[Reader-list] News Items posted on the net on Multipurpose National Identity Cards-46

[Taha Mehmood]

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-2688124,prtpage-1.cms

<http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/>



<http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-2688124,prtpage-1.cms#>


 Not citizens, it's the state that needs an ID card
10 Jan 2008, 0129 hrs IST, Jug Suraiya


   A fundamental aspect of the relationship between you, as an Indian
citizen, and the Indian state may soon radically change: so far, you are in
the eyes of the state constitutionally presumed innocent unless proved
otherwise. This presumption of innocence, not in a court of law but in
everyday affairs, will no longer be valid if Indian citizens are required to
carry, and produce on demand, identity cards issued by the state.

Though the ID card proposal mooted by Delhi's Lieutenant-Governor seems to
have been dropped after a flurry of protests from various politicians,
jurists and citizens' groups, a Multi-Purpose National Identity Card project
(first mooted by L K Advani during the tenure of the NDA government) is
still in the pipeline. The avowed purpose of ID cards is to strengthen
security. But in effect, as many have pointed out, mandatory ID cards for
citizens merely increase the risks of police and other official harassment
of citizens who, in order to demonstrate their bona fides have to produce
the required documentation, a failure to do so being tantamount to a
determination of guilt.

In practical terms, the introduction of a generic ID card (as distinct from
use-specific cards such as the Voter ID card, the PAN card, the ration card,
etc) would greatly increase the scope for police corruption and
intimidation, hazards which are already entrenched in our day-to-day lives.
However, it is in the constitutional relationship between the citizen and
the state that the more insidious and the greater damage would be done.
Unlike the French judicial system where the accused is required to prove his
innocence, in Indian law (as derived from British jurisprudence) the
presumption of innocence is a fundamental right of the citizen.

It is a right, however, that is often grossly violated in countless cases of
wrongful detention, the use of third-degree methods to obtain a
'confession', lethal 'encounters', and other instances of the state's misuse
of its powers.

And the powers of the Indian state - in theory if not in practice - are
already only too formidable when viewed from the perspective of the common
citizen who has little or no protection from repressive laws which often
make a cruel mockery of our democratic and supposedly free society. In the
sacred name of national security, the common citizen - whose security and
safety should be the paramount concern of the nation state - has been
subjected to the often vicious implementation of laws such as TADA, and its
subsequent avatars of POTO and POTA, cute-sounding acronyms that disguised
an official sanctioning of state brutality.

Though TADA and its successors have been scrapped, the Armed Forces Special
Powers Act, 1958 continues to provide protective camouflage to state terror
perpetrated against individuals in the name of national security. Far from
strengthening national security, the misuse of the state's powers has deeply
undermined the foundation of the polity, as witnessed by the frightening
fact that some 160 districts of the country, comprising over 180 million
people are under 'Naxal' control.

So much for 'national security'. Using the mantra of national security, the
state has progressively encroached on individual liberties: from
phone-tapping to cyber-snooping, from police barriers that impose daily
stress on already harried commuters to the 'bandobast' for 'VVIP movement'
which totally dislocates the normal functioning of city life.

At the end of his tether, thanks to official zulm , it is not the common
citizen who ought to be asked to prove his credentials by an extra ID card.
Rather, it is officialdom that needs to produce a clean chit certifying
that, despite evidence to the contrary, ours is not in fact a police state
but still a democracy. Or is it? Is the state innocent, or guilty? And how
is it going to prove it, either way?

(Readers are invited to suggest issues of general interest - political,
social, cultural or economic - for discussion in this column. E-mail the
topic of your choice to secondopinion at timesgroup.com. Or write to Second
Opinion, The Times of India, 7, Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg, New Delhi-110103.)