Biometric Allergy – Mark My Presence!

Dear friends,

Since my last post, I have received several emails in appreciation of the “Password Phobia – Access Blues” in TOI. I would like to thank all those who wrote in. To many of my friends who have sent in their wishes even before and to some others who been thanking me through their chuckles and laughing-out-louds (or lols), while reading my “Artickles” are equally welcome and deeply satisfying to a humour writer like me.

A close friend and a senior person wished I should see him in his office. I obliged and called on him (an IT firm of repute). At the entrance, a notice put up by the IT Administration read: “Your Password should be as unique as you - Our data security is in everyone’s hands”. Mine certainly was, I thought…

When I told him I did not know how to thank you all for their wishes, all he said was, “Only one way - write more!”

So here I go on to thank you all…..

Biometric Allergy – Mark My Presence!

By Gopinath Mavinkurve

It was a coincidence that my “Access Blues” was published on 3rd July, 2008 in the TOI while sister publication, Mumbai Mirror reported of MLAs protesting the imminent introduction of the biometric system of attendance in the state legislature! The move was planned to prevent the reoccurrence of an unpalatable incident uncovered by journalists of attendance being recorded of an MLC Navnath Avhad lying in a comatose condition in a Pune hospital!

Their apprehension was that they would be called “Angootha Chhaap” (an illiterate)! Here I was pleading to the IT guys to grant me that very status and rid me of my predicament and look what I was up against – the entire local political fraternity! Of course, one must understand their point of view. Why oh why, should a politician who has struggled all his life and learnt to read and write his name furnish his powerful appendage for marking presence, when the entire fraternity is doing all the physical exercises with all its limbs, flesh, lungs and tongue to mark their presence all over the country?

How can we expect the honorable elected members of our Assemblies and Councils to extend their finger just to mark his presence? Would his fingers not be pre-occupied constantly pointing towards his opponents, including a certain foreign hand, worthy of his blame? I can only rush to explain that I am seeking entry into my own spaces, while the noble gentlemen are opposing the very idea of using the biometric system to record their presence!

Any citizen of this country would know that elected members of the respectable state and national houses do record their presence in the Parliament, Legislative Assembly or Council by banging on desks, throwing mikes and available paraphernalia at whosoever attract their ire by refusing to listen to their generous uttering and choose to exercise their own lung. They thereby record their presence on Primetime National TV Channels and even on some YouTube videos.

Such outrageous measures as Biometric system for marking attendance for people in high offices are only demeaning of their efforts to make an indelible mark on society and the common man. As for a poor scribe like me, hoping for the technology of finger-recognition access devices to gain access to my own spaces - I can only hope and pray that one day I shall enter my ATM, brimming with confidence, my chin up, thrusting my best finger forward, to withdraw my own hard earned money, without the fear of being branded “Angootha Chhaap”. After all, I am marking my presence and literacy in carbon prints in newspapers of repute!

After reading the report in the same day’s newspaper, my anxiety grew so I caught up with my IT friend who was kind enough to assure me that the recent political upheaval would not hinder the progress on the new technology which I was looking forward to sooner rather than later.

With this assurance I retired for the day and continued to dream…

Fast Forward to some years later, when I enter the ATM centres brimming with confidence with chin up and thrusting my best finger forward, to withdraw my own hard earned money. And a message would flash on the screen: “The fingerprint reading device is Out of Order! Inconvenience caused is regretted. You may however access your account by entering your last registered Password!”
“Grrr! Ugh! $#%^&*&^%”…. To the eternal glitches in IT, I surrender!!