Articles
Aug 05, 2020
#MarginalizedAadhaar: Is Aadhaar a Tech Solution for a Socio-Economic Problem?
This is the fourth field diary entry from Subhashish, one of our Digital Identity Fellows. His year-long research project is focused on the challenges and opportunities within marginalised groups most affected by Aadhaar, India’s national digital ID system. *** “You cannot fix using the law what you have broken using technology” says Indian cybersecurity expert Anand Venkatanarayanan, quoting Professor Sunil Abraham at the Kenyan High Court. Venkatanarayanan was appearing as a witness for the Nubians, a discriminated community for whom the Kenyan biometric database National Integrated Identity Management Scheme (NIIMS, also known as Huduma Namba) would create further exclusions
Articles
May 28, 2020
Numbered Humans: the new podcast from our Digital Identity Fellows
We’re very excited to announce the launch of Numbered Humans, the new podcast from our 2019 Yoti Digital Identity Fellows. In each episode, you’ll hear from Paz Bernaldo in Argentina, Tshepo Magoma in South Africa and Subhashish Panigrahi in India, as they reveal some of the key issues that have emerged during the first six months of their research. Digital identity in marginalised communities The COVID-19 pandemic is affecting the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people around the world and, as expected, the worst-hit are those already living in poverty, and the excluded and marginalised. We know that
Articles
May 12, 2020
MarginalizedAadhaar: Digital identity in the time of COVID-19
This is the third field diary entry from Subhashish, one of our Digital Identity Fellows. His year-long research project is focused on the challenges and opportunities within marginalised groups most affected by Aadhaar, India’s national digital ID system. ***** Before Indian society had the chance to recover from the hardship of both a financial slowdown and the controversial amendment to the citizenship act, it got hit by COVID-19. Many marginalized communities were already struggling to survive poverty, hunger and systemic exclusions, and things have got even harder as life comes to a standstill thanks to social distancing and wider
Articles
Jan 27, 2020
Updates from the field – Subhashish's diary entry January 2020
This is the second field diary entry from Subhashish, one of our Digital Identity Fellows. His year-long research project is focused on the challenges and opportunities within marginalised groups most affected by Aadhaar, India’s national digital ID system. *** India’s ambitious biometric-based identity — Unique Identity (UID) — has been the focus of the State of Aadhaar report recently published by Dalberg Global Development Advisors, a global consulting firm. The study — made possible with funding from Omidyar Network — includes a sample size of 167,000 Indian residents and sheds some light on many facets of Aadhaar. While the report
Articles
Nov 20, 2019
#MarginalizedAadhaar: Exclusion in access to public information for marginalized groups
This is the first field diary entry from Subhashish, one of our Digital Identity Fellows. His year-long research project is focused on the challenges and opportunities within marginalised groups most affected by Aadhaar, India’s national digital ID system. *** In this first of a monthly series of field diary entries, I will be highlighting the challenges and opportunities relating to access to public information for marginalized groups in India. Documentation collected in my research so far includes interactions with two major groups — marginalized communities and other stakeholders that are key to all the digital identity discourses. The first group included