[Reader-list] Highlights of PM’s Independence Day speech - 198

[Taha Mehmood]

Dear Rajen,

Thank you for an insightful post. Please tell me, just as twenty digit
Id numbers are useful for companies to tag -their- products. Products
which are made after a cost is incurred by a company on procurement of
raw materials, processing, packaging and subsequent distribution of
finished products, so to, while allowing a State to tag us, should  we
 now consider our selves, our bare lives, as something which do not
belong to our selves, but to a Nation State, a parent company or a
corporation which will decide what is good for us? Now this is a view
which emanates, as a critique of ID cards, mainly from sociologists
who have tried to understand kind of effect will a universal ID card
have on the sense of self.

This is not to suggest that your views are entirely incorrect but to
prod whether we can think a bit more on  two most important issues-
Trust and Opportunity Cost. Can we in India really trust the State
with our personal information? In other words, Is the government of
India absolutely trust worthy to be given the co-ordinates of our
personal identification information?  What is the opportunity cost of
investing 1,40,000 crore rupees? What kind of benefits can befall, if
for instance, this kind money be invested in agriculture or improving
the health infrastructure?

We can also think about the issue of time here. It takes 5 years for
the officers of the government of India to completely identify twelve
hundred thousand people. Going by this rate, it will take four
thousand years for the government to identify a billion people. If the
Government is keen to make a register and more keen to distribute
random numbers in just one and a half to five years then is the
Government not guilty of haste. Impatience in matters pertaining to
public policy is certainly not a virtue.

Warm regards

Taha