Digital dictatorship of BJP and Modi. The move to demonetise paper currency is questionable now. The goal of scrapping the old notes and bringing in new ones was to fight black money. The move was fated with failure from the beginning as the black money makes only 6 percent of the paper currency. The move effectively paralysed the Indian economy and the worst hits were India’s poor and marginalised. The move led to deaths, agony, and severe mental and physical strain on the citizens. The goal post was changed to digitalisation of paper currency. There is a growing talk of cashless economy. With the given infrastructure and security issues surrounding digitalisation, the cashless economy is a distant goal. It can be achieved after 10 years given the status of internet connectivity and penetration in India.

The digital economy reduced an individual to a digital self. Each one of us is given an individual string of zeroes and ones and the footprints of this string are recorded and it is available to the people in the government and businesses. For example, the Adhar card in India gives a unique identity to each of Indian citizens, which is then linked with all the economic transactions. It is not just limited to the financial transactions, but also the sites that we browse, the sells and purchasing we perform, and our social and political leanings. The digital self is not a private self. It is an assigned identity, which can be manipulated.

The Chinese Government is making a grand system that tracks the individual citizens. The profile thus created becomes the basis of Government’s incentives or disincentives to the citizens. It is called social-credit, just like the credit worthiness of the people have been recorded. India has its home-grown method of creating social credit rating. The system which is efficient and doesn’t take technology to categorise people. The social-credit rating system in India is called the caste system. It automatically categorises people into hierarchical categories. Now add to this the digital social-credit system, you get enhanced handle on controlling people.

In the name of digitalisation, the Government is keen to record your personal and public life.

It has already been started when the big companies collect our choices, behavioural patterns, and political leanings to itch their products into our brains.

The government is trying to use this information in the pretext of collecting financial information. The day is not far when the government will collect our personal information and uses it against us.

Author – Mangesh Dhaiwale, Human Rights Activist

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