Biometric e-Shakti initiative of Bihar govt illegal, illegitimate: CFCL

Patna,(BiharTimes): Citizens Forum for Civil Liberties (CFCL) has demanded a White Paper on the legality of biometric data collection and work undertaken under Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI). 

CFCL is involved in the research and advocacy against surveillance technologies since 2010. It has appeared before the Parliamentary Standing Committee that questioned the biometric identification of Indians without any legal mandate.

In a Press statement Gopal Krishna of CFCL said in the face of this assault on citizens’ rights and the emergence of a regime that is making legislatures subservient to database and data mining companies, the urgent intervention of the progressive political parties and informed citizens should not be postponed anymore.

The statement said the 48-page Report of Parliamentary Standing Committee (PSC) on Finance submitted to both the Houses of Parliament in December 2011 reveals that biometric e-Shakti initiative of Rural Development Department of Bihar is illegal and illegitimate. It is turning Biharis into guinea pigs for biome tric technology companies. 

In the name of financial Inclusion, what is unfolding is surveillance of transactions, mobility and every aspect of life. The biometric data collection faces legal challenge in Supreme Court on October 22, 2013 in 12 digit biometric Aadhaar number case.

The e-Shakti project was launched under National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme Bihar on February 24, 2009 in Paliganj Block of Patna district. More than five years and seven months have passed since the project was launched. It is noteworthy that e-Shakti project was launched within a month of the creation of Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) which was brought into its controversial existence on January 28, 2009 by a notification of the Planning Commission. While presenting the Union Budget 2009-10, the then Finance Minister, Pranab Mukherjee had announced the setting up of UIDAI to “establish an online data base with identity and biometric details of Indian residence and provide enrolment and verification services across the country.”

The CFCL said the Bihar government must be persuaded to abandon biometric data collection the way it has been done in UK, USA, France, China and Australia before it is compelled by the Court to do so. There is a compelling logic to reject those parties, which implicitly or explicitly support tracking, profiling, databasing and mortgaging of citizens’ rights and their sovereignty under the dictates of their donors and non-state actors.

This initiative, according to CFCL, is going to do almost exactly the same thing which the predecessors of Adolf Hitler did, else how is it that Germany always had the lists of Jewish names even prior to the arrival of the Nazis?

The Nazis got these lists with the help of IBM which was in the “census” business that included racial census that entailed not only count the Jews but also identifying them. 

The statement said that at the US Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, there is an exhibit of an IBM Hollerith D-11 card sorting machine that was responsible for organising the census of 1933 that first identified the Jews. IBM has not disputed its involvement in it.

Another promoter of biometric identification, Nandan Nilekani in his book Imagining India describes the “Dividends of an autocracy versus a Democracy” and contends that “In terms of implementing policies that are good for you, whether you like it or not, autocratic regimes are better than democracies” at page no. 50. 

The CFCL asks as to “why is Bihar being taken in that non-democratic route through such identification.”

Nilekani has admitted that “biometrics as a tool of surveillance”. But the gullible seem to believe even what is unbelievable––it is for delivery of identity proof and social entitlements. Although Indians are accustomed to advertising and falsehoods purveyed by them but when it comes to advertising by biometric technology companies uninformed citizens are willing to trust even the most untrustworthy of claims.

CFCL said in 1906, Mahatma Gandhi had encountered the proposal of biometric passes when a Asiatic Law Amendment Ordinance of the Transvaal Government in South Africa in August 22 issue of the Government Gazette that required all Indians and Chinese in the Transvaal region of South Africa, eight years and older, to report to the Registrar of Asiatics and obtain, upon the submission of a complete set of fingerprints, a certificate which would then have to be produced upon demand. Fingerprints were then demanded only from criminals, and the subjection of women to such a requirement had no other objective but the humiliation of Indians.

Gandhi understood well that the Ordinance effectively criminalized the entire community and must be challenged. At a meeting held in Johannesburg, 3,000 Indians took an oath not to submit to a degrading and discriminatory piece of legislation. This gave birth to Satyagraha. Gandhi later wrote that the ordinance illustrated hatred towards Indians which, if passed, “would spell absolute ruin for the Indians in South Africa.”

How is Biometric Smart Card different from the “register of Asiatics” opposed by Mahatma Gandhi? If Biharis forget the lesson of this resistance movement it would “spell absolute ruin for the Indians” of the present and future generations, the CFCL statement asked.