From Margins to Seams: Imbrication, Inclusion, and Torque in the Aadhaar Identification Project

Problems of marginalization and inclusion are central to HCI scholarship and impact in the world, but are badly named in the binary models of access that currently dominate the field. Building on prior work in ICTD and infrastructure studies, this paper explores the problem of inclusion through historical and ethnographic study of Aadhaar, India's biometrics-based national identification project. We illustrate tensions between Aadhaar users' ability to register, authenticate and successfully deploy their registered identity to participate in the Public Distribution System (PDS), a government scheme that provides subsidized food grains to the Indian poor. We argue that rather than an all-or-nothing state, inclusion in ICTD infrastructures is an ongoing and fragile process, achieved (unevenly) at the seams of multiple interconnected systems. Finally, we show that questions of (effective) inclusion are determined not just at margins of a system (who is in and who is out) but also through the artful and often challenging negotiation of the seams that run through and connect complex distributed infrastructures.