Identities Project – Episode 5
Article 1 – Enrolling in ID Systems Does Not Always Reduce Vulnerabilities
In our last episode we discussed the critical role of identity intermediaries such as the PAN card agent and the Aadhaar franchisee. Their positions are especially important when thinking about vulnerable groups. As The World Bank’s Principles of Identification state:
- Legal, procedural, and social barriers to enroll in and use identification systems should be identified and mitigated, with special attention to poor people and groups who may be at risk of exclusion for cultural, political or other reasons
- (such as women, children, rural populations, ethnic minorities, linguistic and religious groups, migrants, the forcibly displaced, and stateless persons). Furthermore,
- identification systems and identity data should not be used as a tool for discrimination or to infringe on individual or collective rights.”
Critics of Aadhaar have largely focussed on privacy concerns, but there are also concerns of exclusion, bias and serious repercussions for groups such as senior citizens dependent on Aadhaar verification for pensions. These concerns are not unique to Aadhaar or the Indian context of course. There have been quite a few reports on identification exclusion in the United States, including immigrants, those homeless and out of prison in Ohio, the story of Alice Faith Pennington in Texas, and the intermediaries who are trying to help those in a catch 22 situation without IDs.
In this episode, we focus specifically on demographics who felt marginalized before, but also during and after identification processes – people who are registered disabled, identify as LGBTQ+, or feel discriminated against for other reasons, like caste, class, literacy, or income level. Again, this is not unique to India – a podcast which left an impression on us early in our research discussed how eligibility for benefits in the United States means major bodily and financial intrusion.
During our research, we asked what specific challenges those in our lower-income demographic faced. We also began to see that instead of just a focus on vulnerable groups, we needed to focus on vulnerable circumstances, and the policies that provide extra support in those situations.
The process of enrollment in ID systems needs to address dignity
Authentication (the first step of identification, followed by verification) can be hardest for the most vulnerable in society. Checking if someone is eligible for a government benefit may be demeaning, and depends on the discretion of intermediaries. We saw this in Garudahalli, near Bengaluru, when Mariswamy, the dairy co-op head, tried to get disability benefits for his neighbour, Padma Akka, a mentally challenged senior citizen:
“Take the example of our Padma Akka … she has no economic means, is mentally challenged and lives on her own. She was getting this pension but it stopped. So, my mother and I took Padma Akka to a doctor’s clinic at Madhugiri. We told the doctor, ‘Sir, this lady is very poor and is in need of financial help. He asked, ‘What? What is wrong with her?’ So we answered, ‘Sir, she has a mental condition…if you could examine her…’. The doctor then looked at Padma Akka and asked her, ‘Here, what is your name?’ She said, ‘G. Padma’ and he asked, ‘What is your father’s name?’ She said, ‘Gopalachar Garudahalli.’ He said, ‘Will you write your name?’ So, the lady goes and writes her name in English. Immediately the doctor said, ‘Hey! How are you a mental case?’ and he shouted at us. And with this turn of events, we quietly came back.”
A transgender activist had a similar concern around invasive identification.
Currently in draft, India’s 2016 Transgender Rights Bill specifies “screening committees,” doctors who will provide certificates for those who identify as transgender.
As this article says, it “puts in place a surveillance and gate-keeping mechanism for an already severely discriminated-against community”. The activist we spoke to said:
“The government wanted us to get checked by the doctors. We were born as male only, with all male genitalia, but mentally we feel very strongly that we are females. When the situation is like this, how much does the government or the doctors know about us to judge us? This being the case, we don’t need you to certify us. We are also human beings. We live in the same society as you. So a universal certificate is necessary”.
Reframing privacy away from being purely about personal information towards being about a consideration of harms has highlighted how identity credentials can actually increase risks for the more vulnerable. One example of this is around the stigma in needing an Aadhaar card to obtain antiretroviral (ART) drugs. An HIV/AIDS activist laid out his concerns:
“Now what has happened in HIV-positive communities, in all the ART centres, only if we have Aadhaar cards, the ART box is given. They are making it compulsory. Due to this, our identity of HIV positive is being shown. Now that Aadhaar is compulsory, few people don’t even have Aadhaar and even if they do, and because it is linked to everything, their fear has increased. It is already a stigmatised condition. Who have they asked before doing this? Have they asked our opinion?”
Declaring one’s identity exposes marginalized communities to risk
In interviews with those who identified as transgender, and with LGBT activists, there have been serious concerns around prejudices in identification processes following the Indian Supreme Court’s recriminalization of homosexuality in 2013 (Section 377). A particular concern in Karnataka was Section 36A of the Police Act which gives police powers to “control objectionable activities of eunuchs”, especially in conjunction with the ruling that a transwoman has to register her residential address at a police station:
“If they (the individual) want to go elsewhere, they should take permission from the police station. If a child goes missing in that area, the police use their authority to enquire or to take them into custody without any prior information. Their power makes us criminals … and all this information about the individual is on an Aadhaar card. Who is responsible for this?”
Identity systems that expose certain social relationships leave some more vulnerable than others
What some considered as potential harms of data was not always obvious. For example, Mansoor, a woollens vendor, did not mind sharing his Aadhaar card with us, but would not share the small pocket diary where he kept track of his lending and borrowing. He was keen to safeguard the privacy of his relationship and the identity of his money lender, since he said he has known him for several years and did not want anything untoward to happen because of us asking for the identity of the money lender.
What this means for people who design and implement ID systems
Identity systems unlock access to services and in theory enable a more efficient, equitable society. Yet, as we have seen from many critiques, especially with regards to Aadhaar, these systems also bring security and privacy fears.
We have been hearing people describe their fears about the harms that might be caused by privacy breaches – harms that disproportionately affect already vulnerable communities. We heard many concerns around identity cards, too – fears of them being lost, withheld, copied by others.
Though many saw the benefits of identity cards, we heard from many people who had major concerns. There were women who felt the time and process impacted hugely on their day-to-day lives; mothers who felt their children were being excluded because they did not have Aadhaar cards; there were those who were illiterate, those like the blind teacher, John who needed assistance [link to transaction story for this episode]; and some concerned about being excluded because of religion or caste.
We also realized that there are vulnerable circumstances rather than vulnerable groups – when a member of our research team had a loss in the family, they found the process of obtaining a death certificate lengthy and intrusive. Their feedback was poignant: “why do I need to write what their diet was like, or if they smoked or not?”
While we agree with the World Bank Principles that “social barriers to enroll in and use identification systems should be identified and mitigated”, we need to think clearly about what this means.
First and foremost, understanding “user” needs and concerns; then perhaps a code of ethics for intermediaries, stronger citizen’s rights with regards to identification processes, and more efficient and effective grievance redressal. In the words of the transgender activist: “when there is an identity card, it has to be beneficial for the people of the community. We do not want cards which create problems for the community.”
Article 2 – What We Have Learnt About Attitudes to Privacy and Vulnerability
The Identities Project has been a learning experience for everyone involved, especially the research team.
Over the last six months, they’ve been privileged to learn about the lives of the “aam aadmi” [“common man”] in India, the people who have been most directly impacted by different identity systems implemented through the years.
As the debate over the privacy implications of Aadhaar continues to rage, in this episode we’d like to throw the spotlight on our own experience with public attitudes to privacy and vulnerability, as surfaced in our interviews.
Income levels impact opinions of privacy
At the start of the research process, we asked people how they felt about the potential for their personal information to be revealed if their identity cards, like Aadhaar, were stolen.
We found that most people weren’t really too bothered, often because they didn’t feel they had enough money for it to matter. Clearly, income levels have a direct bearing on attitudes to privacy. The implication was that as low-income earners, they didn’t matter, and so privacy wasn’t a consideration for them.
This was rather unsatisfying for us, as it might be for some of you reading this. Surely, we thought, everyone should be bothered about their data being stolen, or their identity being exposed too widely?
Emrys Schoemaker referred to his own experience of conducting research in Pakistan a few years ago, where (as it still is today) people were active users of technologies that impact on privacy, such as Facebook. He found that it was not uncommon at all for people to have duplicate Facebook accounts, one for friends and another for family, in order to keep their two lives distinct. This was a practice especially prevalent amongst women, because of the potential for harassment by men in their network if too many details about their lives were revealed.
From individual notions of privacy to a harms-based notion of privacy
We realized then that it might be wise to rephrase our question, shifting from a focus on the individual (and their revealing personally identifiable information) to a focus on events (and the potential for actual harm). In the last phase of the research, we asked different questions, trying to learn, for example,
What aspects of their identity did people prefer to keep secret for fear of harm of any sort? Why?
In Assam, we found that, for women, information about a third or fourth pregnancy was not something they would want acknowledged in public – the idea that someone was unable to control their reproduction was considered shameful. Building on this, we asked a follow-up: in such a situation, what if health data were to be linked to an Aadhaar number, for example?
One woman opened up to this, and said that many other women she knew might be afraid to see a doctor about their pregnancy in this situation, in case it became public knowledge.
Cultural sensitivities always need to be considered
As Alan Westin argues in his 1976 book Privacy and Freedom, the culture of a society impacts how its members perceive their privacy. We found this held true in our research.
In fact, our Indian research team was particularly concerned about being sensitive when asking for information that could be deemed too personal in some cultures. In northeast India, for example, questions regarding citizenship were unlikely to be welcomed because of the tense border situation between India and China, which is relatively near. The team didn’t take these kinds of issues lightly, and had many discussions around what would be the best way to approach them.
Exposure to vulnerability impacts how people feel about identity cards
From a vulnerability perspective, we discovered that many people liked the conveniences that an identity card like Aadhaar gave them.
Where earlier they might have had to negotiate with local government or intermediaries to collect their government benefits, identity cards ensured that they got what they were due much more seamlessly. They told us that it made them feel more independent, and less vulnerable.
For example, Mangalwati, a Rajasthani jewellery seller in Delhi, felt having ID cards protected against being hassled by the police or the New Delhi Municipal Corporation: “if you show your ID proof, they let you stay and sell.”
Conversely, some cards, like the ration card, had a significant ability to expose and enhance other vulnerabilities. One of the things we heard a lot during our interviews was how women were more vulnerable after they got married and moved to their in-laws’ residence. Before, their ration card will have been registered to their parents’ address, but after moving they have to change it to their new address. Going through that process means that their new community would learn their income – only people below a certain threshold are eligible for ration cards – and that, in turn, has the potential to damage their social status.
The research has uncovered several of these very subtle ways in which identity cards and systems can reveal information about people that they might not want revealed – and in ways which they, or others, might not expect.
Article 3 – When Systems Are Designed For The Many, Not The Few
What does a government owe its citizens?
As Anne-Marie Slaughter, president and CEO of the US think tank New America, points out, one answer to this question can be found in Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan. She quotes the philosopher as arguing that a welfare state is a “provider of goods and services that individuals cannot provide individually for themselves”. India’s constitution — as decreed in part IV, by the Directive Principles – clearly states that the country should be that provider of goods and services for all of its diverse citizenry. But for many citizens, this is not the case.
We spoke to John, 38, a teacher in a residential school for blind children in Bengaluru. In India, the process of registering as blind also requires you to go through the separate process of registering as disabled. Plus, enrolling in those identity systems isn’t simple or smooth. John tells us that renewing his disability card took many different steps:
- “In Bengaluru, you have to go to Minto hospital, in Chamrajpet Market. You get the blind certificate from there. For the disabled ID card, you have to go to Victoria hospital and do it there.
- To get a disabled ID card is a big process.
- You have to go to both Minto and Victoria maybe three or six times.
- For the children who are admitted in our school, after that they have to go to the Women & Child Welfare Department and then get it signed by our director.”
Not only has John already been through this bureaucratic process many times, he’s had to experience it again while applying for Aadhaar. John registered for an Aadhaar card because he heard it would make his life easier, and that he would be able to collect additional disability benefits easily. In the end, it took him two years, and on multiple occasions he had to trade off the opportunity cost with the financial cost:
“I had to go three or four times [to get an Aadhaar card]. I hailed an auto for getting ID cards. It took three days, one day after the other … Sometimes it was a rush. Sometimes when I went, the server wasn’t there. It’s expensive.”
John also says that the people who design these systems could be more sensitive to the needs of people like him. Apart from his ATM card, where the numbers are raised, identity cards do not typically have features for Braille users. The application process also largely ignores Braille users; there were no forms in Braille, and no one was assigned with helping people like him at the Aadhaar application office.
He said that the people at the bank didn’t particularly consider his needs when he applied for an ATM card either, and suggested that uniformity was something processes and machines that accept such cards should consider. Some ATM machines have screen-reading software for blind people, he says, “but not all”. At the moment he also has to depend on other people to withdraw money:
“I get the message on my mobile when money is credited. To then withdraw the money is a very big challenge. I have to take somebody with me to the bank or ask someone else to fill up the challan [bank receipt] or the withdrawal form. If I go to an ATM, I always need assistance. I depend on my friends or my wife for help.”
Not all identity systems ignore disabled users, however. While speaking about his experience applying for a ration card in 2014, he noted that he didn’t have to wait in line like the others, and had his application forms filled by office staff: “I didn’t have to do anything. They did everything.”
Overall, John’s experience with different forms of identity systems reveal that most have a long way to go to become truly inclusive. They do not make life easy for disabled people, and, indeed, often make their lives more complicated.
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