Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Practice of Registering Indian Citizens Using Biometric Information

Cornell University, Ithaca NY

Investigators

Abstract

General Audience Summary This award is a doctoral dissertation improvement grant. It supports a study of India's biometric-based registration practices. The study focuses on the tension between the promise of empowerment and the challenges of achieving it by paying close attention to the practices of enrolling citizens into Aadhaar "voluntarily." It also will focus on how various Indian bureaucracies, such as the Public Distribution System (PDS), are using Aadhaar to distribute welfare entitlements of citizens. The results of this study will serve to extend the reach of Science and Technology Studies (STS) scholarship to sites and practices that are key to the emerging real-worldly challenges of using biometrics for citizen empowerment. More broadly, these results will serve as a resource for ongoing deliberations on the extent to which Aadhaar may succeed or fail to mediate state-citizen relationships. In addition, by critically examining the claims of Aadhaar-enabled social inclusion of vulnerable communities, they may also contribute to the design of more inclusive and accountable systems of identification. Technical Summary In this study, the investigators will use a multi-sited study using multiple methods including ethnographic research on the constituencies involved and document analysis examining the technical, legal, and bureaucratic interventions in the deployment of Aadhaar. The investigators will document public engagement with the legitimacy of the government's promises to empower residents through registration in Aadhaar while downplaying concerns about surveillance, and they will document the differential ability to leverage Aadhaar for personal benefits. They will then articulate implications for state identification practices. Those implications will contribute to STS concerns regarding deployment of information infrastructures, the politics of numbers and metrics, and the anthropology of state governance. They will also contribute to the biopolitical turn in infrastructure studies by identifying forms of citizenship that emerge in using biometrics for citizen identification.