Digital ID capitalism: how emerging economies are re-inventing digital capitalism

ABSTRACT

This article adds to the literature on digital capitalisms by introducing a new state-led model called ‘digital ID capitalism’. Here, state agencies help guarantee personal data for commercial exploitation by connecting it to the provision of state welfare services. This is in contrast to the usual focus on US Big Tech corporations’ use of personal data from the internet. Describing how the system works in India, it explains how businesses make money from the personal data collected. While doing so, it draws some of its elements into traditional political economy concerns with the relationships between state, business and labour. The benefit of framing it as a capitalist system is that it sharpens the focus on the corresponding social relations and potential for group governance of this important twenty-first century resource.

KEYWORDS:

• Digital capitalism
• Aadhaar
• India Stack
• personal data

Acknowledgements

I thank Nakul Shenoy, John Zubrzycki and Jan Russell for introductions in Bengaluru, and those who generously shared their time and knowledge with me, including Tanuj Bhojwani, Sunil Abraham, Kiran Jonnalagadda, Vinay Kesari, Anita Gurumurthy, Shweta Mohandas, Parminder Jeet Singh, and Chris Greenhalgh. I also thank two anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions and comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributor

Jacqueline Hicks is a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow based jointly at the Asia Research Institute and Computer Science Department of Nottingham University, working on the International Political Economy of Personal Data.

ORCID

Jacqueline Hicks http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8055-2582

Notes

1 The edited volume, Dissent on Aadhaar (Khera, 2019) collects writings from many key critics. I drew heavily on general online journalistic sources, specialist technology publications like Media Nama, and Indian research institutes like IT for Change and the Centre for Internet and Society. In the academic literature, careful research assesses how far Aadhaar fulfils its aims of social protection Bhatia and Bhabha (2017), Khera (2017), Drèze et al. (2017). Treatments of Aadhaar’s wider implications for state and citizenship include Jayal (2019), Rao (2019), Nair (2018, 2019), Chaudhuri and König (2018), and those giving careful historical contexts include Chhotray and McConnell (2018) and Abraham (2018).

2 Supporters of Aadhaar argue that, in many cases, mobile phone numbers or email addresses also do a good job of connecting data silos.

3 Digital labour can also refer to people who sell their labour on platforms like Uber, and people working in factories making the material hardware.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship scheme (European Commission Horizon 2020 Programme) [grant 793639].