क्या ज़ुल्मतों के दौर में भी गीत गाये जाएंगे?
हाँ, ज़ुल्मतों के दौर के ही गीत गाये जाएंगे
In the dark times
Will there also be singing?
Yes, there will also be singing.
About the dark times.
–Bertolt Brecht, epigraph to Svendborg Poems, Part II
Mining of Electoral Database by Ruling Parties and Partner Databases
Data mining or analysis is a clumsy exercise in defining. Data and the outcome of data mining are probable expressions, translation, or symbolic representation of being and reality. Data analysis is not an equivalent of intuition of lived reality but data determinism treats it to be equal to being and reality. The difference between atom (commodity) and bit is at the core of the digital landscape and e-commerce based on data mining. A 'bit', which is the smallest atomic element in the DNA of information, is the key to the ongoing merger between cyberspace has colonised the physical space. A bit is a 1 or a 0 skipping all other numbers wherein numerals like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 are symbolised by binary representations of 1, 10, 11, 100, 101. All types of information have been rendered into similar reduction of 1s and 0s. The number of bits that can be transmitted per second through a channel like optic fibre is the bandwidth of the channel. A fibre of the size of human hair can deliver an almost infinite amount of data and datafied memory. Data mining is an exercise in mining of static memory. Data mining processes create facts about individuals. It is impossible for law makers, law enforcers and law interpreters to conceive of all the possible uses of information or its consequences because it involves information the individual did not possess and could not disclose, knowingly or unknowingly. This paves the way for the emergence of an 'information State' relying on information.
The electoral database of Indians is not safe. Under the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960, the electoral roll contains the name of the voter, name of the relationship (son of/wife of, etc), age, sex, address and the photo identity card number. The electoral rolls are created with the objective of issuance of electoral photo identity card (EPIC) for ensuring a free and fair election. The cross-referencing of the EPIC with the electoral roll can help prevent bogus voting. Rule 22 requires the registration officer to publish the roll with the list of amendments at his office for inspection and public information. The election commission of India (ECI) is empowered to direct the registration officer to send two copies of the electoral roll to every political party for which a symbol has exclusively been reserved by ECI. In 1998, ECI took the decision to digitise the electoral databases. Google too was founded in 1998. Big data mining makes it easier to target voters and undertake profiling of vulnerable communities and minorities of all shades, which undermines fair elections. In 2014, ECI's plan to join hands with Google for providing 'electoral look-up services' for citizens and electoral information services was dropped in the face of bitter criticism. Both ruling and opposition parties had objected to it. The US firm made a presentation to ECI and National Information Centre officials 'to help the Commission for better electoral information services'. Google’s activities have been violating Indian laws governing mapping policy with national security implications impunity. Surveyor-general of India too lodged a complaint with the police wherein, it had alleged that Google was violating national map restriction policy. (
Reference: India’s election body drops Google project)
Although electoral database has not been declared a critical information infrastructure (CII) under Section 70 of the Information Technology Act, 2000 (IT Act), it has all the characteristics of being a CII. CII means “the computer resource, incapacitation or destruction of which, shall have debilitating impact on national security, economy.” It is intriguing why the electoral database has not been declared as a protected system. As a consequence, information security practices and procedures for a protected system like CII are inapplicable to it. The Rule 2(1)(i) of Information Technology (Reasonable Security Practices and Procedures and Sensitive Personal Data or Information) Rules, 2011 does not seem to cover electoral database as if it is non-critical information infrastructure.
Notably, Wipro Ltd prepared a paper known as ‘Strategic Vision Unique Identification of Residents’ on 26 November 2006 for Arvind Virmani headed processes committee of the planning commission of India. The Supreme Court’s judgement dated 26 September 2018 has recorded that based on this paper, the empowered group of ministers (EGoM) was set up on 4 December 2006, to collate the national population register under the Citizenship Act, 1955 and the unique identification (UID) number project of the department of information technology. The EGoM was also empowered to look into the methodology and specific milestones for early and effective completion of projects and to take a final view on these projects. The EGoM was composed of the then ministers of external affairs, home affairs, law, panchayati raj and communications and information technology and the then deputy chairman, planning commission. The EGoM convened its first meeting on 27 November 2007. At this meeting, a consensus emerged on the need for creating an identity-related resident database, “regardless of whether the database is created on a de novo collection of data or is based on an already existing data (such as the Election Commission’s Voter List).” The court’s judgement chose not to mention the name of Wipro Ltd although the 14-page long ‘Strategic Vision’ paper which was referred to came to light only when it was filed in the court. This paper had envisaged the close linkage that the UIDAI's Aadhaar number database would have with the electoral database.
The uproar over special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls is situated in the merger of electoral database and Aadhaar number database has facilitated indiscriminate electoral data mining to the advantage of the ruling parties and to the disadvantage of the opposition parties. But some of the opponents of SIR have ended up legitimising the illegitimate Aadhaar database, a creature of the dubious Aadhaar Act, 2016 and its unconstitutional convergence with the electoral database. In the pre-Aadhaar era, SIR has been carried out eight times during; 1951–2004. For Aadhaar, ECI’s directions issued
vide letter No. 23/2025-ERS/Vol.II dated 9 September 2025 in compliance of the Court’s order dated 8 September 2025 is applicable. This order is legalising and constitutionalising the Aadhaar Act disregarding the fact that the matter of its constitutionality is pending before the seven-judge Constitution bench since 13 November 2019. It is apparent that the beneficial owners of electoral database and Aadhaar database have outwitted the court with the collaboration of an activist and an advocate in
association for Democratic Reforms vs Election Commission of India WP (Civil) No 640/2025. It is increasingly evident that the relationship between the State and citizen is being subverted in broad daylight by the big data miners, the non-state actors and the fifth columnists.
From neoliberal centrism, neo-liberal totalitarianism, and instrumentarianism to techno despotism
Unlike 'embedded liberalism', neo-liberalism, a model of free market capitalism normalised and naturalised commodification of everything including human relations, natural heritage, commons and data. New automatic identification, communication and big data technologies are facilitating commodification of data, internalising automation of inequality and externalising the cumulative cost of extinction of plant, animal and insect species with disruptive consequences for natural persons and natural heritage. The landscape, soundscape and mindscape created by the information, entertainment and communication technologies at the behest of their owners has a nexus with the geographical space which is being used by the bearers of totalitarian ideologies. They use these tools to create rupture in society by framing certain internal and external communities as enemies by exaggerating pre-existing biases and prejudices as national security threats.
A survey of the big data-driven identification (ID) schemes in China, USA and UK besides the databases of residents in South Asia reveals the ramifications for natural rights of people and sovereignty of the countries. Big databases are at the root of the rise of instrumentarianism, an 'unprecedented species of power' that has not been comprehended as yet. Shoshana Zuboff’s conception of instrumentarian power is reminiscent of the reference to 'instrument-effects of a development project' of James Ferguson in his The Anti-Politics Machine: Development, Depoliticisation and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho. It showed how developmental initiatives pushed by international financial institutions like World Bank Group succeed even in their failure. Zuboff deepens the conception of instrument effect and makes a case for comprehending instrumentarianism without the old lens of totalitarianism. The old lens eclipses the deleterious ramifications of instrumentarian power, which is not confined to 'total possession' - it extends to 'total certainty'. It creates a dehumanising irreversibility and inevitability. Unlike totalitarianism which was a state project for social domination, instrumentarianism is a market project. The latter converges with the digital for social control through behaviour modification, reducing 'human experience to measurable observable behaviour.' The knowledge that emerges from big data that captures human behaviour is 'proprietary'. It belongs to the beneficial owners of big data technologies, who are indifferent to human freedom, paving the way for 'billions of sensors filled with personal data' to fall outside constitutional limits, resulting in the extinction of constitutionalism.
It was not surprising that the world’s most successful farmers’ democratic resistance was directed against the indiscriminate introduction of e-commerce into the agrarian sector. What is surprising is that India is taking contrary positions at the national and international levels in this regard. The online databases, including CIDR of UID/Aadhaar are admittedly on cyber cloud beyond the jurisdiction of India which facilitates foreign investors and compromises the economic interests of Indians. Unmindful of imminent economic disruptions, the proposed data protection law framework by the Government of India remains foreign digital entrepreneur-centric, not citizen-centric. Even the abandoned farm laws were indulgent towards investors. It is apparent that India is not geared up to keep pace with the emerging future of the internet, which is being embedded into everything and which is going to be invisible. Instead of learning any lesson from the farmers’ democratic resistance against the unconstitutional e-commerce-linked farmers laws, the ministry of agriculture & farmers welfare is in the process of finalising ‘India Digital Ecosystem of Agriculture (IDEA)’ which is laying down a framework for Agristack, a part of India Stack built on the Aadhaar database without taking the consent of the farmers. Agristack is a collection of technologies and digital databases that focuses on farmers and the agricultural sector.
Meanwhile, Nandan Nilekani’s firm Fundamentum Partnership commenced talks to back Bijak, a platform which operates a business-to-business marketplace to trade agricultural commodities. Notably, a memorandum of understanding (
MoU) dated 13 April 2021 has been signed between the department of agriculture, cooperation and farmers welfare and Microsoft Corporation (India) Private Limited, a partner of World Bank’s eTransform Initiative, which is behind the Aadhaar number online database project.
Amazon’s MoU was signed on 1 June 2021,
CISCO’s MoU,
Ninjacart’s MoU,
MoU with Jio Platforms Limited,
MoU with ITC Limited and
MoU with NCDEX e-Markets Limited (NeML) was signed on 14 September 2021. Besides this, the
MOU with Star Agribazar Technology Pvt Ltd,
MoU with ESRI Technology Pvt. Ltd and
MoU with Patnajali Organic Research Institute Pvt Ltd was signed on 1 June 2021. These
10 MoUs, besides the
MoU with Digital Green under public-private partnership framework in February 2023, have been signed to develop proof of concepts on farmers’ database based on Aadhaar number. Will there be no impact of mining of farmers’ database on the erosion of agriculturists’ democratic capacity to resist unjust laws like black farm laws, e-commerce laws and questionable trade agreements with USA, Europe and other countries? Will endless biometric and electronic profiling of farmers’ families through these databases and their merger with each other not undermine their electoral voice amid despotic executivisation of judiciary, legislature and media?
At present, high flows of data and information generate more economic value than the global goods trade in a paper titled "Digital Globalisation: The New Era of Global Flows" by James Manyika et al. A paper titled "Analytics - Empowering Operations: The UIDAI Experience" uses the simile of water flow for data flow. It reveals the sensitivity of the controller and owner of the grids- be it water grid, power grid or data grid. The paper by UIDAI observes, “Data can be considered as the equivalent of water. There are a number of processes involved before the actual consumption of water and data. The journey begins with data, like water, being generated at multiple sources. These are then brought together into one central location.” There are forces at work who seek centralisation of every conceivable resource unmindful of its consequences for epistemic justice. Despite colonial experience, the far-reaching ramifications of such free flow of human data in one direction remain to be fathomed in its entirety. The fact remains one of the key factors for colonisation was information asymmetry between the occupiers and the occupied, between the conqueror and the vanquished and the money lenders, bankers and their clients.
Significantly, the internet’s commercial use was illegal until 1992. The government of US gave birth to the internet for reasons of national security and surveillance. In 1994,
New York Times published a story titled “
US begins privatising internet operation”. Soshana Zuboff too had expressed her optimism about these “smart machines” when she
wrote In the Age of Smart Machine: The Future of Work and Power in 1984, two years after Time magazine did a cover story on computerisation in 1982. She realised her error after 35 years and wrote The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for Human Future at the Frontier of Power. Being an interpretation machine, the internet is fuelled by data repositories which are offline and online logistical infrastructures. The data warehouses exist as a repository of electronically stored data, designed to facilitate identification, recording, reporting and analysis. They play a central role in the global supply chain of goods and services or goods as services. The access to data is akin to access to natural resources. It is increasingly becoming a determinant of inequality. It is creating an architecture wherein valuation of digital services is getting enhanced through e-commerce but there is devaluation of commodities, agricultural commodities, bio-resources in particular and workers. The centralisation of data reminds one of what Karl Marx said in the chapter on The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation in Capital, volume 1. It consequents in “accumulation of wealth at one pole and at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole.” The convergence of data and internet is eliminating the distinction between public and citizens’ sphere using public information infrastructure and architecture of total social and environmental control.
Citizens as Guinea Pigs for Panoptic, Synoptic and Biometric Experiment
A June 2005 study by London School of Economics (LSE) concluded that “It is inappropriate for government to model the design of a national ID card infrastructure for citizens after architectures for enterprise identity management that centrally house the capability to electronically trace and profile all participants.” UK’s ID card scheme was cited in India by Wipro Ltd to push for India’s UID/Aadhaar project. The LSE report pointed out that “Panoptical identity management architectures would also eliminate the ability of government and private sector service providers to function autonomously, requiring a transformation of their own systems for integration purposes. It would introduce enormous security risks to citizens, companies and government alike”. Although the LSE report was published in 2005, ‘Wipro’s Strategic Vision: Unique Identification of Residents’ submitted in July 2006 pretended ignorance about it while recommending the UID scheme to the government of India.
In a connected development, a task force for preparation of the policy document on identity and access management under the national e-governance programme (NeGP) was constituted in October 2006 which was supposed to submit its report by December 2006. The report of the task force talked about 'citizens identities' and 'owner of identities'. It states that the identity information is stored by multiple agencies in multiple documents like ration card, driving license, passport, voter’s card, birth certificate, etc. The purpose of the project unique ID (UID) initiated by the planning commission of India is to create a central database of resident information and assign a unique identification number to each such resident. Notably, J Satyanarayana, who later became the chairman of the unique identification authority of India (UIDAI) was a member of this task force in his capacity as director general, National Institute for Smart Government (NISG). Notably, there were 11 technology solution providers including IBM, Microsoft and HP as members of the Indian Task Force. This report reveals that each registered judicial court has a unique identification (UID) number at subordinate courts, high court and Supreme Court. It is apparent that it is part of profiling and surveillance of judicial institutions as well in a context where judicial data, prison data and police station data is being converged in breach of the doctrine of separation of powers among different organs of the State.
This task force seems to have been constituted in India to draft a made-to-order report, as a response to LSE’s report, which was a huge setback for identification technology solution companies across the globe. The biometric unique identification (UID) initiative has its roots in the USA. The National Biometric Test Centre, San Jose State University was set up by the Biometric Consortium, which is the US government interest group on biometric authentication. It emerged from a meeting of Biometric Consortium held in 1995, at the FBI training facility. This test centre has defined biometric authentication as “the automatic identification or identity verification of an individual based on physiological and behavioural characteristics”. The centre was asked to testify before the hearing on 'Biometrics and the Future of Money' conducted by a subcommittee on domestic and international monetary policy, committee on banking and financial services, US House of Representatives in May 1998. This testimony has been reprinted under the title, “Biometric Identification and the Financial Services Industry”. The committee deliberated on the biometric identification technologies based on facial recognition, finger imaging, iris scans, voice recognition, DNA profiling and signature which has potential applications that extend beyond banking, financial transactions, protection of individual data from identity theft and other forms of fraud to securing secret intelligence, protecting strategic commercial data and law enforcement.
The World Bank’s e-transform initiative (ETI), formally launched on 23 April 2010 in Washington, aimed at converging the private, citizen and public sectors, and was associated with Interpol’s e-identity database project. UID-related initiatives of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), a military alliance whose role is at the centre of the Russia–Ukraine war, are also relevant in this context. The UID-related initiatives for voluntarily seeking the full-fledged Financial Sector Assessment Programme by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in January 2011 appear to be linked. The e-identity of the bank and UID/Aadhaar-related projects are part of the same Washington-based initiative. The World Bank’s ETI seeks to leverage ICT to build a knowledge-sharing network that helps governments of developing nations to leverage best practices and improve the delivery of social and economic services. The knowledge-sharing network will focus on areas such as electronic identification (eID), e-procurement, e-health and e-education, areas vital to promoting the participation of citizens in democratic processes such as voting, and helping undocumented citizens get access to health and welfare programmes. The World Bank reported it is funding 14 projects related to e-government and e-ID around the world. The CIDR of UID/Aadhaar is one of these projects.
A book Reimagining India edited by McKinsey & Company has a chapter by Mukesh Ambani, one of the richest corporate donors of India’s ruling parties, titled “Making the Next Leap” endorsing biometric profiling-based identification. Ambani writes, “Aadhaar, an initiative of unique identification authority of India (UIDAI), will soon support the world’s largest online platform to deliver government welfare services directly to the poor.” Eric Schmidt as executive chairman of Google co-authored The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Futures of People, Nations and Business, wherein, he says, “The government’s unique identification project, led by my friend Nandan Nilekani, is creating enormous new possibilities for e-commerce.” The disruption of public institutions caused by introduction of automatic identification technologies is making the Constitution of India subordinate to considerations of e-commerce.
Nilekani also authored a chapter titled “A technology solution for India’s identity crisis”. He does not disclose that the NPR of the ministry of home affairs and central identities data repository (CIDR) of UID/Aadhaar numbers of the unique identification authority of India (UIDAI), ministry of electronics and information technology (MEITY) are aimed at creating an architecture for the indiscriminate mass surveillance of the present and future voters who are being structurally coerced to give their consent to the immoral and illegitimate exercise of their profiling for countless times.
Structurally, both Aadhaar and NPR were/are part of one initiative which has turned every present and future resident of India into a suspect. The majority order of the Indian Supreme Court’s five-judge Constitution bench on 26 September 2018 points out that the UID/Aadhaar number project and NPR project are part of the one database convergence scheme. NPR has been mentioned at least on eight occasions in the order. By now it is apparent that there is a file being created to track and profile every resident of India for good. The replies to questions posed under the Right to Information Act reveal that Indians did not have any identity crisis. It is apparent that commercial czars are promoting automatic biometric identification technologies as answers without identifying the questions of public good. It is a bizarre situation wherein a situation is being created where the right to have natural rights is being made a condition precedent on biometric identification by the beneficial owners of UID/Aadhaar database. This transformational initiative is being pushed forward by the beneficial owners of the automatic identification, profiling and surveillance technologies.
Unjust Law, Lawless Law and Right and Duty to Civil Disobedience
Human beings have a 'right and duty to civil disobedience' in the face of unjust laws because unjust laws are no laws. The laws or laws disguised as computing codes which determine right to have natural rights dependent on surrender of human data for eternity, are unjust laws too. The computing codes that facilitate convergence, tracking and profiling operate as laws. Therefore, there is a logical compulsion to contest injustice both as right as well as a duty. Both at personal and collective level, when governments forfeit their moral and constitutional claim to obedience, non-cooperation with evil is a moral and political right as well as a moral and political duty because obedience in the face of injustice and moral wrong is deeply problematic. Drawing on Gandhi’s experience as a civil disobedient, KG Kannabiran writes that no regulation is law unless it is based on the consent of the people and where such consent is wanting, people are under no obligation to obey in his The Wages of Impunity: Power, Justice and Human Rights. Kannabiran was the co-founder of People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL). Kannabiran refers to Gustav Radbruch, a German jurist who held that “Where the violation of justice reaches so intolerable a degree that the rule becomes in fact ‘lawless law’, the law has no claim to obedience.” Kannabiran was one of the 17 eminent citizens who had signed a statement of concern against biometric profiling of people for convergence, tracking and surveillance through UID/Aadhaar before his death.
As a strategy, enlightened non-cooperation by an informed citizenry with the beneficial owners of digital totalitarian technologies can overcome the architecture that alters the relationship of citizens with state and non-state actors by naturalising and normalising unlimited surveillance. In India, political and legal struggles around the database of UID/Aadhaar numbers have created an awareness regarding the perils of invasive, intrusive and disruptive technologies. By now, most Indians know that this initiative is controversial despite the blitzkrieg of propaganda by the donors of the ruling parties and their governments. The Parliamentary standing committee on finance recommended its scrapping. The CAG’s audit has vindicated the positions of the parliamentary committee and the citizens. As a consequence of robust constitutional challenge, the big data project and the Aadhaar law is sub judice before the Constitution bench of the Supreme Court of India. At least three Left parties have promised to abandon this project. Rahul Gandhi, the leader of Indian National Congress, the main opposition party which had initiated this project when in power, has admitted during an interaction at the University of Cambridge that UID/Aadhaar is a 'political weapon'. Prior to this, in his interaction with Mr Gandhi, Prof. Abhijit Banerjee, the Nobel laureate opined that UID/Aadhaar idea has collapsed. When the government attempted to introduce NPR which is structurally linked to UID/Aadhaar there was countrywide protest which compelled the government to put it on hold.
The ideology of digital totalitarianism which is behind the creation of an all-encompassing web of centralised data repositories of residents of South Asia, China and across the world is facing articulate and inarticulate resistance. It is increasingly being realised that such data repositories are being created to extract economically significant insights and 'prediction products' in the name of 'financial inclusion' missions. These missions have been launched by the beneficial owners of totalitarian automatic identification technologies through their ruling parties. Everyone has access to their technologically extracted data provided they can afford it. This perpetuates agencylessness and submissiveness vis-a-vis state and non-state authorities who have disproportionate control over the data depositories of all shades and brands of humans. It is significant that as an outcome of legal struggle against collection and storage of unlimited data, the European Court of Human Rights has ruled against the indiscriminate collection of biometric data.
The success of the farmers’ struggle indicates that non-violent struggles and mobilisation of informed citizens is one of the most promising ways to resist the rise of electoral autocracy. Such struggles have yielded emancipatory results in India and elsewhere. The enactment of Right to Information Act as a result of people’s movement enriched the democratic content of the political ecosystem. Centralised data repositories are subverting the right to information by making citizens transparent and naked before the digital panopticon and synopticon and by making beneficial owners and donors of ruling parties non-transparent. They are mortally afraid of sunlight, the most effective disinfectant against the rot in public institutions like ECI.
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(Dr Gopal Krishna is a lawyer and a researcher of philosophy and law. His current work is focused on the philosophy of digital totalitarianism and the monetisation of nature. He has appeared before the Supreme Court's Committees, Parliamentary Committees of Europe, Germany and India and UN agencies on the subject of national and international legislation. He is the co-founder of the East India Research Council (EIRC). He is the convener of the Citizens Forum for Civil Liberties (CFCL) which has been campaigning for freedom from UID/Aadhaar/NPR and DNA profiling through criminal identification procedures since 2010. He had appeared before the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance that questioned and trashed the biometric identification of Indians through UID/Aadhaar Number. He is an ex-Fellow, Berlin-based International Research Group on Authoritarianism and Counter Strategies (IRGAC). He is also the editor of www.toxicswatch.org.)
