[Reader-list] News Items posted on the net on Multipurpose NationalIdentity Cards-6

[Taha Mehmood]

Dear Taraprakash,

Thank you for your mail. I think that your suggestion is interesting. By
that I mean it hints at a possibility or perhaps range of possibilities.
These possibilities or the possibility, I think, tends to follow a
trajectory of thought which is more often than not -prescriptive- in nature.
Abstract ideas like nation states are imagined as not as social processes or
negotiable entities but are perhaps understood through the most cliched
metaphor of that of a -body-. Any idea which challenges the dominant idea
or questions it or tries to engage with it is read as a disease afflicting
the -body-. Hence our sensibility informs us to look for the cure.

There is of course nothing wrong in prescriptive thinking, but i believe
that in order to cure a disease we must first have a through understanding
of the nature of the disease. I am in no position to agree or disagree
whether we must have or we must not have a national identity card. This I
believe is the job of the privacy lobby, or the smart card lobby.

I am interested in more fundamental issues. These are the issues of
individual identity. For instance What is individual identity? What is
nature of individual identity? Can the identity of a person be mapped at
all? If so, how? or Why is it okay for us to share the most 'inalienable'
part of our subjectivity like our fingerprints with mostly corrupt, often
inept, state agencies?

Even if we have two identity cards as suggested by you, then don't you think
that the premises in your argument are rather benign. The only way with
which we can begin to think about an identity document issued by an
international agency like UN would be when- 1) All the countries of this
world are able to conduct a successful census of all the peoples of this
world. 2) The data generated with such an exercise is without an error. 3)
All the countries of this world agree to share this data with UN (Underlying
assumption being that all the countries of this world -TRUST- UN on an equal
basis) 4) The UN prints identity cards and distributes them to all the
countries of this world. 5) The individual state governments then create a
mechanism to dispatch an identity card, issued by the UN to each of the six
billion of us. 6) We, the people of this world, get an identity card which
has a correct Name, Date of birth, Permanent Residence, etc etc printed on
it.

Do you really think that having an agency like UN would solve the problem of
correct and a legitimate documented individual identity? When we really do
not to have a clear idea as to what do we mean by individual identity?

IF this being the case then would it be nice to have UN act as the guardian
angel of our individual identities or should we try to first generate more
discussion or debate and think through these notions before allowing anyone
to be the sole custodian of our identities.

Warm regards

Taha

On Thu, Dec 25, 2008 at 4:48 AM, taraprakash <taraprakash at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>  You are right Taha that the identity can be manipulated by the state to
>> prove or disprove claims. Money gets you everything in the subcontinent. So
>> it is possible to have multiple identities. For all we know, tomorrow Aditya
>> Nigam, Amrish Mishra, Ajiz Barni, or other conspiracy theorists in Indian
>> and Pakistani media, may find Kasab's Indian passport under the seat of a
>> taxi he used before being captured. It takes less than rs2000 to get a fake
>> Indian passport.
>> Congress had an MP from Asam who was actually a fugitive, citizen of Nepal
>> required in Nepal in connection of a murder case.
>> So yes, it is possible to give people multiple identities or leave people
>> without it and multi-purpose identity cards may not help in the matter. I
>> wonder if my suggestion will sound to you too ridiculous to consider. But
>> perhaps we should have duel identities. One issued by one's respective
>> country and the other by a world agency like UN. Such a system might help to
>> determine the identity/nationality  of those captured in covert operations.
>> Pakistan today claimed that they have arrested an Indian national in
>> connection with a recent bomb blast in Pakistan. The police of J&K
>> supposedly arrested three Pakistanis a couple of days back. What if the UN
>> had everybody's record in their database so that when such a claim was made,
>> they could prove the veracity of such a claim.
>>
>> Regards
>>
>