When databases come to define the Family

“Error: Unmarried Mother” it flashed on the computer screen as 30-year-old Riz began the process of renewing Pakistan’s National Computerized Identity Card (CNIC), a mandatory identification document that functions as a social security number, driver’s license and passport. Riz’s parents have been married for 31 years, but the database disagreed; there was no way to proceed without this validation check. Every visit to the registry office was said by an officer, “Sorry, sir, the computer doesn’t support it.”

Without renewing the CNIC, Riz could not even buy a bus ticket. In Pakistan, access to sectors and services such as telecommunications, banking, health registries, social welfare, voting and employment has been conditional on having a registered register with the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA).

The problem with validating Riz’s identity was not caused by a system error. The requirement for both parents to be married, on the other hand, is an example of the social judgments encoded in the design of Pakistan’s digital ID database. It so happened that not to take her husband’s surname, Riz’s mother never updated her marital status with Nadra. In analog Pakistan in the early 1990s, it came out without a hitch. Thirty years later, social expectations were embedded in databases, and Riz would not have been able to access basic services if his mother’s marital status query had not translated “TRUE”.

Riz’s experience tells a broader story of how Pakistan chose to structure its digital ID system. The system places each individual within a comprehensive digital family tree. Digital homes are made up of pre-coded, socially and legally accepted relationships, and can be connected to other homes through similar socially and legally accepted relationships. Each registered person must prove blood or marriage ties with another verified Pakistani citizen. Marriage (approved by the state) creates a bond between the two houses, and children (only through marriage) create a constant bond with the genealogies of the two houses.

Pakistan’s experience in creating databases encoding kinship shows important lessons about the complexity of building digital identification systems. Database design is not just computational. At every step, social, political, and technical decisions come together.

1973, Pakistan independence had just emerged from the war; two years earlier, East Pakistan became Bangladesh. Pakistan, after striking its legitimacy, now wanted it “The complete statistical database of the people of this country.” Parliament created an agency to issue a state-issued ID card to all citizens, conduct statistical analyzes of the population, and build rules for identifying citizens.

It is a political question to consider who one is as a citizen for any nation, but especially for a country that has a complex relationship with migration. After the division between India and Pakistan in 1947, hundreds of thousands of people born in lands given to Pakistan migrated to India, and vice versa. The rules of citizenship became a difficult dance between ensuring that the descendants of these migrants received citizenship to Pakistan without setting a priority for future migrant claims to make claims to the state. Thus, from 1951 onwards, those born in Pakistan and descendants of those who migrated to Pakistan were granted citizenship. before 1951. (This date was later changed to 1971 to accommodate the post-independence wave of migration in Bangladesh.) As Pakistan faced more migratory waves, the largest of which was Afghanistan, the rules of citizenship and identification were merged. Evidence of identity, like citizenship, was linked to family and origin.