[Reader-list] On the business of E-Governance.

[Taha Mehmood]

Dear Jeebesh,

Thank you for your comments on the forward regarding the possible
business implications MNIC. I have spent the last few days thinking
about what you seem to have suggested and this is what I have to
say....

You wrote-

- A much heavier and discursively dispersed layer. It was cold war
that was seen as giving
such legitimacy to the earlier apparatus.  Now it a generalised social
panic around security that has given such incredible legitimacy to
this grandiose, megalomanic ideas and hidden enterprise around it.-

Are you be any chance suggesting that during the cold war, the social
panic was not generalized? Do you really think the idea of panic was
too localized? May I ask what specific categories of general and local
are you referring to here?

 I don't think that social panic which seems to result in, what you
kindly term as, 'incredible legitimacy' is generalized nor there is
any evidence to support a view that ideas like national identity cards
or business enterprises which  prospers as a result do so because of
megalomania of some clear, traceable social network? Having said that
I accept that I may be wrong here and I would be extremely glad to go
through any data or theoretical claim on which you might have based
your argument.

Moreover, I think there is a larger point which needs to be addressed
here, which is- that in most of the countries where a national
identity card is in operation the reasons for such an exercise are
deeply local however the discourse around it seems to usurp some air
from global winds on its way.

The idea of MNIC in the Indian context was mooted in the face of a
perceived threat of illegal immigrants. We have to bear in mind this
idea was proposed in the shadow of Kargil Conflict which was a local
low intensity conflict.

I personally think that if identity documents carry some potential
threats then they have their benefits too. I would be very, very
hesitant to articulate regimes built around identity documents in a
totally dismissive manner by attributing it as a direct offshoot of
some wacko conspiracy.

Across the world, if the communists or the erstwhile colonies of the
empire are adapting regimes of full spectrum identification then maybe
its reasoning  point to an urge of political dispensation in these
countries to perhaps relate to deeper historical nature of
authoritarian conditions of governance which is prevalent in these
countries.

If the so called developed countries of the west resort to identity
cards especially during first half of twentieth century then maybe
they did so to provide for the 'exigencies of war', or to fulfill a
gap of a lack of a centralized state or where there was 'a lack of
common law tradition' like in France.

The point being if one dismisses any national identity card regime
which could have a huge impact on a society like ours, in words and
phrases like, 'grandiose' 'megalomaniac' or 'hidden enterprise' which
at best seems like a poignant articulation of an emotional outburst,
then perhaps one tends to weigh the 'cost' component of this discourse
in favor of social obligation component or privacy component. Would
you have reacted in the same manner if the central government were to
propose to spend one twentieth or a mere 7500 crores instead of what
it is spending now?

That UIDAI will result in redistribution of public money in favor of
private enterprises across the country through contracts and
sub-contracts is given. That representatives of beneficiary firms are
also stakeholders in the disbursement of public wealth is also known.
So what hidden enterprise are we talking about here? That it is a
national level program and therefore it is bound to cover everyone
like providing education to all  or giving shelter to all or giving
access to travel to all, so what is so grand about UIDAI which was not
there in earlier schemes.

I think for us i.e. the citizens of in India, the idea of NIC must act
as an important provocation to carefully consider all the views which
are presented in the public realm and then maybe we could vigorously
debate these arguments to perhaps etch out a critical approach to
generate new, different, diverse and overarching set of meanings.

Warm regards

Taha