Data power, AI and the "doubtful citizens": The case of India's National Population Register
Abstract: This paper analyzes how the National Population Register (NPR) project in India uses techniques of data power to shape the boundaries of citizenship rights. With religion becoming a shadowy marker of identity in framing "real Indians," the present governmental regime in India actively seeks to identify the "doubtful citizens" within the national space by linking AI-powered biometric data and other forms of legal identification. The notion of the "real citizen" is reframed through biometric identification, documentation, and the bureaucratic web of this governmental reframing affects who will access essential services like opening a bank account or becoming part of the food distribution system. The entanglements of data infrastructures and systemic discrimination in this context are shaped through surveillance machinations, neoliberal governance, and the erasure of citizenship rights. In Documents and Bureaucracy, Matthew Hull emphasizes "the way documents link to people, places, things, times, norms, and forms of sociality" (Hull, 2012; p. 255). He notes that documents are often thought of as offering access to things and processes they document. However, they have broader capacities, particularly as they relate to administrative control and the active construction of subjects and socialites. This paper questions how the NPR in India seeks to re-construct socialities and rights using AI and data power. Through an examination of the discourses in the mainstream media, the rhetoric of the politicians of the ruling party, and the official government rhetoric, this paper explores how the logic of NPR engenders specific forms of statehood, governance, and citizenship. Using Foucault's ideas of biopower and Agamben's conceptualization of Homo Sacer, the notion of citizenship building in relation to legal documents and biometric identification is analyzed in this paper.
Author bio: Anirban is a Ph.D. candidate in Communications and Media at the Institute of Communications Research at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He is interested in the history of communication/media technologies, media and space, race and media, infrastructures of media, media policies, and critical information studies. He is intrigued by how the media affect cultural changes in the public sphere, build cultural citizenship, and (re)produce frameworks of everyday life.
Recorded Presentation | 26 April 2023
#Biometrics #DigitalState #Citizens #India
