The Vaporstate: ID in India

Our first exploration of The Vaporstate takes us to India, home of Aadhaar: a mammoth digitisation project that charts a path from technical solution for public service delivery, through mission creep and popular opposition, to a knotty but inescapable part of Indian existence today.More like this: Is Digitisation Killing Democracy? w/ Marietje SchaakeJoining Alix for part one of The Vaporstate is Mila Samdub, Astha Kapoor, and Usha Ramanathan. Together they discuss the conception of Aadhaar, India’s key piece of digital public infrastructure, and how it morphed from a simple digital ID to something that unifies payments, phone plans, and biometrics.Further reading & resources:More about Usha Ramanathan — legendary lawyer and activist who has been pushing back on the Aadhaar programme for over a decadeMore about Astha Kapoor — co-founder of the Aapti InstituteMore about Mila Samdub — designer, writer, and CyberBRICS Fellow at the Center for Internet and Society, FGV RioComputer-vision research powers surveillance technology — by Abeba Birhane et al, Nature JournalAadhaar 2.0 workshopWalmart Takes Ownership of PhonePe from Flipkart — The Times of India, 2022Walmart invests $200 million in Indian mobile payments giant PhonePe — TechCrunch, 2023Google launches India mobile payments app Tez — BBC, 2017Identity Verification Standards in Welfare Programs: Experimental Evidence from India — Karthik Muralidharan et al, National Bureau of Economic Research, 2021Aadhaar: Costs of Digital Red Tape — Reetika Khera & Amod Moharil, Economic & Political Weekly, 2024Overload, Creep, Excess – An Internet from India — Nafis Hasan et al, Institute of Network Cultures, 2022Aadhaar: A Biometric History of India's 12 Digit Revolution — Shankkar Aiyar, Westland, 2017**Subscribe to our newsletter to get more stuff than just a podcast — we run events and do other work that you will definitely be interested in!**Post Production by Sarah Myles | Pre Production by Georgia Iacovou