A project to provide Indians with a ?unique? identity can be variously interpreted. Narrowly construed, it can be seen as an effort to arrest misappropriation, misrepresentation and misallocation. Broadly defined, it can be regarded as the harbinger of radical social and economic change; a first step in defining not simply who we are but who we wish to be.
How will Nilekani interpret his remit? Will he steer the narrow course or plunge into the broader unknown. I would hope the latter not simply because against the backdrop of the social and economic consequences of globalisation, technology and demography we Indians do need to reflect upon our identity but also because if there is one person who can ?imagine? the positives of stretching an idea beyond its conventional limits it has to be Nilekani.
A narrow construction of the remit will of course generate value. The plight of Air India; the flow of red ink from the public sector oil marketing companies, the lengthening shadows of power cutbacks? these are just some of the glaring examples of wasteful expenditure, distributive inefficiency and sloppy management. The identity project should help arrest this haemorrhaging of public resources and avoidable loss. And it should make it easier to segregate citizens from illegal immigrants and strengthen internal security.
The question is whether such a massive exercise is warranted for these narrow purposes. Government can surely build upon the various identity cards that are already in place to secure these goals. I do of course appreciate that these cards cover only a fragment of the population; that they essentially correlate economic condition to economic entitlement and that they do not encapsulate the non economic facets of an individual?s identity. But these are inadequacies that can be overcome through the incremental application of appropriate technology. They do not require the start of a new project on the scale envisaged.
It is therefore to the broader remit that I turn for justification. Amartya Sen explained that identity is not a unidimensional and rigid attribute. People have multiple identities and it is a matter of personal choice and circumstance that determines their dominant identity. A woman executive in office may cloak herself with the identity of a professional. But at home she may decide to doff that in favour of something that signals motherhood and/or housewife. The point is that identity is a fluid concept and whilst there are defining singular attributes like nationality, religion or caste, the lens through which people see themselves and others reflect kaleidoscopic overlaps of these attributes. Identity is a shifting composite and individual behaviour reflects this composite.
The framers of our Constitution recognised this behavioural relationship. They saw the opportunity to broaden our identity and to thereby alter the dynamics of social relations. Prior to the Constitution identity was defined essentially within a social context. People knew their position within society. Caste determined where they ate; whom they married, etc. Social identity determined social rights.
The Constitution stretched the context to cover political rights. Whilst recognising the reality of caste it supplanted it with the category of ?citizen? – a political identity that signalled a new freedom and a new equality and which found expression through the medium of universal adult suffrage. Of course social identity did not dissolve but from 1951 onwards it shared space with political identity.
Mandal had an equally seminal impact on identity. For it elevated caste from being something of largely local salience to something with a national scope.
We have to recognise that identity cards have a chequered past. They can be and are used for important but innocuous purposes like determining whether a person should be behind the wheels of a car. They have also however been used for dastardly ends. Identity cards were what enabled Nazi Germany to single out the Jews. Information that empowers an individual does also empower a state. Ultimately therefore what redeems a card is the vision and purpose for which it has been designed.
Nilekani should therefore ask: What is the vision and purpose of his project? Could it be to open the doors for Indians to push beyond the Mandal era? And if so would it be it practically possible to design the system of collating and incorporating data in a way that triggers a reassessment of the relative importance of the different attributes of identity. Can the very process of determining identity lead to its redefinition and thereby to changes in behaviour? Nilekani may choose not to ask these questions but it would be a pity ?- indeed possibly a lost opportunity, if he fails to appreciate that identities are not simply expressions of the past or the present. They entail visions of the future.
?The author is chairman of the Shell group of companies in India. These are his personal views