[Reader-list] Identification and social control

[Jeebesh Bagchi]

Some comments on the discussion on identification obsessions of the 
state and the creation of a new model of social enforcements.

A DCP (Deputy Commissioner of Police) Crime advises the public on 
security systems - "Everyone must go in for such systems. These are 
an effective way to check crime. At all our meetings with the RWAs 
(Residents Wefare Associations) we keep telling people to install 
security systems. But these kind of systems have been installed only 
in modern societies like the ones in IP Extensions and other new 
colonies. In older colonies like Chandi Chowk, people don't have this 
sense." (HT East Delhi Live, Friday, June 15, 2001, p1).

The security system technologies that are being advised and of which 
the `modern` housing groups are very aware of are video door phones, 
close circuit televisions, intrusion detection systems like sensors, 
magnetic contacts, motion detectors etc and signalling devices like 
sirens, hooters, strobe lights, and auto dialers. This will add to 
the already present security guards and entry/ exit registers.

But strangely the incidence of crime in these areas and the 
perception of threat do not match. If you talk to residents of these 
so called modern societies you will record very little actual 
incidence of crime (murder, robberies, theft, cheating etc) but an 
amazingly ornate and enlarged perception of threat from the `class` 
other. And the activists of the RWAs are very vocal and pro-active in 
implementing technological monitoring mechanisms. These same 
associations are amazingly slothy and sloppy when dealing with issues 
of garbage collection and dumping, or road safety in the 
neighborhoods, etc.

My fear is that these micro-`welfare` associations, associations of 
residents and shopkeepers in localities may just lap up the new 
technological order of the identification systems that are emerging.

What you may get is a very de-centralised franchised chain which 
connects a software company - a local franchise - local associations 
and the local police station. I think I am not being paranoid, it 
will simply come and replace the present security system that we are 
all accustomed to. This form of social control through social 
networks and consensus is going to be the new mode of control within 
our society. Well lets say at least large parts of the urban spaces 
for sure. 

Let me end with a story of a park. This is a very large and well 
maintained park shared by many societies. But the residents do not go 
to the park after sunset, as apparently `bad` people from the `other` 
neighborhoods appears at night. No great crime has been reported from 
the park but dark rumors about dark people abound. Perhpaps one day 
RWAs will get active and will go to re-capture the night at the park, 
and their weapons probably will be a security picket armed with ID 
scanner!

The deep urban politics of legal and illegal, licensed and 
non-licensed, resident or non-resident, are creating cognitive 
frameworks that arrive at consensus around mechanisms of social 
control and discrimination, and they are searching for efficient 
enforcement...
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