The Unique Identity Project: Surveillance Society and Democratic Culture in Aravind Adiga’s India
Published in Narrating Surveillance / Überwachen erzählen, 2019
Abstract
On 24 August 2017, the Supreme Court of India determined that privacy is among the fundamental rights guaranteed by the Indian constitution. The immediate occasion of the privacy decision was the rapid expansion of Aadhaar, the biometrically-enabled identification system administered by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), a legislatively-established statutory authority which provides permanent 12-digit identification numbers to residents of India. These numbers are the central component of a verification system that is intended “[t]o empower residents of India with a unique identity and a digital platform to authenticate anytime, anywhere.” Critics have contended that by gathering together identity information, demographic information, and biometric information, Aadhaar not only contravenes fundamental rights, but also augurs the emergence of an ominous surveillance society. Its originators and defenders, on the other hand, insist that Aadhaar is inclusive and egalitarian. In order to consider these conflicts in more detail, this essay looks at three novels by the Indian novelist Aravind Adiga, each set in the context of India’s neoliberalization. Although Adiga has not written directly about Aadhaar, I argue that a central project of The White Tiger (2008), Last Man in Tower (2011), and Selection Day (2016) is the reinvention, repositioning, and even the neoliberalization, of democratic concepts like privacy, empowerment and inclusion. I further argue that by “innovating” within an anti-modernist literary tradition, Adiga’s novels rival the sociotechnical innovations under way in India with regard to the notion of “unique identity.” Through these arguments, I attempt to move past the debate about whether Adiga got India right, or whether he had the right to represent India, in The White Tiger. Intriguing contributions to this conversation, I propose, are now on offer in Last Man, in Selection Day—and in the Aadhaar system.