Sunday, September 6, 2009

Unique Identity Card

It's a wonder why no one from the intelligentsia has spoken out against the project of assigning a number to each human? Has the memory of first half of the 20th century Europe faded so much? The midnight knocks, the herding into cattle trains, the indignty of incarceration, were not imaginary, but happened to common people like you and me. Movements of people were fully controlled by examination of papers at each juncture. The existence of identity papers, and their acceptance by the uniformed personnel was the decisive factor. A whole world war was fought to regain human dignity and liberty.

Once again we have a situation emerging wherein the panicbutton is being hit all too frequently by the media and the system gleefully talks of clamping down on liberty and dignity, in the guise of safeguarding life and limb of the citizenry. Instead of curbing the actions of the villain, we seem to be curtailing the freedom of the common man, in the name of security. After the storm, come the carrion to scavenge on the left overs. They cause more destruction than the storm.

A frightened, timid populace is easy prey to the shenanigans of confident looking insurance salesmen, who demand liberty as the premium. Suffering silently, blaming the stars or past life, all due to a negative philosophy, this populace pays obesience to the cloud-people and accepts shackles as their just dues.

The residents of the clouds look down from time to time to smile benevolently at the acts of the simple populace. With their free thinking already curbed by illogical concepts like god, unfairness and injustice is meekly accepted as something ordained.

What the people need is the dignity of their unique identity, which will come when they are enlightened and become positive. When they become Ujjwal. Providing them with a piece of plastic with a unique number will never do that.