Sunday, December 8, 2013

Unexamined assumptions behind UID

I feel that there are some unexamined assumptions behind the whole citizen ID card thing.

One is that the top decision makers in government and the govt machinery are foolproof, infallible people who will never betray their citizens for their personal advantage.

Another is that the way to solve the problems of the day is by having maximum control over everything... by id'ing, tracking everything and everyone, and that we all need a perfect someone on top to keep a close watch over everything.

And yet another assumption is that the problems facing society originate from the population at large and particularly from those at the bottom of the societal/financial pyramid; and not from the elites and rulers at the top of the pyramid. We feel that all the poverty, hunger, deaths, child malnutrition, separation, pollution, disempowerment, discrimination, negativity etc is because of those sneaky people running away from unforgiving debt or fleeing persecution because of sexual orientation or life partner choices or being evicted out of their ancestral lands.... we think these people on the fringes of our society have no right to be burdening our infrastructure and clogging our welfare services. So they're the problem and they should all be tracked, ID'd, denied any basic human dignity because they can't prove that they're one of us, criminalized for not being "proper", and stamped out.


And then again... we make the assumption that finally we'll be able to devise a heavy, sophisticated system that will be able to ensure that despite having unlimited funds, extensive mafia links and questionable ties with the ruling elites of our society who are running this system, no "terrorist" can manage to fake his way through.

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