Articles by: Arjun Banerjee

Linking Aadhaar With NPR Records: Is it Based on Informed Consent?

Linking Aadhaar With NPR Records: Is it Based on Informed Consent?

Part 1:  On September 5, 2023, a group of citizens convened online to discuss the issue of Aadhaar imposition and overreach in the context of seeding Aadhaar numbers with NPR records. This discussion was a continuation of similar sessions in which experts and activists like Usha Ramanathan and Harsh Mander had also participated. Economist, author, and professor Jean Dreze, and[Read More…]

by 19/09/2023 Comments are Disabled India
 India the surveillance state and the role of Aadhaar 

 India the surveillance state and the role of Aadhaar 

 India has been turned into a full-scale surveillance state with the masses under the watchful eye of the government, vulnerable and oblivious to being tracked, profiled, recorded, and registered at every point of their day and entire lifetimes. Invasive technologies like facial recognition are being cavalierly used in public spaces and universities, political and institutional opposition is being stymied through[Read More…]

by 04/09/2023 Comments are Disabled India
The private sector and the question of democracy

The private sector and the question of democracy

The issue of unemployment has become a regular talking-point for the political opposition in India and one of the many grounds on which it alleges that the ruling BJP has failed the country, especially its youth. However, the issue of dignified and fair conditions of employment is rarely brought up. It seems that the people of the country should not[Read More…]

by 12/08/2023 Comments are Disabled India
Violence in Haryana: Fascism with Indian Characteristics

Violence in Haryana: Fascism with Indian Characteristics

The news cycle this week has been taken up with the rapidly escalating violence in Haryana’s Gurugram, Mewat, and Nuh. This is occurring against the backdrop of months of violence in the state of Manipur, where the hill-dwelling Christian Kuki tribals are facing an onslaught by the dominant Hindu Meitei community of the plains. Ever since the BJP assumed power[Read More…]

by 05/08/2023 Comments are Disabled India
‘Digital India Bill’: Some things to worry about

‘Digital India Bill’: Some things to worry about

There is talk again of the government coming out with its ‘Digital India Bill’ which is meant to replace the IT Act, 2000. The ‘Digital India Bill’ is an unofficial name for the legislation meant to uphold the rights and interests of the ‘Digital Nagriks’ of an imagined ‘Digital India’. The government is somewhat correct in its position that new[Read More…]

by 08/06/2023 Comments are Disabled India
Online content moderation: the ‘misinformation’ vs free speech question

Online content moderation: the ‘misinformation’ vs free speech question

Earlier this month, the lower house of the Brazilian legislature adopted a controversial “fake news bill” (Bill 2639) which resulted in opposition from major tech firms like Google. The debate surrounding the Bill has once again foregrounded the issue of online content moderation by governments around the world. Brazil’s Bill 2639 has emerged from a context of increasing violence perceived[Read More…]

by 19/05/2023 Comments are Disabled World
Aadhaar Needs To Be Questioned And Resisted

Aadhaar Needs To Be Questioned And Resisted

The Indian government has proposed changes the regulations around Aadhaar to allow private entities to conduct Aadhaar-based verification with its permission. On April 20, 2023, the government amended the Aadhaar Authentication for Good Governance (Social Welfare, Innovation, Knowledge) Rules, 2020. The purposes for Aadhaar authentication listed in sub-rule (1) of Rule 3 have been expanded to include a new clause:[Read More…]

by 14/05/2023 Comments are Disabled India
The Majority’s ‘beef’ with democracy 

The Majority’s ‘beef’ with democracy 

“Whatever the majority wants should happen. That’s democracy, right?” said a friend to me the other day when we were sitting around in a group and the discussion took a few political detours into the question of beef eating and cow slaughter. It brought to my mind Dr B.R. Ambdedkar’s criticism of the “Divine Right of the Majority to rule[Read More…]

by 02/05/2023 Comments are Disabled India
A regime of hurt sentiments

A regime of hurt sentiments

As J.M. Coetzee has written, taking ‘offence’ at something is usually a reaction of powerful and oppressive groups in the face of any challenge to their power or the possibility of losing it. Throughout the ages and across the world, the censorship of views, speech, depictions, expression, etc. has been rationalized in the name of ‘morality’, ‘decency’, ‘blasphemy’, and whatnot. In[Read More…]

by 20/04/2023 Comments are Disabled India
The Rising Surveillance State in India 

The Rising Surveillance State in India 

The Delhi, Bengaluru, and Varanasi airports have recently begun the ‘DigiYatra’ service. It is a facial recognition technology (FRT)-based passenger boarding system verified by Aadhar details. Recent news also says that the Western Railways’ use of its FRT-based surveillance system has reduced crime on its routes and stations. Earlier this week, Maharashtra deputy chief minister Devendra Fadnavis said that Mumbai[Read More…]

by 06/12/2022 Comments are Disabled India
Moving towards an unfree internet: The amended IT Rules, 2021 

Moving towards an unfree internet: The amended IT Rules, 2021 

The amended IT Rules, 2021 were notified in end-October this year by MeitY, the electronics and IT ministry of the Indian government. They were withdrawn in June this year after pushback during stakeholder consultations, but even its amended version has not made much of a difference to how it is received. The rules are a clear articulation of the desire[Read More…]

by 13/11/2022 Comments are Disabled India
Haathras Atrocity: Savarna Men Must Speak Up Now!

Haathras Atrocity: Savarna Men Must Speak Up Now!

The horrifically brutal and inhuman act of torture and rape perpetrated by Thakur men on a young Dalit woman in Haathras, Uttar Pradesh, tears at the soul and claws the conscience. It provokes violent thoughts and words and makes it impossible to not imagine a proportional response of the same barbaric extent as the ultimate self-defensive justice. This feeling is[Read More…]

by 30/09/2020 Comments are Disabled India
Dalit Lives Matter, Dalit Rights Matter !

Dalit Lives Matter, Dalit Rights Matter !

Dalit and Bahujan lives, safety, and dignity continue to expendable in Uttar Pradesh (U.P). It is the ideological and geopolitical heartland of the ‘Hindu Rashtra’ model of the political nation-state, and the suppression and relentless alienation of Dalits and Muslims is central to its machinations. U.P was the state with the highest recorded atrocities against Dalits according to NCRB data[Read More…]

by 17/06/2020 Comments are Disabled Annihilate Caste
Demand Justice For Devika’s Institutional Murder

Demand Justice For Devika’s Institutional Murder

On 1 June, 2020, Devika, a Dalit child of fourteen from Kerala committed suicide by burning herself alive for want of a functioning television set on which to continue her studies. And now she is a name, a picture, and a tragic spectacle, like so many that appear and vanish on the mobile phones, flatscreens, and laptops of the upper[Read More…]

by 13/06/2020 1 comment Annihilate Caste
The Lockdown of Caste

The Lockdown of Caste

Caste is an institutional ‘lockdown’ that has existed, developed, and fortified itself in an organic relationship with the material conditions of history. In his pioneering journal Mooknayak, Dr. Ambedkar used a potent metaphor to describe the caste system— a multistoried building with no staircase connecting the floors, in which people live and die in the same floor they were born[Read More…]

by 12/05/2020 1 comment Annihilate Caste
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