Aswin Behera

DataFolks

The Hidden Lives of Our Digital Self

A book about data and privacy for Indian readers. Not a textbook, a book that uses Indian systems and metaphors to make digital infrastructure legible.

WRITING IN PROGRESS 3 sample chapters live

India has the world's largest digital public infrastructure. UPI processes billions of transactions. Aadhaar covers over a billion identities. DigiLocker, CoWIN, ONDC, the India Stack is vast and growing.

Most Indians interact with these systems daily but have no mental model for how they work. What happens when you scan a QR code? Where does your Aadhaar data live? Who can see your UPI transaction history?

These aren't academic questions, they affect 1.4 billion people. DataFolks answers them using Indian systems, Indian metaphors, and Indian stakes.

Central Metaphor

Datafolk, Your Digital Double

Every time you tap, scroll, pay, or search, you leave behind fragments of yourself. These fragments assemble into something surprisingly coherent, a digital double that lives inside databases and algorithms, handled by others, moving through systems you rarely see. This book calls them datafolk.

The book follows your datafolk through their entire life, from birth (data collection) to movement (packets and networks) to the marketplace (profiling and ad-tech) to defence (encryption and rights). Each chapter makes a different invisible system visible, using Indian infrastructure and Indian metaphors.

Table of Contents

Chapters

  1. 00

    Introduction: Meeting Your Datafolk

    The quiet trail you leave behind every day. Through a simple story of logging into an app, meet the idea of a "datafolk", a digital double assembled from clicks, preferences, and habits.

    sample
  2. 01

    How Datafolk Are Born

    From early censuses and punch cards to databases, tracing the origins of data collection. How categorisation creates power and bias, often unintentionally.

    sample
  3. 02

    Couriers, Packets, and Digital Dabbawalas

    How information travels across networks through packets, protocols, cookies, and trackers. The dabbawala metaphor for understanding the internet.

    sample
  4. 03

    The Invisible Bazaar

    The marketplace where datafolk are valued, traded, and profiled. Ad-tech ecosystems, recommendation systems, and real-time bidding explained through a digital bazaar.

    forthcoming
  5. 04

    Mirrors That Predict

    Datafolk encounter their reflections in prediction engines. Machine learning, pattern recognition, and how predictions can reinforce stereotypes and inequalities.

    forthcoming
  6. 05

    When Datafolk Are Copied

    Leaks, breaches, identity theft, and deepfakes. What happens when datafolk escape their intended boundaries and take on lives of their own.

    forthcoming
  7. 06

    Shields, Locks, and Disguises

    Encryption, anonymisation, permissions, and digital rights. Datafolk learn to protect themselves, privacy is about choosing how and where parts of ourselves are visible.

    forthcoming
  8. 07

    Living With Our Datafolk

    What a healthier relationship with data might look like. Data responsibility, regulation, and humane system design, engaging with technology consciously.

    forthcoming

Origin

The ISBF Proposal

DataFolks originated as a proposal for the India Science Book Fellowship (ISBF), designed as a book that makes digital infrastructure legible to a general Indian audience. The fellowship supported early research and chapter development, and the project has since expanded beyond that original scope.

Three sample chapters are live. Start from the introduction or jump in anywhere.

Start reading Interactive experiments

SEARCH