Identities Project – Episode 3
Article 1 – What we learned at the identities roundtables
It’s a brave move to stand in front of a senior audience of stakeholders before we’ve completed, analysed, and written up research findings – but throughout the Identities Project, we have done things differently
Whilst the research team were still on the ground in India, we wanted to engage with an audience of key stakeholders and peers to receive direct feedback we can take straight back to the field. Presenting this way has been an interesting, engaging, and rewarding experience.
It can be frustrating to only see a research presentation when the work is complete – there are always a few questions you’d like to explore deeper, and issues to probe more fully. Usually that’s not possible, but we wanted to see if we could make the Identities Project more interactive. We wanted to hear ideas and comments from our audience at first-hand, in the hope that people would share in our excitement about our work, help us uncover stories about using identity systems, and prompt us to go further, and be even more diligent. Fortunately, that’s exactly what happened.
During April and May, we presented our Identities research in Delhi, Bengaluru, Washington D.C. and Stockholm. In each city, we invited a hand-picked audience of 20 to 25 people to work with us for an afternoon as we shared early insights on our research and went through an exercise based on personas from our work.
We wanted to immerse the participants in the experiences of our research subjects, and then to look at identity services from the bottom-up, as users have to. It was a chance to reset people’s perspectives on identity services – as one participant said, from now on they’ll see identity through the eyes of Devi, one of our interviewees.
There were distinct flavours to the feedback from the audience in each city. In Delhi and Washington DC we had a government and policy audience, and their suggestions for solutions to user problems were policy-centric.
In Bengaluru, where the audience were mainly technology startup staff and developers, it was fascinating to see the discussion focus on product and service design.
1. Like many similar debates – net neutrality for example – there are those who are strongly for and against identity systems – but what we need are user voices.
2. People carry, and use, multiple artefacts, in order to make the digital physical. This means that users turn Aadhaar from a number into a laminated card, but also that users often benefit from having multiple identity artefacts, and in some instances, multiple identities.
3. The role of intermediaries is key – as both a benefit and sometimes a hindrance. There was a lot of discussion in India about whether legislation was needed to formalise and regulate the role of people who help with identity transactions.
4. Vulnerability shifts with enrolment – it does not disappear. An intermediary may take risks to help, a visually challenged man may get pushed about in an Aadhaar centre, an HIV/AIDS patient may fear being tracked if they are asked to present an Aadhaar card every time they need to collect their anti-retroviral drug. These vulnerabilities need to be addressed
5. Privacy continues to be a mutable concept. Often it’s directly associated only with economic shock – for example, someone saying “I have no money, so if my identity is stolen there is no cost.” Privacy, and the nature of a user’s control over it, was a hot topic of discussion, particularly in DC and Delhi.
Engaging directly with our audience in small groups – indeed, meeting many of you watching our work unfold via the email episodes and the website in person – was a fantastic experience. It’s given the team real impetus as we enter the final stage of research, and also provided interesting new ways of thinking about how we make the research usable in its final form.
We were able to spend valuable time as a group with these stakeholders, but, even more importantly, we’ve been able to spend time with the rich stories and experiences of the people we’ve encountered on our research field trips – and take their messages directly from India to the world.
Article 2 – What happens when other people claim the objects most central to your identity as their own?
Indigenous Mayan weavers in Guatemala have, for a few years now, been fighting a battle that we’ll all be fighting in the not-too-distant future. On 6 May 2016, hundreds of them gathered outside the Guatemalan supreme court to demand official recognition they own the sacred woven patterns that they’ve been making for generations.
Indigenous Mayan weavers in Guatemala, demand official recognition they own the sacred woven patterns. These patterns they’ve been making for generations define the community’s identity.
Indigenous Mayan weavers are fighting for control of the artefacts that have been part of their identity for generations.
These patterns define the community’s identity. “There are elements of our clothing that are sacred, that have a spiritual significance, and others that are only used in ceremonies or by the spiritual leaders in our communities,” Angelina Aspuac of the Women’s Association for the Development of Sacatepéquez told Truth-out.org. But there are currently no legal protections under Guatemalan law for the intellectual property rights of indigenous clothing patterns.
That has resulted in a situation where transnational companies are profiting from these weavings without respecting their significance in indigenous communities. In one notorious example in 2011, Guatemalan fashion designer Giovanni Guzmán was roundly condemned by indigenous representatives for clothing the country’s contestant in the Miss Universe beauty pageant in the sacred patterns of the male spiritual leaders from the K’iche’ Maya town of Chichicastenango.
There are many objects in our lives that we treasure because they define part of our identity – informal types of identity as much as the formal kind embodied in a card or document.
Emrys Schoemaker from Caribou Digital says
“We’ve seen a social shift towards individualism and individual expression, and one of the ways in which we define who we are is the things that we buy and the things that we wear.”
But what happens when those objects, or the context around them, changes? A heavy metal fan who’s uncomfortable with Iron Maiden t-shirts being sold in Topshop, or inspiring tour merchandise for Justin Bieber, can begin to get a sense of how Mayan weavers might feel when they see their spiritual leaders’ clothes on Miss Guatemala. When the popular perception of the artefacts that we use to define ourselves shifts from cultural to merely transactional – where they become economic units, thought of primarily in terms of their economic value – it erodes that part of our identity.
This is not a new process – it’s happened many times throughout history. Coats of arms, for example, came into general use in the 12th century as an identity artefact – they were a practical way of telling knights apart on the battlefield when clad in huge suits of armour. By the 13th century they had become an emblem for European families of higher social status, inherited from the father and passed on to the son. As their use was strictly regulated, they could still be used in identification, particularly in seals on legal documents. They were a symbol of both power and pride.
Over the centuries, however, the value a coat of arms holds in society became massively diminished. Royalty, who controlled their allocation, began to grant arms to the clergy, then to towns as civic identifiers, then to royally chartered universities or trading companies. They became national and then local flags. Soon, arms were everywhere – you can trace a clear line all the way from the modern corporate logo to the oldest heraldry in the world. Today, you can create your own crest in two minutes with an online family crest generator.
The loss of control, this shift from identify artefacts being cultural to being transactional, occurs everywhere.
This loss of control, this shift from identify artefacts being cultural to being transactional, occurs everywhere. Facebook is a great modern example. Facebook began a mere decade ago as a way for college students to express themselves and communicate with friends. People proudly displayed their favourite movies, music and books on their profile, and chose which pictures were allowed to appear – all ways of curating one’s public digital identity.
Most personal of all was the “relationship status” feature. In 2010, Samuel Axon at Mashable wrote: “Who pulls the trigger to make a relationship official on Facebook first? It would be embarrassing to declare yourself to be in a relationship if your (you thought) significant other doesn’t reciprocate. Changing Facebook relationship status has, for better or worse, joined first date, first kiss, first night together, exclusivity talk, and first ‘I love you’ on the list of important relationship milestones.”
Then it dropped off that list again, almost as quickly. As Facebook shifted away from being a home for cultural self-expression to its current incarnation as a transactional identity system – where our profiles are more and more frequently used to access other services, from signing up to third-party websites to paying for things in “real life” like cabs or food delivery – it’s been accompanied by a fall in the amount of information that users share with each other. There is even evidence that the youngest Facebook users have seen how much their parents and older siblings have been sharing, and, aware of the cost to privacy and identity, are drawn to more ephemeral social networks like Snapchat as a result. “Maybe we’ve just decided that our online presence should benefit us, not those who want a two-click rundown of our personal lives,” wrote Barbara Speed in the New Statesman in 2016.
Unfortunately, in many parts of the world where being on Facebook is near-universal, profiles are increasingly required for using vital apps and services – necessitating participation in a digital identity system that some of us are increasingly uncomfortable with, while others are unaware that their information is being used in a transactional way.
“The private sector are using social media as the basis for credit scoring to provide cheap loans, for example,” says Schoemaker. “People unwittingly reveal unbelievable amounts and aspects of their identity, and are very unaware of how much they’re revealing and who has access to it.”
This is the unfortunate flipside of investing in some object or artefact as an aspect of our identity, where trusting in an object to respect and reflect our inner self can be turned against us for profit or control. It’s something which any government needs to be mindful of when designing an identity scheme, too – the things that people feel most reflect their identities, and which they would want to share about themselves, aren’t necessarily the same as the things which prove identity in a legal sense. Forcing personal identity artefacts to become transactional can be alienating, or frustrating, as our research has found.
It’s possible for things to swing back in the other direction. The white lab coat started out as a marketing gimmick – a way for a 19th-century medical establishment to put aside its history of quackery and mysticism and take on an image of scientific rigour. It was firmly a transactional garment. But today, the white lab coat is an identity artefact beloved of doctors around the world, and ritualistic wearing it is deeply ingrained in the culture of the medical profession.
The key question is that of control. Those that control an identity artefact will use it for their own ends, regardless of the feelings of those who value it. The royalty who controlled the distribution of heraldry used it to reward their political allies. Internet firms like Facebook and Google, which control the information we give them, will use that information for profit – no matter how we feel about that.
INTERVIEW WITH SUMITRA DIDI, ARTIST
- “I am an artist. My identity is in my art, my entire family works on these arts.”
- “We will grow old but our art will survive through our children and their children.”
“If you control what the artefact is, you’re controlling a huge part of the nature of a relationship and a key part and experience of what identity means,” says Schoemaker. “Being able to control what people know about you is quite important for our wellbeing. The degree to which individuals have agency over privacy, and what people know about them, has a direct implication on the quality of dignity that they experience.”
“If you control what the artefact is, you’re controlling a huge part of the nature of a relationship and a key part and experience of what identity means,”
Whether it’s a Facebook profile or an Aadhaar card, creation is a way to control which aspects of our identities are made clear to others, and which parts remain hidden.
That’s why indigenous Mayan weavers are fighting for control of the artefacts that have been part of their identity for generations – to regain that control. It’s a fight that will come to all of us, sooner or later.
Article 3 – What happens when a country gets a new identity card?
Identity is a multi-layered concept. For residents of India, the portfolio of cards they’ve used to prove their identity – which has been ever-expanding since the first ration card was introduced in 1947 – has grown yet again, as the Aadhaar system is added to the mix.
The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) established Aadhaar in 2009, but most people only obtained their Aadhaar number in the last few years. Since its launch the scheme has had its detractors and survived numerous political issues – including a change of government, from the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) to the incumbent National Democratic Alliance (NDA) coalition. Its place in the wider discourse about identity is complicated, especially with regards to data privacy and security, given the use of biometrics as part of the data collection process.
Older forms of official identity – like voter ID, PAN and ration cards shouldn’t be dismissed lightly. People are often still holding onto their older systems and cards as part of a portfolio of credentials
Many people find value in the efficiencies that Aadhaar brings, particularly migrants, who form a significant proportion of residents in the bigger cities of India. But our research is finding that there continue to be uses for the other, older forms of official identity – like voter ID, PAN and ration cards – that shouldn’t be dismissed lightly. People are often still holding onto their older systems and cards as part of a portfolio of credentials.
Mangalwati and Ankita are an aunt and niece duo, originally from Rajasthan, who have lived in Delhi for 30 years. They sell costume jewellery. As with almost all the people we’re speaking with, they have multiple identity cards: in their case, voter ID, ration, and Aadhaar. But the Aadhaar card, over time, has become the most requested form of ID, says Mangalwati:
These days everyone is clamouring for Aadhaar. Wherever there is a requirement for photo ID, they ask for Aadhaar.
Ankita, in particular, lost hers and had to re-apply after informing the police. She emphasises that it’s the most important card now, a fact she realised during the recent demonetisation-imposed cash crunch. She was in a tricky situation without her Aadhaar if she wanted to exchange the cash she had in the banned 500 and 1000 notes for legal tender denominations, as banks wouldn’t accept other forms of ID.
Sanket, a wallet salesman from Lucknow who moved to Delhi five years ago, tells us something similar about the universal applicability of Aadhaar as a form of identity:
“Now the Aadhaar card is the most important document. It can be used anywhere. Sometimes I had to show my Aadhaar card to the police whenever my things are seized by them. That happened to me a number of times. They write the name, address etc. If we show the Aadhaar card, they note down the number and allow us to move on. It’s a proof that we are Indian citizens. It’s a proof that we are not terrorists.”
Magesha, who is from Chennai but has been living in Delhi for 20 years, is a mobile phone SIM card salesman. As a small business owner, he is matter-of-fact about Aadhaar’s ability to simplify his customers’ lives when it came to getting a new mobile phone connection:
- “There were a lot of problems before the Aadhaar card. It [the SIM card] took one or two days to activate. Now it takes six to eight hours for a person who is not local, and is done immediately if that person is local.”
- He says that this is thanks to the collection of biometric data as part of the Aadhaar process:
- “With a biometric machine, it works faster. We enter your Aadhaar card and your fingerprints. They [the telecoms companies] get your data.”
Magesha is clear about the responsibility he has when it comes to verifying the documents of people who come to buy a SIM card from him. Biometric verification means he refuses to provide one to anyone who wants to buy on someone else’s behalf. This is interesting to note because previously it wasn’t uncommon for people – including Sanket, featured above – to get SIM cards using someone else’s identity card (in Sanket’s case, a relative’s).
For Magesha, “another reason [for insisting on proof of identity] is that when cybercrime started to increase, we got alerted from all police stations that we should not provide the SIM card to anyone who comes with someone else’s ID card. If anyone comes with his brother’s ID card, for example, we cannot provide it [the SIM card].”
Aadhaar here has become a synonym for official identity. You’ll note that this also echoes Sanket’s feelings about Aadhaar proving that an individual is a citizen, that “we are not terrorists”. This is a noteworthy observation, because Aadhaar in itself isn’t actually proof of citizenship, only of residence. This confusion explains the confidence with which most of the people we interviewed viewed Aadhaar, in terms of national security: if you’re officially “verified”, then the implication is that you’re not a terrorist.
Supreetha, a betel nut seller from Bengaluru, is about 25 years old with a three-year- old daughter. She is an example of how much Aadhaar has embedded itself into people’s lives: she planned ahead when her child was born, guessing that she would need an Aadhaar in order to admit her into school, and got her child’s Aadhaar card right after her husband and she got their own. This came in handy, because the school did indeed ask for the Aadhaar, and in fact made it compulsory for all students to submit it.
Supreetha echoes what Mangalwati from Delhi said about how frequently she uses Aadhaar compared to the other cards. Despite having ration, voter ID and PAN cards, Supreetha uses the Aadhaar more.
“Now, they ask for Aadhaar everywhere”, she says.
She used hers to open a bank account and get a gas connection since she first obtained it two years ago.
Jamima, a 40-year- old cart seller, is a widow who moved to Delhi from her village in 2003. The Aadhaar card was her first form of official identity when she moved to the city, through the government scheme running at the local school at the time, in 2011. Her first form of ID was her voter ID card, which she needed the help of her father-in-law to register for. Applying for Aadhaar, by comparison, gave her more of a sense of agency by requiring her to submit her biometric data and register for it herself. She used it to get a gas connection and then to open a bank account, as that was the only way to get the gas subsidy she was due – it could only be credited to an Aadhaar-linked account. Her Aadhaar also enabled her to get the education subsidy her daughters were due from the government. In fact, the latter was unscrupulously collected by a teacher in the government school for many years, until Jamima was finally able to submit proof of local residence.
However, as a reminder to us that Aadhaar isn’t a golden solution to every problem, it’s useful to remember that Jamima was only able to get her Aadhaar in the first place by submitting her voter ID as proof of address – and it went to her village, as that was where she was registered.
Overall, the impression we’ve gathered from our interviews is that Aadhaar leads other forms of identity from an impact perspective in the larger states – for example, many people we interviewed, and particularly informal street vendors, spoke about how it stopped them from being harassed by police or local strongmen. Some have spoken of how Aadhaar has given them an increased sense of citizenship and belonging. Other have told us that they find it reassuring that they can legally use a photocopy instead of the real card, and that if they lose their card they can easily replace it digitally.
That impact hasn’t been felt across the entire country, though. In our latest interviews in Assam and Meghalaya, we found that people aren’t as convinced by Aadhaar, or even the need for it. As these are states with exceptionally low rates of adoption – at seven and nine percent, respectively, as of April 2017 – this could reflect the fact that most people have yet to see an Aadhaar card in use, let alone experience the functions of the rest of the system.
In our interviews about identity with Maqbul and Narisa, who we spoke to in a community bank in rural Assam, they didn’t mention Aadhaar being required as a form of ID to open a bank account even once. It was trumped by voter IDs, ration cards, electricity bills, driving licenses, PAN cards, and the local government (panchayat) certificate. One of the reasons for Assam’s low rates of Aadhaar adoption is that the state government is concerned about an influx of undocumented migrants securing government ID illegitimately, and so the panchayat certificate has become a popular and effective stopgap alternative.
Mohsin, a 56-year- old cycle repair shop owner originally from Bihar but a resident of Delhi for 16 years, mentioned how he only got the Aadhaar because it was mandated by his bank. To him, voter ID has always been good enough:
- “I only made it as it was necessary for the bank. I already had my voter ID, which is my ID as a citizen and I did not need Aadhaar. The voter card had all the information about me.”
- Overall, our findings so far have been that the complexity of people’s personal sense of identity is often unrepresented by a single card like Aadhaar. It extends their existing forms of identity, rather than replacing them.
We mentioned privacy and security at the beginning of this article as reasons why many are not big fans of Aadhaar. For people like Mohsin, this isn’t a concern yet – he didn’t ask anyone at the Aadhaar Centre where he went to enrol what his data would be used for, and feels confident that his information wouldn’t be misused as long as he could control it:
“The educated people can be asked about it or people at the block level, but I do the photocopying and everything myself, and keep it with myself, and do not give it to anyone.”
