Wednesday, January 13, 2010

EPW Article by Ravi Shukla, CSSP

Reimagining Citizenship: Debating India's Unique Identification Scheme
by Ravi Shukla, CSSP
Economic & Political Weekly (EPW), 9 January 2010, vol xlv no 2.

The unique identification scheme opens up several possibilities for both governance issues and market logic. Despite enabling the identification of a person and pinpointing that X is X, the UID scheme can nevertheless bring about sharp, though problematic, shifts as well. Notably, the apparatuses of state within the premise of the UID scheme are not expected to be posed as a radical contrast to the market but rather as a node point bearing citizen data and therefore capable of operating as a facilitator and mediator of market information. At the technical level as well, the debate over the UID is far from over.

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