[Reader-list] On Shahrukh, shenakhti and scans!

[Rajendra Bhat Uppinangadi]

Dear all,
 we have different rules for different "class" of citizens, one rule for the
babus who go with the rulebook, but break them with impunity, throw the rule
book to our faces when questioned on accountabilty,

 and then there are political leaders who have Z class security for
safeguarding their lifes, who are anyway not worthwhile as leaders, who
break all rules made by them,

 and ofcourse the celebs in all walks of life, who are well known to be ego
boosters, who never hesitate to break all rules, but pretend to be very
concerned about safety of aam admi, as these are the ones who break the
security procedures that any one who pretends to be of this class can break
the rules.!

poor aam admi.!

Regards,

Rajen.

On Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 9:53 PM, Taha Mehmood
<2tahamehmood at googlemail.com>wrote:

> Dear All
>
> As we all know how on the eve of the 62nd Independence day of India,
> Shahrukh Khan, a bollywood star of some consequence, was detained at
> the Newark airport. The reason being, his name popped up on their
> computer screens. Apparently the surname -KHAN- is seen with
> categorically suspicious eyes in the US.  Had the worthy emigration
> officials taken the help of google, they would have been surprised to
> find that Shahrukh's name pops up 5,230,000 times.
>
> Much has been made about the story, but Shahrukh's episode, his brush
> with the bureaucratic mechanism governing the information society
> needs to be looked into carefully.
>
> Recounting his almost Kafkaesque experience, Shahrukh talks about, at
> a press conference which he called at his home in Bombay,  how he was
> shuttled from room to room, with emigration officials coming over now
> and then pestering him to tell them the name of one person in the US
> who could identify him as Shahrukh Khan.
>
> More so there seems to be a problem with the centralized data base as
> Shahrukh's retina and fingerprint scans taken at the US embassy in
> Bombay did not seem to have matched with the information provided at
> the emigration counter in Newark. Shahrukh got through the ordeal
> after making a few phone calls to his friends at the Indian consulate
> office. However, it is important to note that when Shahrukh was
> leaving the airport he was not asked to submit his retina and
> fingerprints again, to verify bureaucratically as per the procedure,
> whether he was indeed the one who he claimed to be. The sole reason
> for which he was detained in the first place. No one knows why this
> lapse was allowed, no one knows why this lapse took place in the first
> place. Perhaps no one will ever know.
>
> It was indeed amusing to see how the so called security super
> structure of the information society the world over functions. Is it
> not in exceptional cases like a Ajmal Kasab or a Shahrukh Khan that we
> can perhaps get a glimpse of a norm of the state of things to follow
> with UIDC and MNIC? These states of exception must be carefully
> analyzed and viewed with a magnifying glass for I am sure no would
> like to be in a position to find that one's own fingerprint and retina
> scans, believed to be the most concrete proof of one's individual
> identity are forgotten in the haphazard archives of alphanumeric
> debris, created, maintained and managed by a completely faceless,
> completely opaque network of operators.
>
> Please watch this press conference while keeping in mind that this
> could happen to any one. Shahrukh in a rare instance of
> non-narcissistic utterances repeatedly stresses that -I am a nobody-
> when it comes to the structure of the State, - I am like everyone- he
> maybe referring to the alphanumeric codes or he maybe appealing to all
> of us to seriously look into this unfolding drama botched up shenakhti
> procedures of an overwhelming information society.
>
> The url to Shahrukh's press conference is here-
>
> http://www.ndtv.com/news/videos/video_player.php?id=1147061
>
> Warm regards
>
> Taha
> _________________________________________
> reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city.
> Critiques & Collaborations
> To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with
> subscribe in the subject header.
> To unsubscribe: https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-list
> List archive: &lt;https://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/>




-- 
Rajen.