End : 19 November 2026 à 12:00
Seminar overview
The LATTS’s ‘Governing, Organising, Working’ (GOT) strand is organising a seminar on Thursday 19 November from 10.00 am to 12.00 pm in room B235.
Nicolas Belorgey will present the book *Should We Put Everyone on File? The Battle Over Digital Identification in India*, published by CNRS in 2026. Antoine Courmont will lead the discussion.
Summary of the book
Identifying individuals is, more than ever, an economic and political issue. Whilst this used to be done using paper records, it is now increasingly carried out via the internet and through computerised databases containing our personal data. These databases seem to make the dreams of scientists, politicians, administrators and entrepreneurs a reality, but they can also turn into a nightmare of invasion of privacy and a surveillance society – which is particularly dangerous in an authoritarian political context.
Based on field research, this book explores one such digital and biometric system, which covers almost the entire vast and diverse population of India: some 1.4 billion people. It shows how this tool, called Aadhaar (‘foundation’ in Hindi), designed primarily by and for the business world, was adopted by the state and then imposed on the population through a combination of propaganda, censorship and coercion, whilst bypassing social movements, Parliament and the Supreme Court. It also shows that only a handful of companies stand to profit from it, whilst the most vulnerable members of society bear the heavy costs in terms of access to social rights and freedom.
Any resemblance to events elsewhere may not be coincidental.
The author
Nicolas Belorgey is a CNRS research fellow at IRISSO – Paris-Dauphine University, where he teaches, and at the CSH in Delhi
