“While Brits are longing for less surveillance in their electronic snoop state, the government in India seems to want to take Bharat Mata farther down that road. Nandan Nilekani, co-chairman of India’s tech giant, Infosys, and now the head of the Government’s Unique ID project, is proposing an
Indian biometric ID.
What’s incredible is he thinks it’s feasible to extend this to the whole population. Apart from the logistics, the level of technology, and the cost (1.5 lakh crores – a number I’ll translate later), there’s the vulnerability to abuse, considerations which deterred Britain from going ahead with its own biometric ID scheme.
They don’t seem to bother Nikelani – one of “Flat Earth” globalist Tom Friedman’s favorite people. He discussed the objections in an interview with CNN-IBN’s Karan Thapar, published in the Hindu.
Here’s a short excerpt:
“Karan Thapar: You said a moment ago that you would create checks and balances. I put it to you that you can never create sufficient and the reason say is this — In the UK, in the US and in Australia, because the authorities couldn’t respond to public concerns about misuse, they have effectively put on the backburner consideration of similar schemes for those countries. Now if developed countries cannot tackle the problem of misuse, then how can India, where 35 per cent of the people are illiterate and 22 per cent live below the poverty line? How can India claim that we can tackle these problems?
Nandan Nilekani: What these developed countries have put on hold is giving national ID cards to people. But both the countries, US and UK have a number. For example in the US, you have the social security number, in the UK there is the national insurance number. They already have a numbering system, which is what we are going to propose.
Karan Thapar: Except for the fact that is is nowhere near as extensive or as complete in terms of the biometeric details as what you are proposing in India. The national insurance in Britain has been around and developing slowly but it doesn’t have any details that could lead to an invasion of privacy. It doesn’t have any details that can be misused for profiling. Yours could have both?
Nandan Nilekani: As I said, these are legitimate concerns and I think we have to address them in the public as well as in the laws and so on. But notwithstanding these concerns, the social benefit, the inclusivity that this project will provide for the 700 million people in this country who are outside the system is immense enough to justify doing this project…”
My Comment
Notice, once more, that’s it’s “social uplift” that’s the excuse for the expansion of the state, the same reasoning given for the sale of IMF gold. And as suspect in this case as it is in that. It seems as if public officials hardly get a wink of sleep cooking up schemes to help the poor.
Consider that the British biometric scheme was put on the backburner because it cost too much. The London School of Economics calculated that it would cost between 10 and 20 billion pounds, and Britian is about 1/20 the size of India. Now figure how mind-boggling the Indian scheme is likely to be be…..in every respect.
People are considered to be cattle by their governments, to be managed, tagged, drugged, vaccinated, sorted, graded, and manipulated for their own good. Who ever could argue against a government taking care of their cattle? No cow ever asks themselves, “who owns me?”
You gotta love the euphemistic phrasing our beloved farmers use: “the inclusivity that this project will provide.” (Reading through clearer lenses: “the more slave-power we’ll be able to harnass”) Who writes this stuff? You think they silently chuckle to themselves when they write it?
(Of course, the really depressing thing is that even with the clearer lenses, most people still accept their enslaved servitude. Behind our corrupt out-of-control farmers… is us. (How tempting free security/education/healthcare/anything-you-want can be.))
Hi Dennis –
Welcome back. I miss sparring with atheists..
Yeah – the biometric is id frightening to me – the most frightening part being that no one seems to find it frightening..
I don’t know enough about Nilekani to know if he’s on the level or not. He might be a sincere guy, although when some one shows up in Friedman’s books that often, you wonder. But, if he is honest, he needs to wise up about the ways this thing can be abused.
(Re: sparring with atheists… I miss it too — far more constructive and REAL than sparring with theists ;b.)
Re: Nilekani wisening, his perspective is easy to understand. He (like the mob) believes in the means and ends of statism (aka. initiating violence), and this new UID is in fact the better more efficient way of realizing the statist wet dream — it’s a lot harder to fake biometrics (though, granted, not impossible), and having them all neatly centralized and consolidated makes it far easier to administer and expand throughout the herd. Really, it should be less prone to abuse than the current systems. In fact, I’m sure we’ll have it here soon, likely with wireless (RFID) technology — it’s just soo much more convenient and more effective and efficient. The crux of the matter was already decided long ago — the herd already accepts state coercion — we already are tagged with ID numbers — this will simply do it better. (Unless *the herd* wises up and realizes that it’s not ok to be violently tagged and milked! :\)
Pingback: India Begins First Biometric Census | LILA RAJIVA: The Mind-Body Politic
Pingback: The Mind-Body Politic Indian’s Dangerous ID Schemes | The Mind-Body Politic