| Summary/Abstract |
Interrogating Aadhaar, India’s biometric ID project for its billion-plus residents, in the small north-eastern state of Tripura, where it first achieved high levels of acceptance, reveals that ‘success’ at enrolments into the database was dependent on the subversion of its celebrated biometric potentials by a local mediating bureaucracy. By limiting enrolments to previously documented subjects and enrolling Aadhaar into an ongoing regional situation of strife and reconciliation, the work of the bureaucracy highlights the contextual, territorial conditions of securitisation within which a biometric database takes shape. This paper aims to challenge claims about Aadhaar as an emblematic case of biometric governance ushering in a ‘new’ state, instead suggesting linkages with existing forms of state practices and ongoing state projects.
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