In 2009, I became extremely concerned with the concept of Unique Identity for various reasons. Connected with many like minded highly educated people who were all concerned.
On 18th May 2010, I started this Blog to capture anything and everything I came across on the topic. This blog with its million hits is a testament to my concerns about loss of privacy and fear of the ID being misused and possible Criminal activities it could lead to.
In 2017 the Supreme Court of India gave its verdict after one of the longest hearings on any issue. I did my bit and appealed to the Supreme Court Judges too through an On Line Petition.
In 2019 the Aadhaar Legislation has been revised and passed by the two houses of the Parliament of India making it Legal. I am no Legal Eagle so my Opinion carries no weight except with people opposed to the very concept.
In 2019, this Blog now just captures on a Daily Basis list of Articles Published on anything to do with Aadhaar as obtained from Daily Google Searches and nothing more. Cannot burn the midnight candle any longer.
"In Matters of Conscience, the Law of Majority has no place"- Mahatma Gandhi
Ram Krishnaswamy
Sydney, Australia.

Aadhaar

The UIDAI has taken two successive governments in India and the entire world for a ride. It identifies nothing. It is not unique. The entire UID data has never been verified and audited. The UID cannot be used for governance, financial databases or anything. It’s use is the biggest threat to national security since independence. – Anupam Saraph 2018

When I opposed Aadhaar in 2010 , I was called a BJP stooge. In 2016 I am still opposing Aadhaar for the same reasons and I am told I am a Congress die hard. No one wants to see why I oppose Aadhaar as it is too difficult. Plus Aadhaar is FREE so why not get one ? Ram Krishnaswamy

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.-Mahatma Gandhi

In matters of conscience, the law of the majority has no place.Mahatma Gandhi

“The invasion of privacy is of no consequence because privacy is not a fundamental right and has no meaning under Article 21. The right to privacy is not a guaranteed under the constitution, because privacy is not a fundamental right.” Article 21 of the Indian constitution refers to the right to life and liberty -Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi

“There is merit in the complaints. You are unwittingly allowing snooping, harassment and commercial exploitation. The information about an individual obtained by the UIDAI while issuing an Aadhaar card shall not be used for any other purpose, save as above, except as may be directed by a court for the purpose of criminal investigation.”-A three judge bench headed by Justice J Chelameswar said in an interim order.

Legal scholar Usha Ramanathan describes UID as an inverse of sunshine laws like the Right to Information. While the RTI makes the state transparent to the citizen, the UID does the inverse: it makes the citizen transparent to the state, she says.

Good idea gone bad
I have written earlier that UID/Aadhaar was a poorly designed, unreliable and expensive solution to the really good idea of providing national identification for over a billion Indians. My petition contends that UID in its current form violates the right to privacy of a citizen, guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution. This is because sensitive biometric and demographic information of citizens are with enrolment agencies, registrars and sub-registrars who have no legal liability for any misuse of this data. This petition has opened up the larger discussion on privacy rights for Indians. The current Article 21 interpretation by the Supreme Court was done decades ago, before the advent of internet and today’s technology and all the new privacy challenges that have arisen as a consequence.

Rajeev Chandrasekhar, MP Rajya Sabha

“What is Aadhaar? There is enormous confusion. That Aadhaar will identify people who are entitled for subsidy. No. Aadhaar doesn’t determine who is eligible and who isn’t,” Jairam Ramesh

But Aadhaar has been mythologised during the previous government by its creators into some technology super force that will transform governance in a miraculous manner. I even read an article recently that compared Aadhaar to some revolution and quoted a 1930s historian, Will Durant.Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Rajya Sabha MP

“I know you will say that it is not mandatory. But, it is compulsorily mandatorily voluntary,” Jairam Ramesh, Rajya Saba April 2017.

August 24, 2017: The nine-judge Constitution Bench rules that right to privacy is “intrinsic to life and liberty”and is inherently protected under the various fundamental freedoms enshrined under Part III of the Indian Constitution

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the World; indeed it's the only thing that ever has"

“Arguing that you don’t care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say.” -Edward Snowden

In the Supreme Court, Meenakshi Arora, one of the senior counsel in the case, compared it to living under a general, perpetual, nation-wide criminal warrant.

Had never thought of it that way, but living in the Aadhaar universe is like living in a prison. All of us are treated like criminals with barely any rights or recourse and gatekeepers have absolute power on you and your life.

Announcing the launch of the # BreakAadhaarChainscampaign, culminating with events in multiple cities on 12th Jan. This is the last opportunity to make your voice heard before the Supreme Court hearings start on 17th Jan 2018. In collaboration with @no2uidand@rozi_roti.

UIDAI's security seems to be founded on four time tested pillars of security idiocy

1) Denial

2) Issue fiats and point finger

3) Shoot messenger

4) Bury head in sand.

God Save India

Thursday, December 9, 2010

932 - Aadhaar will institutionalise Poverty in India by Ram Krishnaswamy

9th December 2010 



Aadhaar is a technological solution looking for a problem.

To date we have had no clear explanation from UIDAI on what Aadhaar can truly solve yet the Government of India (GoI) has been coaxed to authorise  an expenditure of  Rs 45000 crores (about US $ 9 billion) just to issue a 12 digit number and a bar code to the most vulnerable people.

Any one questioning Aadhaar is given a standard response that reads “As I said...it is tough to 'debate' misinformation and disinformation.” This leads us to believe that all the information published in UIDAI web site is ‘misinformation and disinformation’ as most questions being raised are based on the information provided by UIDAI in the web site and propagated through the media.

On 28th August, Mr.R.S.Sharma, Director General of UIDAI, an IIT Kanpur alumnus and an IAS officer and second in command to UIDAI Chief Nandan Nilekani wrote in his EPW articleThe article “A Unique Identity Bill” (EPW, 24 July 2010) reflects some fundamental misunderstandings on the objectives of the Unique Identity Authority of India, the features of the identity number, and the impact it will have on privacy”.

If Aadhaar was on strong footings, UIDAI officials will seize opportunities to answer questions raised as opposed to questioning people’s capacity to understand the objectives of UIDAI.

To date not only has there been no public debate on the authenticity of Aadhaar; the UIDAI chief will not agree to a public Q & A session. Several IIT alumni had requested a Q & A Session with Nandan Nilekani at the PanIIT 2010 meet in October at Noida and the request has been ignored to date. If he will not talk to other IITians it is unlikely he will agree to a public debate on TV.

The very foundation of Aadhaar that assumes that the “poor have no identity” is shallow and unstable.

Educated Indians will not accept being told that that they have “no identity” as it questions their parentage and legitimacy of birth. 

Aadhaar is tantamount to bastardisation of the poor and branding the poor for life, institutionalising poverty.

Aadhaar will divide a nation already fragmented by religion, caste and language with a new criteria called Aadhaar that draws a clear & distinct line between the "haves and the have nots"

The poor who accept Aadhaar without fully understanding the lifetime implications will be branded “Poor for Life” and issued a Bar Code. No educated person with any self respect will volunteer to register for Aadhaar to be branded poor for life and this means it will result in victimisation of the illiterate masses who do not understand and who look up to the government for some aid to tide over poverty and hunger for the present and not necessarily in perpetuity.

The irony is that a scheme that assumes the poor have no recognisable identity for GoI to issue subsidies, demands that people produce identification papers as proof of identity to register for Aadhaar. Does this make sense?

Can Aadhaar fix the PDS that is leaking so badly? Afraid not - only because Aadhaar assumes that the PDS is not working as the leakage is in the “last mile”, where the needy poor are greedy and have multiple identities double dipping into govt subsidies. The ground reality is that the very poor do not even have enough money to be able to buy a full month’s ration and as such fore go a large percentage of their monthly entitlements.

What can Aadhaar do besides de-duplication and authentication to establish that a poor starving & malnourished Indian deserves his rations?

  • How will Aadhaar save millions of tonnes of food grain rotting all over the nation?
  • How will Aadhaar prevent illegal sales of PDS grains interstate?
  • How will Aadhaar prevent millions of tonnes of PDS rice from being illegally exported to Singapore & Malaysia?
  • Can Aadhaar stop local PDS officials selling food grains at a higher price?
  • How will Aadhaar stop large scale diversion of PDS food grains in transit?
  • Does Aadhaar not wrongly assume that it is the poor population “in the last mile”, who are the main cheats and have multiple ration cards under bogus names, which is to be tackled through de-duplication?
  • Will UIDAI authority acknowledge that the bogus ration cards are mostly owned and held by PDS officials and Ration shop owners who fudge sales that never took place and then sell the grains at a much higher price to general public making huge profits?
  • PDS is described as a sham and a scam and an abject failure. Will Govt money not be better spent plugging all the loop holes and cleaning up the PDS system, as opposed to targeting the very poor PDS is supposed to assist? Why create one more unwieldy monster called UIDAI to issue Aadhaar to resurrect an out of control PDS & NREGA?

Is it fair to state that UIDAI authority will take four or even five long years to issue Aadhaar to 600 million people and it will take many more years and many more billions to have biometric scanners, computers and internet connections installed in ration shops around the nation and that means for another ten years the PDS & NREGA rort will continue?

If Aadhaar is a mega project can we ask the Project Manager the following questions:

  • Is there a cost benefit analysis for the Aadhaar project? If yes can it be uploaded in the UIDAI web site please.
  • Aadhaar is useless until scanners are available for authentication. Finance ministry has approved a budget of Rs 7000 crores a year for the next four years. Does this budget include the cost of authentication equipment like biometric scanners, micro ATMs, computers and internet connectivity? 
  • Should the costing for the project not be disclosed to the public?
  • If poor had money they would not be classified poor and would have taken to bank accounts as they have taken to mobile phones in India. Poor do not need bank accounts as they have no money to deposit in banks. Is the nation justified in forcing national banks to create about 600 millions bank accounts that would be dormant but for two transactions a month, one for the govt deposit and the other for withdrawal of this paltry sum?
  • What is the opportunity cost to India? Alleviating poverty levels? Investing in agricultural projects and assisting the farmers? Creating employment for those Aadhaar is claiming to assist and help them come out of the poverty trap?
  • As Aadhaar is not compulsory can an individual not have two identities; one with real name and identity documents like passports, driving license and bank accounts and the other with Aadhaar using an alias with associated biometrics? Can Aadhaar prevent this fraud as it is not compulsory?
  • If the concept of ID Cards has been abandoned in USA, UK and Australia due to cost & privacy implications why are these not real issues in India? Do the poor in India not have a right to Privacy?
  • How can any system that is optional provide a complete solution? Does this not mean that despite Aadhaar large sections of disadvantaged people will still be left out of the system?

These are just a few questions and there are many more related to biometrics which shall be raised when some of these questions get answered.

The questions raised by the concerned members of the public need to be answered; they cannot be dismissed as results of ‘misinformation and disinformation’.

UIDAI cannot coerce an entire nation into Silence on the Aadhaar Project.



About the author: 
Ram Krishnaswamy
B.Tech. IIT Madras, M.Bldg.Sc. Uni of Sydney. MIE(Aust) MAAS