Dissent on Aadhaar
Dissent on Aadhaar

Author: Reetika Khera

Publisher: Orient Blackswan Pvt Limited

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9789352875429

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Aadhaar, India's unique identity system, was introduced in 2009 with the stated purpose of creating a more inclusive and efficient welfare system. Hundreds of millions of Indians were enrolled into the biometric database, with successive governments creating pressure by making it compulsory for social benefits. Even after the Supreme Court verdict in 2018, it remains a must-have for welfare.Dissent on Aadhaar argues that Aadhaar was never really about welfare. The essays in this book explain how the project opens the doors to immense opportunities for government surveillance and commercial data-mining.Focussing on Aadhaar, but drawing lessons from ID projects from other parts of the world also, this book alerts readers to the dangers lurking in such expansive digital ID projects. For example, how profiling, made possible by Aadhaar, impinges on the fundamental Right to Privacy; or how surveillance leads to self-censorship and can choke free thought and expression; or how Aadhaar, contrary to government claims, excludes people entitled by right from welfare when made compulsory.

Examining the Roles of IT and Social Media in Democratic Development and Social Change
Examining the Roles of IT and Social Media in Democratic Development and Social Change

Author: Kumar, Vikas

Publisher: IGI Global

Published: 2019-11-15

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 1799817938

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Social media has emerged as a powerful tool that reaches a wide audience with minimum time and effort. It has a diverse role in society and human life and can boost the visibility of information that allows citizens the ability to play a vital role in creating and fostering social change. This practice can have both positive and negative consequences on society. Examining the Roles of IT and Social Media in Democratic Development and Social Change is a collection of innovative research on the methods and applications of social media within community development and democracy. While highlighting topics including information capitalism, ethical issues, and e-governance, this book is ideally designed for social workers, politicians, public administrators, sociologists, journalists, policymakers, government administrators, academicians, researchers, and students seeking current research on social advancement and change through social media and technology.

The Making of Aadhaar
The Making of Aadhaar

Author: Ram Sewak Sharma

Publisher: Rupa Publications India Pvt Limited

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 199

ISBN-13: 9789390356126

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Aadhaar is the world's largest identity project that enrolled a billion residents. alongside Nandan Nilekani, the author led a brilliant team in developing the technology that undergirds Aadhaar, enrolled the Resident population of India, created an online authentication mechanism for the digital world, and operationalize the ecosystem to take advantage of the new identity. This book is a first-hand account from the trenches which provides a lucid and in-depth understanding of the artefact called Aadhaar and how it continues to change and redefine India.

The Caravan
The Caravan

Author: Delhi Press Magazines

Publisher: Delhi Press Magazines

Published: 2019-02-10

Total Pages: 100

ISBN-13:

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The Caravan is India’s most respected and admired magazine on politics, art and culture. With a strong literary flair, the magazine presents the best of reportage and commentary on politics, policy, economy, art and culture from within South Asia. It has become an essential read for anyone interested in understanding the political and social environment of the country.

From Family to Police Force
From Family to Police Force

Author: Farhana Ibrahim

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2021-11-15

Total Pages: 207

ISBN-13: 1501759558

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From Family to Police Force illuminates the production and contestation of social, familial, and national order on a South Asian borderland. In the borderland that divides Kutch, a district in the western Indian state of Gujarat, from Sindh, a southern province in Pakistan, there are many forces at work: civil and border police, the air wing of the armed forces, paramilitary forces, and various intelligence agencies that depute officers to the region. These groups are the major actors in the field of security and policing. Farhana Ibrahim offers a bird's-eye view of these groups, drawing on long-standing anthropological engagement with the region. She observes policing on multiple levels, showing in detail that the nation-state is only one of the scales at which policing is enacted at a borderland. Ibrahim draws on multiple sources and forms of policing structure to illuminate everyday interaction on the personal scale, bringing families and individuals into the broader picture. From Family to Police Force looks beyond the obvious sites, sources, and modes of policing to show the distinctions between the act of policing and the institution of the police.

Unfair ID
Unfair ID

Author: Silvia Masiero

Publisher: SAGE Publications Limited

Published: 2024-10-05

Total Pages: 167

ISBN-13: 1529678854

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We live in an age of digital ID. Through the digitisation of our biometric and demographic selves, digital ID converts human beings into digital data, which in turn mediates access to services and rights – be they public or private, commercial or not-for-profit, essential or non-essential. Allegedly designed to improve services, and to aid humanitarianism and social inclusion, digital ID has multiple hidden complexities. From denying access to essential goods, to algorithmic bias, to the sharing of sensitive data about vulnerable groups – digital ID is not necessarily just, or balanced, or helping. It is often severely unfair. This book offers a journey into stories of unfair ID. Exploring examples across sectors, countries and data-managed populations, it takes a data justice perspective on what this unfairness effectively means for the users of digital identity systems. Examples range from denial of food rations to eligible beneficiaries, to the searchability of asylum-seeker data in police force databases, to the algorithmically-determined exclusion of genuinely entitled users from anti-poverty schemes. This book also explores forms of resistance to these injustices, showing how solidarity movements can resist, engage and challenge the damages of unfair ID. Through its research, it sets out to imagine forms of fair ID where people’s rights and entitlements are upheld, ultimately contributing to build a future of justice for the digitally identified. Silvia Masiero is an Associate Professor of Information Systems at the HISP Center, Department of Informatics, University of Oslo.

Ashis Nandy
Ashis Nandy

Author: Ramin Jahanbegloo

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018-04-04

Total Pages: 517

ISBN-13: 0199093318

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This volume is an adda of great minds, spanning generations and multiple nationalities. While one discusses creativity and aesthetics through Indian classical music, another recounts the pleasure of a simple walk. Another questions how it would be if Rabindranath Tagore lived in the twenty-first century; yet another, how ‘cool’ Indians are or might be in the future. Subjects as far apart as war and solitude find space in these musings. Through these lively engagements emerge key insights into the ideas, writings, and life of one of the foremost intellectuals of our time in Indian and global scholarship, thought, and dissent—Ashis Nandy.

Data-centric Living
Data-centric Living

Author: V. Sridhar

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2021-11-29

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 1000483126

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This book explores how data about our everyday online behaviour are collected and how they are processed in various ways by algorithms powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML). The book investigates the socioeconomic effects of these technologies, and the evolving regulatory landscape that is aiming to nurture the positive effects of these technology evolutions while at the same time curbing possible negative practices. The volume scrutinizes growing concerns on how algorithmic decisions can sometimes be biased and discriminative; how autonomous systems can possibly disrupt and impact the labour markets, resulting in job losses in several traditional sectors while creating unprecedented opportunities in others; the rapid evolution of social media that can be addictive at times resulting in associated mental health issues; and the way digital Identities are evolving around the world and their impact on provisioning of government services. The book also provides an in-depth understanding of regulations around the world to protect privacy of data subjects in the online world; a glimpse of how data is used as a digital public good in combating Covid pandemic; and how ethical standards in autonomous systems are evolving in the digital world. A timely intervention in this fast-evolving field, this book will be useful for scholars and researchers of digital humanities, business and management, internet studies, data sciences, political studies, urban sociology, law, media and cultural studies, sociology, cultural anthropology, and science and technology studies. It will also be of immense interest to the general readers seeking insights on daily digital lives.

The People of India
The People of India

Author: Ravinder Kaur

Publisher: Penguin Random House India Private Limited

Published: 2022-09-19

Total Pages: 333

ISBN-13: 9354927343

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The People' and 'New India' are terms that are being invoked freely to both understand and govern India as she enters her 75th year of post-colonial nationhood. Yet, there is little clarity on who these people of India really are, what they do, their desires, histories and attachments to India. Similarly, the phrase 'New India' is used far too loosely to explain away a dangerously confounding politics. In this book, some of the most respected scholars of South Asia come together to write about a person or a concept that holds particular sway in the politics of contemporary India. In doing so, they collectively open up an original understanding of what the politics at the heart of New India are-and how best we might come to analyse them. This brilliant collection put together by Ravinder Kaur and Nayanika Mathur includes original and accessible essays by leading social science and humanities scholars of South Asia.

Political Technology
Political Technology

Author: Andrew Wilson

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2023-12-14

Total Pages: 499

ISBN-13: 1009355317

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'Political technology' is a Russian term for the professional engineering of politics. It has turned Russian politics into theatre and propaganda, and metastasised to take over foreign policy and weaponise history. The war against Ukraine is one outcome. In the West, spin doctors and political consultants do more than influence media or run campaigns: they have also helped build parallel universes of alternative political reality. Hungary has used political technology to dismantle democracy. The BJP in India has used it to consolidate unprecedented power. Different countries learn from each other. Some types of political technology have become notorious, like troll farms or data mining; but there is now a global wholesale industry selling a range of manipulation techniques, from astroturfing to fake parties to propaganda apps. This book shows that 'political technology' is about much more than online disinformation: it is about whole new industries of political engineering.