Imagine if government databases could track when you moved cities, changed jobs, bought property, got married, or basically had any kind of social life. The Indian government is in the final stages of creating a National Social Registry — “an all-encompassing, auto-updating, searchable database” that can track every aspect of Indians’ lives, HuffPost India reported on the basis of RTIs filed by activist Srinivas Kodali (read the RTIs here) and journalist Kumar Sambhav Shrivastava. What is the National Social Registry? The National Social Registry 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. It will automatically update itself in real-time. [caption id="attachment_211761" align="aligncenter" width="550"] Communication from Ministry of Rural Development, sent by Joint Secretary Biswajit Banerjee on June 17, 2019[/caption] Is this based on Aadhaar? Yes, because the 12-digit Aadhaar number will become the unique identifier to track every citizen across databases, akin to a cookie on your browser that tracks you across websites, but worse because you can't get rid of it. It will be the “single identifier” that will allow different databases to effectively talk to each other. This casts the mandatory linking of Aadhaar with different forms of ID and accounts such as the PAN, Voter ID, ration card, bank accounts in a different light. [caption id="attachment_211771" align="aligncenter" width="550"] Communication from Ministry of Rural Development, sent by Joint Secretary Biswajit Banerjee…
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