Science, Technology, and Society Seminar: STS Circle at Harvard (In Person)

Date: 

Monday, February 13, 2023, 12:15pm to 2:00pm

Location: 

Harvard Kennedy School, 79 JFK Street, Bell Hall

"India's Biometric Identity Project"

Speaker:

Rahul Bhatia, 2022-23 Lisa Goldberg Fellow, Harvard Radcliffe Institute.

Contact:

Laura Flynn
lauraflynn@hks.harvard.edu

Co-sponsored by the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University.

Chair:

Sheila JasanoffFaculty Associate. Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies; Professor of Environmental Science and Public Policy, Committee on Degrees in Environmental Science and Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School.

Abstract:

This seminar is about the cultural roots of India’s biometric ID project, which contains the details of over a billion people, and is the basis of a complex surveillance architecture. For the past six years, Rahul Bhatia has conducted several hundred interviews with systems architects, political leaders, lawyers, activists, social service organisations, historians, and many others as part of his investigation into the surprising ideas and impulses behind India’s extraordinary welfare delivery platform. Come for the technology, stay for the history. These findings are from his upcoming narrative non-fiction book, The Identity Project, which will be published in 2025 by Little, Brown.