Is Aadhar a necessary evil ?

In 2008 when I was learning fascinating technologies, I became particularly interested in applying those in politics. I had a Thinkpad T60 laptop (military grade) that could use fingerprint to authenticate the owner. One of the areas I thought this technology could be used was to address double (or multiple) voting in elections. 

I was badly wrong. It violated a fundamental principle of democracy. Elected leaders need to work impartially even for those people who did not agree with their ideology; fingerprint based voting will leave a trace, who voted for whom. The indelible ink by Mysore Paints and Varnish is a solution which still stands the test of time. 

Origins

Mr K Subrahmanyam, a security analyst, first proposed the need of an ID card for people living in border villages, most likely. as part of an assessment of the security lapses that happened before the Kargil War. Since it was difficult to use other forms of prevailing identification e.g. PAN card or driver's license in those remote villages, the alternative biological means of identification was explored. Fingerprint based identification method was proposed by Sir William James Herschel (magistrate posted in British occupied Bengal) and formalized by Edward Henry assisted by two Bengalis - Hem Chandra Bose and Azizul Haque. It had been predominantly used by law enforcement agencies as the guilty often lied about their true identity escaping suspicion in the event of repeated crime. 

Knives are used both for murder and cutting vegetables. Superior technology should be adopted but its effectiveness depends on the incorruptibility of the people overseeing the system. 

Drawbacks

Aadhaar was extended from the realm of forensics to prevent leakages in the public distribution system. Isn't that also a means of fighting crime ? Now, information of law abiding citizens are captured in the same manner smudging the lines between black and white. 

Reliance Jio saved huge amounts of regulatory verification costs during on-boarding of its mobile subscribers using Aadhaar system, though, they also have passed the benefits to the customers by abysmally low prices. But, can one guarantee that any tech-savvy Jio store personnel had not stored this information silently in his mobile phone. This impression can be planted at a crime scene misleading the agencies. Maybe the accused will eventually be acquitted but imagine the mental trauma. 

Secondly, the technologies used to implement this important system is not developed by us. One such is Mongo DB, a product from a company funded indirectly by CIA (In-Q-Tel). It is unlikely that any nation will ever own the entire eco-system (exception China) but in matters of strategic importance, it is imperative to use indigenous components for the critical parts, even if those turn out to be shabby. If you buy weapons from a country, can you ever defend yourself in a war against that country ?

There are other loopholes. For e.g. it is not possible to de-register from Aadhaar when a person dies. (see here)

Hence, it not only blurs lines between the good and bad but also the living and dead.

Going backwards

People from poor sections of the society cannot fill up the form for a bank account let aside a loan application. Supporters of Aadhaar will argue that such bio-metric authentication fast-tracks this process which will thereafter unleash the country's potential. Viewed from another angle, it is actually pushing the country backwards. 

One very important difference between man and animal is man's ability to record his thoughts. The complicated forms in any PSU bank is a challenge to the poor man's intellectual ability (if you tick 'a', then you need to tick 'b', and if you tick 'b' then you need to explain ... ) It is an incentive for him to study and think logically for comprehending the nuances of modern civilization. Once he successfully opens an account after navigating through these words and symbols, he has arrived in the modern society. 

Henceforth, he has to be logically defeated. 

Wikipedia - where truth is editable.

In 2011, when I was attending the Wikimedia conference, supporters of right-wing parties were protesting outside the venue of Mumbai University campus; and Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia was greeted with black flags. The cause of their agitation was the wrong depiction of the map of Kashmir in Wikipedia. Nothing bad happened further; the conference completed smoothly. 

Mr Wales' Mac-book, however, could not be connected to the projector during his opening speech

The protesters probably did not know the nature of Wikipedia. It wasn't as if Mr. Wales had a team of editors who were writing the articles like the Encyclopedia Britannica. The later is edited by domain experts whereas in Wikipedia - anyone can write. In other words, the truth need not be proven - it is conveniently editable. Although, there are rules to assess the credibility of an article and articles evolve much over time to a supposedly more generally accepted version of the truth. 

Recently, while reading about human evolution, when I got to the part of language development, I was interested to find how my language - Bengali had evolved. It has been proven beyond doubt that Bengali is a descendant of the Sanskrit language, which in turn had descended from the Aramaic language which in turn had come from the Semitic branch of Afro-Asiatic language. Though some scholars claim Sanskrit had evolved from inside India i.e. the Indus Valley. 

On checking the Wikipedia article on Sanskrit it said that the earliest inscriptions in Sanskrit were found in Ayodhya. This rings a bell; especially now. 

This part on Ayodhya appeared on 18 Jul 2018. Refer difference here.

It may be plausible that the earliest known Sanskrit inscription were indeed found in Ayodhya. Prof D.C Sircar, an epigraphist with Archaeological Survey of India may have unearthed and dated it. Ironically the book he edited Select Inscriptions (bearing on Indian History and Civilization) was dedicated to Dr. Shyamaprasad Mukherjee. 

However, no one from ASI edited or even locked this entry in Wikipedia, especially, at a point of time when a defining verdict was being awaited in Supreme Court. 

(as of this writing)

This edit was done by someone named Ms. Sarah Welch. She created her first page on 26-Dec-2014, and is very active since then with 15 edits per day, mostly on Hinduism and ancient Hindu literature. From the edit statistics, it seems she is an academic or researcher on these subjects. However, most of the articles she wrote on Hindu literature has lower ranking per Wikipedia assessment standards compared to the much better ranking which is on Cattle theft in India. Moreover, she has numerous edits on subjects those seem different from her main subject, for example on 2019 India General Elections, even on Article 370 of Indian Constitution, Citizenship Amendment Act Protests and Assam Accord. 

I am not sure whether Ms. Welch is helping protect the truth. Maybe Ms. Welch genuinely cares for the correct information. But it is quite amazing how there is absence of participation from official entities when gradually evidence from the digital medium is being accepted in the court of law. There were quite some instances of people held guilty for public posts. 

Such platforms, though immensely convenient should always be taken with a pinch of salt. 

References:

Sarah Welch edit statistics from here.

Is Movie Art or Business ?

When the common man enters a theater, the grand hall which has just the right temperature to keep him from falling asleep and the surround sound system that adds dimensions to the lifeless acoustic waves, and then the lights are switched off and the big screen starts to magnify both beauty and ugliness; when the movie begins, it also starts a dream. Movie is the business of dreams. And all its cast and crew, merchants of this "dream business".

I must begin by the definition of "business", for which, I will paraphrase Jordan Belfort, the infamous salesman of Wall Street. 

"Business is monetizing the delivery of some value".

When a person goes to the theater, he is looking for some respite from his reality. A movie warps the time (shot of a running boy's feet and by the time the camera refocuses to his face, he is a grown up young man), exaggerates human ability (the protagonist jumping off sky-scrappers without getting hurt), distorts dimensions (the picture perfect damsel) and many, many more to transport a person to a momentary disbelief of his own self. It frightens him, makes him cry, laugh, makes him angry or gives him hope through a platter of scenes and variety of genres for the sole purpose to entertain. 

Steven Spielberg said "A movie must always entertain the conscious mind and educate the subconscious mind." 

Such efforts need collaboration which is the very hallmark of a business. It is for this reason we also call businesses a "company". These need full time effort, which means, collaborators need to be paid. Hence, the money that the producer spends to make a movie needs to be recovered to fund future such efforts to guarantee future income for the collaborators. 

Unfortunately there is no single definition of art which makes answering this question so difficult. To ease the effort, let us look at something we consider art - the painting "Death of Socrates" by Jacques David. (recommend the reader to pause and see the painting) The person sitting at the feet of Socrates is his famous disciple Plato. When the former died, the later was young. Isn't this also warping of time ? The most famous works of art are all distortion of reality. And they are also valued in billions. Academically (who don't have a skin in the game) movie is a multi-disciplinary art that delivers a value - a shock or surprise or solace without damaging his reality. In fact, the movies those are labelled as "art films", at least the ones those are sincerely done, are experiments by mainstream movie producers which is a smaller risk to test a concept or style. Unless there is a profit in the mainstream, these would not have been possible. This makes its nature just like any another business. 

Businesses produces more business. 

I will elicit this point by the example of the movie Terminator 2. It was a path breaking movie that had visual effects ahead of its time. It was produced at an era when microprocessors were less powerful and more costly. This movie (and Jurassic Park) triggered the Hollywood race for visual effect domination. The Knoll brothers working at Industrial Light and Magic (VFX) company who worked on this movie later created the software Photoshop using computer algorithms used in this movie. This software took Adobe (company) to dizzying heights of success and spawned an entire industry around it.

Trivia: The bad robot in T2 could take forms of other people - once a security guard and then the boy's mother. This is not VFX but shot using twins ! Even people with large amounts of money optimize. In fact, they always optimize. 

However, it is true that money magnifies the personality of a person. It will make a stupid look more stupid. More money does not guarantee success in movies, but it is also true that an unimaginative person with the best computers cannot make a dog wag its tail, let alone dinosaurs fighting the human army. As Steve Jobs said "Computer is the bicycle of the mind". It can only take you to places that you can imagine.

It is undeniable that one of the finest minds like Andrei Tarkovsky has redefined movies, but hasn't he also distorted reality ? Similarly, it is equally difficult to create a movie like Hum Apke Hai Kaun**, (a Bollywood movie) that seemed more like a wedding video yet it had something for every last Indian. It did find a new way of storytelling - tell an ordinary one but in a grand fashion. 

Money is not a yardstick of success but an essential one for any creative effort. Movies do not need to consistently make money but the objective of never making any will surely kill an exciting art form permanently. It may be re-imagined, it may employ newer art forms.

But it will always remain a business of dreams.


**My lack of the understanding of the language limits watching Tamil and Malayalam movies, but undoubtedly those are way up the mark compared to Bengal and Bombay.

Does size matter ?

The composition is original but images used are borrowed. Needless to say, its a shabby composition. As an excuse, I can say it is my attempt to master a photo editing tool called GIMP.