• How does lack of access to information in one's own language impact their access to public services?
• How the state is pushing for mass surveillance in the disguise of providing rightful benefits? Which digital/human rights are violated through the rollout of Aadhaar, India's national and the world’s largest biometric ID programme?
• How a complex mix of proprietary and open-source software use in the Aadhaar architecture raises questions on openness and transparency of the state?

These are some of questions I have asked while making "MarginalizedAadhaar", a documentary as a part of my 2019 Yoti Digital Identity Fellowship. Marginalised groups and subject experts have shared their concerns, inputs and recommendations to fix Aadhaar.

The interviewees include elders, farmers, students and many monolingual and indigenous-language speakers. Marginalisation is deeply tied to political, ethno-linguistic, economic and gender issues. The film follows the exclusions across thousands of kilometers inside India -- from a remote village of Uttarakhand in North India to a much remote village in the eastern Indian state of Odisha -- where the closest hospital is a few kilometers away. (Panigrahi)

Aadhaar works for a privileged city dweller who is literate. But does it work for the majority of India that are yet to be digital literates? I have learned about the potential violation of human rights and digital rights through conversations with rights advocates and researchers. What are the practical challenges for a trans-sex worker in an unorganised labour sector who would like to be anonymous in a state that pushes the boundaries to expose their identity and eventually bring them more trouble?

References

Panigrahi, Subhashish. “7th International Conference on Language Documentation and Conservation (ICLDC).” An Account of How Critical Information about Privacy Is Missing in Indigneous Languages of India and Ways to Avoid It, 2021.

Poster © 2021. Subhashish Panigrahi. (CC-BY 4.0)