India’s digital ID system deepens exclusion of vulnerable communities amid pandemic · Global Voices
Banner image credit: Corona crisis in Kolkata 14. <PERSON> (CC-BY-SA-4.0)
This post was first published at Yoti as a part of <PERSON> Digital Identity Fellowship. It has been edited for Global Voices.
Before Indian society had the chance to recover from the hardship of both a financial slowdown and the controversial amendment to the Citizenship Act, it got hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. At the time of reporting, 16,568 Indians have died of COVID-19 and 554,386 have tested positive. By mid-May, 24 people, mostly migrant workers who were desperately trying to return to their own houses, were also reported to have died recently because of the lockdown. Most of them died in an attempt to walk hundreds of kilometres, in hunger and illness, and some as a result of indiscriminate attacks.
However, a curated database maintained by open data community Datameet suggests that more 882 Indians have died of non-coronavirus reasons (mostly starvation and financial distress, exhaustion, accidents during migration, lack or denial of medical care, suicides, police brutality, crimes, and alcohol-withdrawal) during the lockdown. Many marginalized communities were already struggling to survive poverty, hunger and systemic exclusions, and life got even harder due to social distancing and lockdown regulations.
India's digital identification system—which faced scrutiny over privacy concerns and exclusion— has further put marginalised communities at a greater disadvantage during the pandemic.
There have been concerns that fingerprint-based authentication (as used by Aadhaar, India’s national biometrics-based digital identity program) can increase the risk of further spreading COVID-19, and India’s Public Distribution System (or PDS, India's social welfare service) predominantly uses Aadhaar for authentication. The state of Kerala identified this risk early on and suspended the use of all biometric authentication systems. 803
This, and all the other social, political and transactional risks linked to Aadhaar — because of COVID-19 — have put marginalized communities at much higher risk, and furthered calls for a revised look at the digital ID ecosystem. While migrant workers in the cities of Delhi, Mumbai and Surat desperately try to return back to their native homes, many struggle to get the COVID-19 relief and regular support of food grains and rations that they are entitled to – all because PDS is yet to be made universal to ensure an equitable public benefit.
Aadhaar and social services
The use of Aadhaar-based authentication – or linking the use of Aadhaar with essential social services – makes exclusions more likely than ever.
A 68-year-old disabled woman from the Indian state of Odisha with missing fingers was denied enrolment in Aadhaar, and as a result, she received no food grains for 11 months. Another disabled person was denied rations for three years, and a five-member family, including an elderly couple, have been in a similar situation for the past six months. There are over 100 such individuals from one tiny administrative region in the same province who did not receive the food grains or rations that they are entitled to.
<PERSON> of Lachipur, Sonepur distt., Odisha was denied of Aadhaar first for not having fingers intact. She hasn’t received any food grains or other ration for 11 months, or #COVID19 relief. https://t.co/LXCZYwcyKo @Food_Odisha @rajaaswain @CMO_Odisha #MarginalizedAadhaar pic.twitter.com/W4sC2VduAO
— <PERSON>@subhapa) April 30, 2020
From public welfare to mass surveillance
National Register of Citizens
India is in the middle of the National Register of Citizens (NRC), an effort to identify and build a database of “legal citizens” which, in the first rollout in the state of Assam, declared 31 million people out of a total population of 33 million as “legal” while leaving 1.9 million, mostly Muslims, as stateless . The government has plans to implement NRC across the country .
The use of personal data lies at the centre of everything — from identifying protesters using facial recognition, or selectively-identifying vehicles owned by Muslims from a government database during a communal pogroms, or even tracking people who have travelled to a coronavirus-affected country. The government is reportedly in the process of developing a geofencing app that can alert local authorities if a person in COVID-19 quarantine or isolation attempts to ‘escape’, using the affected person’s cell tower location. 607