Reportage on a planet without equitable or sustainable development.
the follies of rushing in…
yesterday was profoundly anomalous. i filed two stories. both, as it were, on aadhaar. one on a sting by cobrapost which flagged faulty enrolments. and the other where the supreme court said aadhaar cannot share its database with anyone without consent from the number holders.
this is a significant development. over the last five years, a clutch of government departments and private companies have been collecting biometrics with gusto. however, with the privacy bill still on the drawing board, India has seen biometric data get collected, by multiple agencies, without any laws governing their collection, use or retention.
in the process, the country has entered a world of new risks. without, sigh, getting the safeguards in place. which brings us to the dispute between the cbi and the uidai which culminated in this SC judgement. it is one kind of an outcome.
what are the protocols for the use of such data? as legal researcher usha ramanathan says in the article: “the idea that databases can be used by anyone makes people vulnerable, especially in a state where there is neither law nor much respect for law.”
the good news is that the SC verdict clarifies matters to some extent. but the country still needs a regime on privacy and data (including biometrics) protection.
I am an Indian journalist with interests in energy, environment, climate and India’s ongoing slide into right-wing authoritarianism. My book, Despite the State, an examination of pervasive state failure and democratic decay in India, was published by Westland Publications, India, in January 2021. My work has won the Bala Kailasam Memorial Award; the Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Award; and five Shriram Awards for Excellence in Financial Journalism. Write to me at despitethestate@protonmail.com.
“Westland closure: Titles that are selling fast and a few personal recommendations,” by Chetana Divya Vasudev, Moneycontrol. (Because this happened too. In February, a year after DtS was released, Amazon decided to shutter Westland, which published the book. The announcement saw folks rushing to buy copies of Westland books before stocks run out.)
Fractured/Earth 
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