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NEISP organises a seminar by Khetrimayum Monish Singh

NEISP organises a seminar by Khetrimayum Monish Singh

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NEISP organises a seminar by Khetrimayum Monish Singh
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NORTH EAST INDIA STUDIES PROGRAMME

SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES

 

Data infrastructure and the politics of citizen-making: Analyzing the Assam NRC citizen identification project

 

Khetrimayum Monish Singh

The Centre for Internet and Society, New Delhi

 

In India, databases such as the UID/ Aadhaar represent new ‘sociotechnical imaginaries’ (Jasanoff and Kim, 2015) of data infrastructures that mediate state-citizen relationships in a political regime of public-private partnerships. Database politics, around such data infrastructures, therefore represent new forms of categorizations – who is a citizen, who is a resident and who is a welfare beneficiary. In this paper, I investigate the update of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) database in Assam (India) as a case study to map the emergent changes in one of the core modalities of Indian governance: the unique identification of citizens. The NRC, as a part of the National Population Register (NPR), is a list of only Indian citizens, and is currently in the process of being updated only in Assam. This update is driven by concerns around illegal immigration from neighbouring Bangladesh, the history of identity politics in Assam, and constitutional and legislative rules and provisions which define the nature of citizenship in India. While promising formal integration into the legal system of rights, the NRC database also inevitably reflects a controversial exercise evident through the inclusion/ exclusion of individuals. Situated at the intersection of Science and Technology Studies and Infrastructure Studies, this paper seeks to problematize this particular infrastructure, and the challenges and concerns following legal, bureaucratic and technical processes of categorization, identification, data collection and data verification of a diverse demography.

 

DATE: March 09, Friday, 2018

TIME: 3:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.

VENUE: Room no.324, 3rd Floor, SSS-I, JNU

A warm welcome to the modified and updated website of the Centre for East Asian Studies. The East Asian region has been at the forefront of several path-breaking changes since 1970s beginning with the redefining the development architecture with its State-led development model besides emerging as a major region in the global politics and a key hub of the sophisticated technologies. The Centre is one of the thirteen Centres of the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi that provides a holistic understanding of the region.

Initially, established as a Centre for Chinese and Japanese Studies, it subsequently grew to include Korean Studies as well. At present there are eight faculty members in the Centre. Several distinguished faculty who have now retired include the late Prof. Gargi Dutt, Prof. P.A.N. Murthy, Prof. G.P. Deshpande, Dr. Nranarayan Das, Prof. R.R. Krishnan and Prof. K.V. Kesavan. Besides, Dr. Madhu Bhalla served at the Centre in Chinese Studies Programme during 1994-2006. In addition, Ms. Kamlesh Jain and Dr. M. M. Kunju served the Centre as the Documentation Officers in Chinese and Japanese Studies respectively.

The academic curriculum covers both modern and contemporary facets of East Asia as each scholar specializes in an area of his/her interest in the region. The integrated course involves two semesters of classes at the M. Phil programme and a dissertation for the M. Phil and a thesis for Ph. D programme respectively. The central objective is to impart an interdisciplinary knowledge and understanding of history, foreign policy, government and politics, society and culture and political economy of the respective areas. Students can explore new and emerging themes such as East Asian regionalism, the evolving East Asian Community, the rise of China, resurgence of Japan and the prospects for reunification of the Korean peninsula. Additionally, the Centre lays great emphasis on the building of language skills. The background of scholars includes mostly from the social science disciplines; History, Political Science, Economics, Sociology, International Relations and language.

Several students of the centre have been recipients of prestigious research fellowships awarded by Japan Foundation, Mombusho (Ministry of Education, Government of Japan), Saburo Okita Memorial Fellowship, Nippon Foundation, Korea Foundation, Nehru Memorial Fellowship, and Fellowship from the Chinese and Taiwanese Governments. Besides, students from Japan receive fellowship from the Indian Council of Cultural Relations.