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

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

2030 - Term over, experience gained, bulk of private sector team quits Aadhar - Express India

Chinki Sinha,Chinki Sinha
Posted: Nov 29, 2011 at 0000 hrs IST

New Delhi The Harvard graduate has left. So has the executive who had graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and left a “lucrative banking career” to serve the nation. One will join a startup, the other will start a business. Many others have left for other jobs or for studies abroad, leveraging their UIDAI experience.

The Unique Identification Authority of India, under the chairmanship of Nandan Nilekani, was marked by the first-ever attempt at a setup where the private and public sectors would work together on its project to give every Indian an identity, an Aadhar number. The idea was to combine the “efficiency” of the private sector with government officials’ “knowledge of the system”.

Now, the bulk of those in the non-salaried groups — volunteers and sabbatical workers — have left, as data from the UIDAI show (see box). Officials say many of them left because their term had ended. Not many volunteers or sabbatical staff have since joined, but officials say some more have joined in the salaried category.

Among volunteers who have left is Nilekani’s senior at IIT Bombay, Raj Mashruwala, who had sent him a congratulatory note offering to help him. Only a handful have extended their terms, including Govindraj Ethiraj, a journalist and TV anchor who is a sabbatical worker and writing a book on UIDAI.

The model
“The model was flawed as nobody will work for too long without being paid,” a UIDAI official said. “Goodwill and the temptation of having UIDAI on their resumes brought in a lot of private sector people but they didn’t understand the system. They saw it as a means to enter the government laterally.”

At the PMU (project management unit), private sector employees are hired with salary by the National Institute of Smart Government with which the UIDAI has an agreement.

Several new people have been hired, UIDAI deputy director general Kumar Alok said. “They come and go. We receive many applications as the project has great visibility in terms of being the largest national identity project ever implemented,” he said.

‘Too many controls’
One sabbatical worker said he travelled often to make presentations on Aadhaar and interact with communities to understand their needs. He had wanted to give back to the community, he said, but over the last few months, the energy that he had felt in the organisation began to ebb because of too many controls. Many things, he said, got mired in the bureaucratic processes. 

Reimbursements were delayed, travel plans were stalled because of numerous permissions to be sought on paper, not just by emails. Government officials’ response was that they had to keep accounts.

The system
Over the past few months, the government has introduced new guidelines specifying the term of the contract has to be a minimum one year for volunteers and sabbatical resources, said Awadhesh Kumar Pandey, assistant director general.

Initially, there was friction between government and private sector members who couldn’t reconcile with the government’s way of working, its hierarchies and its formal setup. “We introduced brainstorming sessions and made them work together on issues like RTI queries so they could iron out their issues,” Pandey said.

“It is a government project and the two sides needed to understand each other,” Pandey said. Director general R S Sharma too said it is a government project and “government shall exercise control.”

One official said travel bills started mounting. The UIDAI, which apparently hadn’t made it clear that only Air India flights’ fares would be reimbursed, refused to pay outstanding fares on other airlines.

“Suddenly, we saw people were travelling too much. They would have breakfast in Jaipur, dinner in Udaipur, and the next morning they would be Bangalore. These were mostly private sector people,” an official said.

Many from the private sector said they liked being part of a national project under Nilekani but a few said they were unable to work the way they would have liked. The UIDAI says the initial issues have been resolved and the project is on target.

Leverage
“Those who left had come with a purpose. They pumped up their resumes with the UIDAI experience of working on a complex data management system, and then left when an opportunity came their way. We have recruited others,” the government official said. “They discovered they couldn’t have everything their way and there was a system in place they had to follow, and they left.”