Narendra Modi-led Govt is Preparing ‘Master Database’ to Track Every Citizen’s Move

New Delhi. March 17, 2020:

While the whole world has slowed down to combat coronavirus and ‘quarantine’ is the latest trend, India is preparing a master database, based on several databases, in order to track each and every move of its 1.2 billion citizens.

This master database will reportedly monitor every move of every individual residing in India. The technologically advanced and updated system will automatically track when a citizen moves between cities, changes jobs, buys new property, when a member of a family is born, dies or gets married and moves to their spouse’s home.

A detailed report published by Huffington Post says, “…there is no technical limit to the extent of data that can be collected and indexed by this master database of databases. In a meeting on October 4, 2019, for instance, a special secretary of the NITI Aayog even proposed geo-tagging every single home and integrating it with Bhuvan, a web-based geo-spatial portal developed by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).”

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The master database according to the report is the proposed National Social Registry. While the common narrative is that it is a routine exercise to update the 2011 Socio-Economic Caste Census (SECC) to prevent the misuse of pro-poor government schemes by ensuring that benefits and entitlements reach the right people, documents obtained through the Right to Information (RTI) Act by Srinivas Kodali, data and internet governance researcher, and the correspondent of Huffington Post reveals a different picture.

“Under the guise of creating a SECC that automatically updates itself in real time, the National Social Registry (or the Social Registry Information System or SECC Social registry as it is also known) will either be a single, searchable Aadhaar-seeded database or ‘multiple harmonised and integrated databases’ that use Aadhaar numbers to integrate religion, caste, income, property, education, marital status, employment, disability and family-tree data of every single citizen,” read the report.

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The Narendra Modi-led Government is readying the National Social Registry, which is the master database of the country, to broaden its purview and include all the citizens across its length and breadth. Due to this nature, the initiative has been viewed as highly intrusive by experts.

According to reports, an expert committee has been set up to implement the social registry by 2021, which has proposed amendments to the Aadhaar Act to allow the government to capture this information without running afoul of the 2018 Supreme Court judgment that restricted the use of Aadhaar and reiterated individual privacy as a fundamental right.

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“The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has decided to amend the Aadhaar rules, the minutes of the October 4 meeting show. If implemented, these changes will render the 2018 judgment meaningless by removing the few provisions,” stated the report by Huffington Post.

UIDAI has reportedly suggested a Data Exchange Framework to ensure that the Government Departments and Ministries can exchange databases at the state and central level. Thw World Bank has also extended its financial aid to support the ‘surveillance’ project. However, it is yet to be known whether the status of the proposal.

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