Aadhaar in a Box? Legitimizing Digital Identity in Times of Crisis

The political drive to develop digital identity systems, in particular in the Global South with financial and technical support provided by international development actors, is accelerating during the COVID-19 pandemic. There are different reasons for this redoubling of attention to digitizing identities. These include an increased emphasis on digital social protection during the pandemic and the emergence of proposals for digital vaccination/immunity certificates to facilitate the reopening of societies and restoration of economies, which it is argued would need to be supported by robust digital identity infrastructures. Without evaluating the merits of claims about the capacity of digital identity systems to address the various challenges posed by COVID-19, in this paper I instead make a theoretical observation before raising a policy concern. First, I draw attention to the rise of India’s Aadhaar as an exemplar of developmental digital identity, which has intensified during the pandemic, and what this might mean for concepts of surveillance. I then conclude with a call to the development community to take more seriously investments in data protection regulatory capacity in countries where they are supporting digital identity projects.