From having too little ID, we now have too much of it

Growing up in Calcutta, I knew my family and I were Indian because we lived in Calcutta, which was in India. Geography proved our Indianness.

But our official proof of being Indian was Ration Card, pronounced Raashun Card. Raashun Card was a prized possession, rather like a family heirloom, or a piece of ancestral property. It enabled you to buy essentials like rice, atta, sugar, and kerosene for the primus stove, from govt-sanctioned ration shops at govt-controlled prices. 

More than the domestic economy that Raashun Card afforded, it was the only proof that you were a genuine born-and-bred Indian, and not some interloper from dubious foreign parts. 

Very few Indians – govt high-ups, captains of industry, and brigadier generals of business – possessed something called a passport, a rarity more remarkable than a snowman in Thar Desert in summer. 

For general janta, Raashun Card was the sole proof of national identity. It was a constant reminder that the patriotic watchword of the day was austerity, and in the name of austerity everything had to be rationed, including identity. 

Then, like a genie popping out of a magical lamp, the jack-in-the-box of change sprang up from wherever it had been hibernating. 

Passports, as a means of identity if not of foreign travel, became almost as commonplace as Raashun Cards. And when passports became passé, there came PAN, Permanent Account Number, as a further ratification of identity, as a taxpayer.

PAN was followed by Electors Photo Identity Card (EPIC) or Voter ID. Voter ID, in turn, was succeeded by Aadhaar Card, which didn’t exactly prove we were Indian, but which we had to have to get into airports. 

And now we have SIR, Special Intensive Revision, which identifies us as being pukka Indians, eligible to vote. From having Raashun Carded identity, we have an overdose of identity, an OD of ID. For Indians the existential question is no longer Who am I? It is Which am I? Passport, PAN, Voter ID, Aadhaar, SIR? 

We have what might be called an embarrassment of whiches.

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