but if you're providing something else that some other kind of legacy data then you have to also provide electoral role documentation or at least that's what it looks like in the application form I may have gotten it right but I also wanted to present a certain picture of what an applicant may experience while witnessing the application form. And whether or not it holds up as a different thing, but the application form itself is also designed to owe value and we can talk about that also in the question down I'm not going to talk about it much now. But when I was talking about shifting goalposts, I also meant that no matter what you produce, right, as, as documentation to show that you were definitely a person residing in Assam before the stipulated date in 1971. Right. It's not going to be enough often right because there's because there's a way in which as much right in your documents or lack of correspondence right between your surname in one document and another and the lack of say compatibility between your documents. There's something or the other that is going to emerge to incriminate you right so there's always going to be a certain way in which the goalposts are going to shift for you when the authorities examine your application form. This has happened with the foreigners tribunal in Assam and and this is this is true even off the authorities that are signing off on whether you should be included in the NRC or not. The other thing to mention here is that the NRC has also induced all kinds of archival panics right so there's been a beeline to the West Bengal archives and other archives where people are looking for documentation that establishes their lineage in terms of their, whether their grandparents may have been included in electoral lists, census documents, etc. Right and and that's again that's that's again an extremely unfortunate state of things right when when the arch when you know it's while of course it's wonderful that archives are seeing the footfall of people that they may not usually the the fact that some people are able to access these archival documents and that they're able to make reliable claims and others are not is also extremely worrying. Now the last point I want to make as far as the NRC is concerned is that denials will always spawn more denials but inclusion does not always guarantee more inclusion right so for instance, you also have something called the D status of the doubtful student status in your voter ID right so based on various developments the Election Commission was also tasked with the exercise of determining who was a legitimate voter and who was a doubtful voter. Now if you were a doubtful voter then the chances that you are going to be found to be not an not a legitimate resident of a some are are high right and the chances that you're you're going to be found guilty by for a foreigner's trivial are high right, but if for instance you don't have these status in your voter ID. It does not automatically guarantee that you will be included in the NRC right and that's again and that's again something that is deeply deeply worrying right so how denials spawn more denials but inclusion does not include allow for more inclusion and this is true, like, even for instance, those people who had doubtful statuses, and who had those statuses cleared, right. It takes a long time for this to disappear from, say, the record that they say remains with the Election Commission. That's again a allied thing to keep in mind. Okay, I have touched on various things I want to now just wrap up and I want to tie some of the threads of what I was saying and then open the floor for questions. So, through the talk what I was trying to capture was was that there may be variegated standards of authentication authentication may come in different forms, and it may have different meanings different names. And it may have different functionalities as well. But there are ways in which it enables enables sending people into exile in it enables all kinds of erasures of self in person right. And I also, I also wanted to bring out through this masterclass how all technologies have a claim to the universal right, even while they're rooted in surveillance so the various pioneers of technologies will all say that it is a cutting edge and that it is a great improvement what came before. But they, and also that they will they will also talk about how it is scientifically reliable and scientifically universalizable. However, almost all of them are also rooted in surveillance agendas or surveillance projects that are aimed at marginal groups right. And not always are these agendas in the sense that technologies that are touted to be universal will have intended unintended consequences and the ways in which they will retain their biases that's again something to keep in mind. Authentication as having a cascading effect, but also as a spawning techno utopias of purification and purity, right. That's again something that I wanted to illustrate, especially through the cases of both electoral role purification and the case of the NRC. And, and this is something to watch out for because you are always going to have parallel schemes you always going to have not just doppelgangers but other kinds of ambitious schemes, which all amplify the consequences of consequences of say the original techno techno utopia right. So that's again something to keep in mind and the last thing I want to mention is also that the metrics and the standards of what identification and what unique identity are are going to be different for different groups and marginalized groups will experience each innovation with intensified techniques and experience each of them distinctly. I wanted to conclude by showing you a certain image from my fieldwork it is very deliberately blurred to keep it as anonymous as possible. So, in, in Govindpuri slum cluster which is where I did my fieldwork and which are right about in my book as well. The, the residents of Delhi the slum residents of Delhi were issued something called the VP Singh card, right, and the VP Singh card was supposed to be a card that was issued once and only once. This claim to uniqueness was not in terms of its fingerprinting or in terms of necessarily a photograph though of course there was a photograph in the ID card. But it's claimed uniqueness was that it had been issued once and only once right and never after that right and so. If you were a slum resident of Delhi during 1990, then the chances that you have VP Singh card are very high right now people were supposed to hold on to this ID as as carefully as possible right and not lose it. Of course there were many things that happened people did lose them. There were fires that also occurred in slums. And so, when one such fire happened, there was a resident who waited for the embers to settle down, and then he retrieved the burnt fragment of the card. And he saw that only part of it was there but he decided to laminate it just to sort of illustrate and demonstrate that this is what has happened to the card, but I still am a holder of the VP Singh card. So this is what happens when you insist on on possessing unique identities. So let me stop with that. Yeah. I'm sorry it took more time than what I should have. Yeah, I think this is fascinating and I'll drop remark in the zoom chat and I'll kind of talk a bit about why I find this fascinating because in your concluding remarks you made. You included this idea that all technologists new and emergent try and observe the uniqueness the scientific rooted in the scientific approach. And yet, this claim to be specific original or unique scientific is something that we have been seeing for ages and years now. And I got reminded of this concept in the recent book on the election commission which mentioned very emphatically that the act of voting is not the only important part what happens in the democracy is the process that leads all the way up to the voting that gets a person to the polling booth. And a lot of that is linked to electoral roles, and once presents on the electoral roles and going walking back just like you did. It also means that one has to present not only an identity group but proof of residence, and a lot of our approaches towards that by building on new fangals unique technology tends to limit access to democracy processes. For quite a significant number of people we uncharitably enough I think we often read opinion pieces which say oh in a country of so many people of this percentage. This happens it's a rounding of error, it might be a rounding of error but not to the person who's facing the other end sitting at the other end of that so I think it's important for us to realize while we talk about election tech. The killing part that you brought about is that identity has always been rooted in surveillance and identity has been become such dominating part of our lives that the lack thereof tends to erase one from all sorts of access to government processes. So, yeah, no it's it. It has been a fascinating walkthrough all the stuff and one of the things we tried to do in part of this project was to not just limit ourselves to looking at what is happening now, but try and examine what has happened, because a lot of these problems have our echoes from the past. People before us have tried to solve this problem in the unique way created more problems, more societal issues. But just sitting in the now and here and thinking that oh this is a novel problem for which I have a silver bullet that I will unleash upon the entire population is I think not just unfair it's unjust and probably immoral as well. So, with that I'm going to stop and I'm going to see if others on the chat are keen to make some remarks I know we have a few folks who have been grappling with similar problems. I don't want to call them out to put on the spot but if you do want the mic is all yours. Let's have a bit of conversations that I will be you raise your hand go ahead unmute yourself and have a go. Thank you, Sankarshan. Thanks a lot for the talk that I'm going to it was really, really fascinating. There are a few questions for you but I think one that really sticks out for me is, you know, you talked about you talked about NRC and you talked about water roll purification I guess the 3 million people who went missing. And, you know, given given recent history, you know, especially given the reaction to claims or to the evidence that you know people have gone missing and that this pick is being used in ways that, you know, is slightly undesirable, very, very undesirable by that. You know, for that matter, given given this recent history, do you have concerns and suspicions about about where authentication tech like this might be used for purification and purity in the in the foreseeable future. Okay. I mean, that's a good question. I would actually imagine that the election commission might bring it up in in other in other through other routes and through other parts that's that's one thing that I totally anticipate. In terms of like water roll. I mean the purification aspect of it. It's also possible that I mean to say right now it's it's it's not really something that I can think about. But you know the very process of rolling out a one nation one ration card scheme itself for me is a little bit worrying in that sense. And it has a semblance of purification in that sense right, because you want to also ensure that a person has one ration card that sure he can carry everywhere. Now while this while this does not have the same kind of manifestations of purification. There is there's a certain danger in going ahead with the one nation one ration card scheme as well because you know the the whole point of something like this is of course to enable someone to receive rations right on the move. What might end up happening is that you know oftentimes if you to look at for instance migrant workers they want to leave their ration cards back home right when they travel so that so that their family can access rations right and and and so so a process of cleansing the cleansing such that you know a person should be able to access rations only only insert in one place and not be able to access it in other places it has a certain dangerous implications right so yeah I would say that ration cards is one site perhaps that I would see this manifesting yeah. Thank you. I think one of the things that emerges from technology being unleashed and made available is that it generally as a whole they're never rolled back, they tend to persist, they tend to also find their way across various data stores data collection regimes and data processing regimes and the problem. These three items create is that it creates a level of correlation that is otherwise not found or otherwise not easily done, and that probably is one of the worries that we should try and start becoming more aware about that data is quite easily correlated. And this idea that everything should be linked to one unique identifier and then that gets used as the source of truth also means that the costs associated with finding or figuring out grievances and getting the addresses for them increases proportionately because if you had different data stores like the likelihood the impact on your life and livelihood would be less but now if you have one central one number to bind them all and that's the one that is causing all the issues for you. Then you are going to be in a you know, in harm's way, you know, in right quick, and it's going to get right ugly in no time. So, that's that's one of the things that came to my mind is that correlation is a topic that we should at some point in time start talking about, and also discussing we usually imply it, but that's there. Yeah, the example of that I was giving, and that a journalist and academics galore have been talking about of SRDHS, especially is I think extremely dangerous in that regard, Santhosh and what you were mentioning. Yeah, I mean, but, but it's not just that right is it's not just like any one type of SRDHS also right like this. Like there's a Bama Shah database of Rajasthan this the other position has its own certain types of databases but also you know the related to what you were saying about data correlation and collection is also the the allied point of like how you're going to allow for people to see all of this right, whether you're going to allow people to see this or whether you want to like make certain certain aspects visible and and hide other aspects, all of that is problematic and this is where I think a friend is very right in pointing out like I was having this conversation with friend. The problem is not just about compromise databases it's not just we're not just we shouldn't just be talking about data breaches, we should be talking about very design of databases right, such that they're often set up to be correlated in all these in all these ways. And, and, and, you know, even though you might might cry foul about it. I would say that it is something that they're okay with it. And it's not just the idea but several other such data collecting agencies that they're okay with that they they have intended it in at some level or the other right. When, when I, when I was also talking about the party in power and the party that plans to be in power, right, and the line being some that's exactly what I meant, right, SRDHS are also set up in such a way that by design they are to be, they are to be leaky, right, so that's that's something and just I just also realize that you know Rahul I would say that one other place that I anticipate this this attempt at some kind of cleansing purification to happen is also pension fraud, in terms of like cracking down on pension fraud and yeah, it's the the nitty gritty is a fit I would have to think about but yeah. This, this brings me to another question. Sorry, I, there may be others with lots of questions but I've got a few of my own. Given, given the timing of SRDHS, I think when, when Adhar began or other when it was rolled out UID was rolled out the first time and you had whatever information was available, general as it was at that point back in 2009, you were told this is for welfare and this is for corruption and there was that extremely large number and that extremely simple message that they were spreading everywhere. At the same time, I think a year later or so, we, you know, if you sort of do a search, you find males that that show that they were working on SRDHS at the same time, and I'm not sure if we were aware at that, at that time, with, you know, what SRDHS were, how they were, how they were happening and what exactly they meant. So when you look back at that, I mean, you know, you mentioned, you mentioned in your presentation that these, these technologies they eventually become broader, and they become, you know, they encapsulate a lot more, they become something else. Does that apply to Adhar, do you think like from the get go? Yeah, it had a dual purpose. It was, it was many things to many different sets of people. Yeah, yeah, that's, that's a good question. It's, in fact, I think Usha Ramnath and a whole corpus of work has been about this right and, and her answer would be in the affirmative that it was definitely intended like that, right. There are so many examples to give Rahul in this regard but one thing maybe we can narrow it down to one interesting conversation which is that, like if you have to look at the mandate of Adhar, like what exactly is it like you want it at the same time to be a very reliable, reliable form of identification and authentication, which is cloud based and all of that, right, and which is something that that can be universally applied in some senses but then when you do that then you're, the UID is keenly aware, it was keenly aware that he's setting himself up for all kinds of accusations about data breach, right. But so the what, so what's the other, what's the other way in which you can claim that Adhar is like any other kind of ID, right, I mean, so you can say that. Again, a claim that they cannot meet right so so it's in a way they're caught between these conflicting desires right on the one hand to be able to say that look why are we being singled out for all these accusations whether certain technologies of like crosswalking existed even before. And on the other hand, saying that this is in every way unique right so this that to keep in mind. But yeah sorry. So sorry I was just listening to you. Yeah, sorry okay I thought you had something else to add. Yeah, so, so that's one thing what else to do. Yeah, so it's also very convenient right so oftentimes all you need is like for instance, say the some order to emerge right and and that order and that order can be very vague right order can be from the Supreme Court, and it says that look mobile phone verification is to be carried out right now the Supreme Court is not saying that mobile phone, you know verification of who's applying should be carried out throughout her, but that's very extremely easy to carry out on the ground, right and that and that is exactly what has happened and again there are multiple instances of this happening. So, yeah. So should be like maybe take another question. Yeah, I'm going to swing back to you that there's one interesting remark from YouTube that I'm going to read out. And then this question that's enough as posted. So the remark is that if it's in the government's interest to have maximum surveillance, how can one convince them to stop collecting. Would we need the courts to allow a provision to refuse to provide once anthropometry. I think that kind of circles back to the last point you just made that the courts can can intervene and then then limit the scope and the purpose and the specificity to be able to do but nonetheless, I'd like to sort of have a quick remark from me if you want to want that. Can you just repeat maximum surveillance. If it is in the government's interest to have maximum surveillance, how can one convince them to stop collecting. Okay. Right. Yeah, so that's the other interesting part right I mean so the UID I if you're to look at it and the various kinds of proof of concept documents and the various kinds of documents that they generated early on and later on also. It's they tried to actually draw a wedge right as much as possible and they they talk about how it is purely about a welfare function right that that is tied to certain welfare functions right and and later on the other act also tries to reinforce these impressions that it is, it is entirely, it is, it's entirely for welfare purposes, but what food activists are the activists several others have all tried to explain is that you know, it's for one, you cannot talk about privacy as some something that is only an elite concern that it is very much tied to the, the methods through which you are able to access these benefits right and and it's also tied to the process of accessing these benefits. So, so how is it that the other is enabling surveillance through what are seem to be standard welfare provisioning services, right that's that's a conversation that we should be having. Thank you. How about this one, which came up that how adequate or not are the draft provisions in the data protection bill in providing a framework for Dressel grievances towards the central systems of data collection. If you go back and look at the data protection bill. I haven't looked at it in recent times as I saw it a while back, but I can see this from what I remember is that the data protection bill, which takes off from if I'm not mistaken the, the three question or commission report right. So, so the, so the, this particular bill also has, you know the way in which it frames certain important what it seems to be important concerns what it seems to be priorities right is that it's constantly also like for instance, trying to balance secure data right with what is called a legitimate state interest right and and for me that's it again a very dangerous slope to be treading on right and if you're if you're constantly going to be talking about legitimate state interest and then ring the the potential kinds of necessity right for carrying out certain for carrying out data gathering right you you're saying that data is something that is absolutely necessary to gather indispensable together for certain for protecting certain state interest. So, by framing it in that way, you are automatically sort of making this a conversation, not about not about what data means for people personally not about what data means people for for people on, you know, who are who are submitting it in myriad ways, right, you're making it a conversation about a state interest right so that's, that's something that I can say. And of course the language itself is also something I would assume to be problematic right when you're talking about data fiduciaries right and data sovereignty that again becomes problematic because again, what are you right what public goods are you valuing what kinds of personhoods are you not valuing right those are again conversations to be had. Thanks. Definitely copy this. Yeah, that actually is for others who are who have the link it's it's it's a great report to go through about the PD people and there's associated work on the privacy topic at has geek as well that's ongoing. So, one of the things that we have had conversations previously is that challenges are not unique on new to India in the sense like these are these are challenges that are being faced as you point out by in other countries. This is also a set of challenges that have been sort of a key theme or issue around voting process changes and improvements in Pakistan. And Dr. Taha Ali has been writing about it for a while and then investigating on this topic. And I wonder if you wanted to make some remarks on the conversation we're having today as well as how the this vex topic of identity and identification documents also relates to the process of democratic changes around voting and voting processes. Hello. Good to hear you. Am I audible. Yes, you are. I don't have any direct comments on this. So this has been a fascinating and very new kind of talk for me. And it's very, very interesting. I just had a very, I just remembered something from listening to this conversation about. So what what is happening is that we in the developing world we're actually trying to move towards authentication frameworks and automation automated tools. And in the West, the West has already gone through this and there was just a slightly humorous observation I remembered you might find it interesting, which was that essentially what happens out there, if you lose. So banks maintain records of how to identify you and how to authenticate you. But what happens quite a bit of times is that when the banks lose that information, they pin that on the customer they sort of make they say that your identity has been stolen. Even though it's not the customer's fault at all what's really happened is that the bank has basically compromised or lost the ability to authenticate him. So this is a. So it's just something I thought you might find interesting. Regarding elections obviously sun cushion was right that the electoral roles have a lot of problems in many countries I think that's the biggest problem that that's why we had the coup and Burma recently. And this is one thing that I'm writing about nowadays which is the fact that even if you bring in very high flying voting technology unless you clarify these issues on the side like issues like authentication and marginalization and voter coercion, you don't really get the full benefit of trust trustworthy technologies or trustworthy elections. So that's that's just my two cents, and I hope it's entertaining and useful. No, thanks. Thanks a lot. Yeah. No, what you're saying also about the state banks being able to farm off the problem or to be able to be in denial that there has been some liability on their parts is also actually a little too resonant for me at this point in time because I just encountered this happening to somebody very recently and you know what's interesting also is that you know, there are rules which say that you should be able to complain within the next three days right by simply going to the bank and reporting it but I accompanied the person whom this happened to and we were we were sort of told that you know without an FIR this cannot get done. This identity test cannot be reported. Well, while you know there's actually no requirement like that and we were able to manage we were able to do it over the phone, not in person. Yeah, anyway. But thank you also for telling me the other part about electoral rules and in Pakistan and Burma. Rahul, I know you said that you had a few more questions do you want to take a stab at them now. No, I'll reach out, I'll reach out to them really separately those. Yeah. Yeah, thank you. I cannot resist getting that comment about how to stop the government from collecting data in because it feels so natural it felt so natural at that point in time because the state by its very definition does collect data to be able to offer services and provide services, but more often than not the state has become this massive data hub that seems to suck up everything about us. And more importantly user, our entire body surface as markers biometric markers and then sort of try and narrow boxes into being able to be identified as and that's why I find this entire masterclass and the conversation today is very, very relevant to what we are trying to do in election tech is because the process of elections is often understood with gaps in India. We tend to, so here's the thing like unlike other various commissions, the election commission does not draw its power actually from the parliament, it is enshrined in the Constitution, which kind of makes it a very strange, a very unique and very cherished institution by itself, and it draws its governance processes in a very transparent manner. And even though I'm aware that the appointment of election commissioners and the chief election commissioner has not been smooth and have been fraught with a lot of controversies, particularly during I think it started off during MS Gilstein, but nonetheless, the Constituent Assembly debates and the Constitution mandated an election commission to exist. When India as a country decided on universal suffrage, it actually had the election commission and the then election commission and making bold decisions that during those times would have been would have actually been looked at with a lot of tension and nervousness. And yet here we are 70 plus years down from that moment in time. And we are still circling our wheels on the same thing how to be able to determine whether a person is supposed to exist on the electoral roles, and thus be able to find themselves eligible to cast their ballots. And the only difference that I see that has been made is that we have now started talking about technologies that seemingly are expensive fancy new fangled and also not proven in the scheme of things. So, that that those other things are interesting. There's a question on YouTube that says that, while savings in welfare pilfer is doubted as benefit of the other system. How can we mandate authorities to quantify the opportunity cost to those no longer able to access what is legally due to them. I wonder if this is something that would be far more good in a specific other related conversation but I wouldn't want to sort of box you in tournament if you want to have a remark and provide some. So, the opportunity cost has been very high with regard to. How can we mandate authorities to quantify the opportunity cost to those no longer able to access what is legally due to them. Right, right, right, right, yeah. Yeah, it's a difficult one but let me just first actually comment on what you had to say some Christian then I'll come to this particular question. Um, so one of the things that I mean, I mean it's it's more like a, it's more like unrealistic idealized desire on my part right now to see a legislation for the repeal of other I mean it would be really nice if that could happen but of course, I'm not going to hedge my bets on that one. I, what I would like to point out is what is I think has been a little disheartening is that of course there has been civil society. Agitations, if I could use that or civil society dissent against other let's let's put it that way. Right. And, and there's been a lot of litigation also in terms of resisting the various advances that other has me. Right, in terms of cross walking in terms of what it entails and privacy in terms of what it means to be fraud and what it has been called us. It's been called a fraud in the Constitution and by by of course one of the justices but again the petitions have enabled this kind of pronouncements to happen. We have not seen and that, especially, you know, if you to think of an anti CA movement style resistance, right, was style mobilization. We have not seen something like that happen and it would have been really good to see something like that right manifest itself right and especially if you to look at the history of South Africa you've had very robust, very historical evidence of that kind of evidence of that kind of mobilization counter mobilization against the ID system and it would have been nice to see that that's one thing I wanted to mention. The other thing I want to mention is you know, as far as you know quote unquote solutions go quote unquote you know how to get people governments to collect less data goes right. But I mean I think the certain precedents have to be created right precedents have to be created in different realms, I would say. So you would have to create precedents for instance in the realm of voting like for instance Shubhashish was talking about this in a previous master class like why don't we look at the carrying out more reliable audits for instance of VVPAT chains So that would be a that would be a good thing instead of like moving towards blockchain or something else. Let's do that. Right. And in the realm of say food distribution, like you have something called point of sale machines right so instead of having those point of sale machines collect biometrics, let us instead simply have them like record the ration card details and find a way of ensuring that those POS machines are answerable, or you know they that they faithfully reflect the food that is being regularly drawn right by the families that let's let's have a proper record of that let's have POS machines do that instead of biometric authentication right. So, I think that we need to have those kinds of like localized conversations across different realms. And, and I think that might create a certain precedent also to then take on other right and so without without having those kinds of like bold precedents. It's not going to be able for us to, you know, dismantle data collection, whether it is other whether it is something else, right, whether it's ROGC or something else. That's one thing. As far as opportunity costs are concerned, I would say that yeah I mean that that's exactly what you are seeing right like for instance, like even Usha Ramnathan talks about you know the if you to look at the proof of concept. Look at the proof of concept kinds of documents that you idea had there very deliberately you had certain people who were not being who are not being selected in terms of testing out the efficacy of the efficacy of biometric collection right. You had all kinds of quote unquote compromised fingerprints, like whether they were elderly whether they were disabled in some form or the other, but not for on the one hand not being taken into account but not being taken on as far as the exercise of testing the biometric source, but opportunity costs you know if you to look at especially you know how in various kinds of regions right but they're talking about regions with tribal communities and they are talking about regions. The case studies for instance where their precipations, for instance, have have attempted to again try and access welfare goods and services. And the opportunity costs for them have been extremely high right so so it's. It's the story is one that that kind of like has newer and newer ramifications and manifestations right so it's, it was this is something that was talked about as far back as the late 19th century where for instance, Henry falls talks about it right and how with how the opportunity costs are going to be higher for certain people compared to others. I hope that answers your question because he did talk about like people with tuberculosis. He talked about people with certain kinds of deformities as as as again being extremely at risk right even as far back as the late 19th century when he was looking at universalizing it. That that remark and question came to us through YouTube so we'll wait and see if there's further comments. There's. So this is this these master classes are fun because the input just comes in from every possible channels and I'm trying to get more clarification on a set of comments that are made in the car on a telegram channel. So the idea was that I'm going to read it out a bit by sort of editing some of the things that are written but anyway, it goes something like this, all the bombast and propaganda around and the myths built around the heart that is are essentially that that it is essentially fundamental rights destroying and humanity negating and basically garbage in application. These could be easily. Once the word liability is attached to it, the basic principles of accountability and liability should be at the foundations of any and every tech that scales like this, and has the potential for harm like this so I think this is more a remark and an observation than a question but I generally just would agree with it. Yeah, no I mean to see the scalability question is, I mean very much like it's, it's almost like a no brainer right when you're, if you're saying that you're scaling up authentication services then you're also scaling up the possibilities of that, just that just going wrong right and and that's exactly what I have been trying to pause and not just me I mean a bunch of others right, both in the activist and academic service circles have also been trying to demonstrate yeah I'm, I mean I agree with the spirit of what is being said. I mean, I can sense the anger coming out of it, and I think it's, it's righteous, I can, I can deal with that. But it is in the true I think one of the things that, again, in technology discourse and critique in India we often do not touch upon very strongly is the idea of responsible tech and especially tech that is deployed on nation scale. And it's not just in India right and Nanzala's conversations around the elections in Kenya, I watched that talk twice now and just sat back and thought like, who in the right mind would think that is a brilliant way of doing things and yet here we are. It actually is has been provided to a nation and there are other nations who are now repeating that playbook. And so it goes tech once unleashed in a country tends to find its supporters every single place across the world. So, I wanted to say that we were, we were at the cusp of sort of wrapping this one up. So I'm going to go around the room and check if there are remarks or questions from any of the those who have given their time on this Saturday to participate and join us. Or even you Tarangini if you want to do closing remarks a bit and then after that we'll just bring it home and close it up. So I was just thinking about the scalability question and I was just also thinking that you know, along with the things that are being scaled up are also, you know the scaling up of like database, database providers right and authentication and a whole bunch of others, other entities right and and and I'm also wondering if you know, more and more, you know there was already a certain tenuousness in terms of being able to separate who was engineering the ui di database right who was behind the architecture who was setting up the architecture, the technological architecture of the ui di database and who and who are the people who are also enjoying office in the ui di for the people who are providing certain kinds of biometric services right, link to all of this that that line was already being very blurred, right and you know with the various other stories that I'm that I also try to recount right the SRDHS and the very many other entities that that have emerged right that in terms of in terms of static ambition in terms of like a technocratic career trajectories, software engineers, and a whole industrial complex. And that has emerged, I think we're going to be not going to be able to tell apart these things, right if if we continue with a certain extremely mulesh tendencies that authentication is absolutely indispensable for any kind of reliable welfare ecosystem right, and we've seen that also to be imparting certain lessons right this whole other ecosystem and and the people who seem to be like incessantly tied up right within the other ecosystem, these you know I'm pretty sure that this has lessons to impart for us also in other regards right in terms of like, for instance, again what is happening on the argue say to front. Right, I would I would say that you know, Byzantine schemes and the mechanisms that go into setting up those Byzantine schemes are not only going to be replicable replicable, but they're also going to leave a trail of devastation which is going to be very much socio socio economic cultural and not just technological I think you can leave it there I mean that would be my. Indeed, indeed. And that, and to that I would add that the lay citizen being not able to access information knowledge to identify these challenges that lie in front of them these problems that are emerging out of everything for instance, you mentioned are abusive to the entire vaccination effort suddenly spawned on out a new health ID for all of us. Yeah, so there is always this new national level ID that jumps out of the woodwork for many a thing, and it's a wonder that it that there's so many unique national level ID is floating around but, but true. Yeah, I just wanted to add quickly that by the way, I mean the ways in which I think we're seeing immunity passports and are okay say to and all kinds of, you know, exposure notifications, all of these also as feeding into each other as we speak, right. So, so yeah, I just wanted to drop that in as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah, true. So, first up, I'd like to thank you for making time today to have this conversation. We started off with a very simple topic of identity as it stands. And then we walked all the way up to the fact that identity as it stands has impact that we don't often quantify and measure or realize. More importantly, we don't realize that the, there are policies and proposals based around identity that could easily deny us services from the government that are due to us, or more importantly, make a stateless as well in certain cases. So, the, the potential for harms are plenty. And, and the election tech project is probably just one small aspect of it, a place where we are trying to demonstrate that technology is to be used for good, but technology should not be left alone and cannot be not criticized. It has to be examined. It has to be examined through a set of scientific frameworks and to be able to arrive at a situation where it is easily understood by non practitioners or the audience. So that the next iteration of technology that emerges for any other part of our life. It, it can be a natural reflexive action for any individual in the country, any citizen to be able to assess and evaluate and say, No, I do not want this because this seems to be going against what I what are my rights. And, and I think as part of the project at Corona with we aspire to ensure that we communicate this effectively, simply, and to be able to gather more experts like yourself, as we try and build up some momentum in exploring the critique of technology. Before we close this one up, just a few things that are coming up. One of the things that is going to happen in the coming month. It's already the last day of July. So let's say the in the month of August is that we are going to synthesize all that we have heard and learned and discussed as part of this masterclasses to be into an interim report that will publish on the website. The idea is to use that report to get some feedback and some initial recommendations brought up. And then from there on we will will go towards a final report that we can circulate among, perhaps also among those who are creating all these policies, and hopefully we can make some change because there's, there's worth taking that attempt and making that attempt to make make those changes and we'll see how that goes. So, thank you again. And with that, we'll close this this webinar up. Thank you. Thank you for having me. It's been really exciting for me as well. If you all of you who are on on the webinar today and if you want to continue this conversation Corona has the telegram group which is on days very chatty but most of the days it's not. So you could you could try and join that if you that link is there on the election tech project page as well on has click.com. Thank you so much.