Recently, the Election Commission have successfully completed their voter registration program. Their project was received warmly and many ushered humble accolades for what the commission have done. But the commission seemed dissatisfied with the appreciations they got. So it staged its own “awareness” campaign with aplomb and carnivalesque gaiety to demonstrate how narcissistic three Bangladeshi men (the Chief Election Commissioner and his two deputy) in the power could be. These three men were ably supported by the “co-operative venture” between BIO-Key in the US, Tiger IT in Bangladesh, and the Bangladesh army in their long journey to finish the Voter Id documentation.
However many fear that by digitalizing information the “State” might tighten it’s grip on individuals through constant surveillance or even gather uncalled-for information by “eavesdropping”. State Surveillance that has become a major concern round the world in recent times will also be a top agenda of our state. And it becomes more of a matter of concern when eminent supporters of the Voter ID project claim that the “digitalization” process will make governance “more scientific”. Jean-Françoise Lyotard in his The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge says that the State purchases scientists, technicians and instruments “not to find truth” but to “augment power” (ed Cahoone, 497). His argument about how science is used to augment power is good enough to catch the irony inherent in the voices of those who want governance to be more scientific, i.e, brutally totalitarian.
"Surveillance" and "eavesdropping" are the modern trajectories of Baroque-styled voyeur-fetish. Once, the crème de la crème of Western Europe participated in such smearing voyeuristic acts. But now it seems that the magniloquent oligarchs of Bangladesh (people with an insatiable desire to control and codify) have an opportunity to fulfill a desire of their own.
Desire fulfilling is no sin. “Repressed” desire, as Freud argues is harmful. Lacan, if lived to this day would have argued that "surveillance"/monitoring/codifying are the natal fantasies of men involved in sucking the juice out of a postcolonial nation or in warfare and arms dealing or in "the holy act of state guardsman -ship".
But it involves something more than sex. It is more pleasurable than sex.
Surveillance/eavesdropping are all-pervading fetishes. They devour the haves and the have-nots, the hideous and the charming, the petite and the belle, the scholar and the layman; all alike.
Those men who have dreamed of this for a long time are gleaning with scrotum juice. But they lacked the "backing" of what Lyotard calls "legitimizing" science. Thanks to those science people who have come up to aide the military/election commission so that their latent desires/fantasies will at last be fulfilled.
People who think they own a state/estate or two naturally hate Kafka. Or illiterate as they are; perhaps never have heard of him. Or perhaps they have heard of him and doing exactly the same that has to be done to get a stronghold on the bureaucratic states Kafka was frightened of. Whether in heaven or in hell or as a mutant (Gregor Samsa) re-incarnated in Jibonanodo Das-er Bangla, the soul of Kafka must be writhing in pain after seeing all these bureaucratic and militaristic hullabaloos.
