Source : INDIA TODAY NEWS
Mongoloid facial features, including narrow eyes, have been used to stereotype people from India’s northeast. Nagaland Tourism and Higher Education Minister Temjen Imna Along once again used humour to destroy racial stereotyping, while highlighting the limitations of some technology.
Temjen Imna Along, a BJP MLA, used a video captioned just “Struggle is real”, highlighting the difficulty of some in getting biometric verification done.
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In a video shared on X, a person (who’s not in the frame) repeatedly struggles to scan the eyes of a Naga man on the KYC biometric application. As the system fails to scan his iris, a group of people are seen trying to hold the Naga man’s eyes open to make the scan possible.
People are heard laughing in the video.
Behind the humour, however, lies a real problem. That of technology being non-inclusive in design.
Biometric technologies are increasingly used for KYC, authentication and accessing digital services, but systems designed around standardised facial and biometric parameters can sometimes create difficulties for people from certain communities whose physical features might not fit these broader parameters and assumptions.
Temjen Imna Along’s post brought that problem into focus without turning it into a technical or political lecture. Instead, he chose mirth, which is a style that has become closely associated with his social media presence. Even if the clear intention of sharing the video was not mentioned by Temjen, the post has done its job.
“We should create alternative methods. If people are facing problems nobody should suffer due to their natural biological traits,” one person wrote on X, reacting to Temjen’s post.
“Who said technology doesn’t exercise racism! I’m sure China, Japan and other south east Asian nations must have invented something for this. Why is Indian government not adopting something similar?” another user reacted on X.
The Nagaland minister himself has repeatedly used humour to address stereotypes directed at people from India’s Northeast, particularly the popular perception that they have “small eyes”.
This theme of Temjen Imna Along went viral in 2022 when he spoke about the supposed advantages of having smaller eyes during a public event.
Acknowledging the stereotype head-on, he joked that people from the northeast do indeed have smaller eyes, but claimed they also have a sharp vision.
“Because of smaller eyes we don’t get much dirt inside the eyes. And we can easily sleep when some long programme is going on,” he said, drawing applause and laughter from the audience.
The video quickly travelled across social media and was also shared by Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma. “My brother Temjen is in full form,” Sarma wrote on X.
Temjen responded in his trademark playful manner. “My eyes may be small, but I can see the camera from a mile. Always pose ready. Also I can see you smile as you reading it! Good Morning,” he wrote.
Temjen’s latest KYC post follows the same playbook of taking a familiar experience or stereotype, turn it into a joke and use the humour to make people notice the larger issue.
The biometric video, however, carries an additional layer. What appears at first to be a funny struggle with an eye scanner also raises questions about how technology interacts with India’s enormous diversity.
For people in the northeast, where facial and physical features can differ from the assumptions built into some technologies, a seemingly routine process such as biometric authentication can become an unexpected obstacle.
Temjen has made a political style out of addressing such subjects without sounding overtly political. His posts often turn everyday experiences into moments of humour, allowing him to connect with audiences beyond conventional political messaging.
And this time, the joke is quite literally in the eye of the scanner. The video might be funny. The problem it points to is not. It’s indeed eye-opening.
– Ends
SOURCE :- TIMES OF INDIA
