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, November 9, 2017

12351 - Citizens, you’re guilty: If a government begins to mistrust citizens, good governance becomes impossible - TNN


November 8, 2017, 2:00 AM IST Sagarika Ghose in Bloody Mary | Edit PageIndiaNarendra Modi |TOI

Have you not yet linked your bank account or mobile telephone number with your Aadhaar card? You’re guilty. 
Are you finding it difficult to fill complicated GST forms? You’re guilty. 
Did you ever keep cash in the house? You’re guilty. 
Do you eat meat? You’re guilty. 
Do you read Mughal history? You’re guilty. 
Do you feel it’s not necessary to play the national anthem in movie theatres? You’re guilty. 
Are you insisting on a right to privacy? You must be guilty!

As a Leviathan state also becomes a super-snoop surveillance state, with news TV as its shrill storm trooper, modern democracy’s basic principle – innocent until proven guilty – is being turned on its head. Every citizen is now potentially guilty and has to prove her innocence, her patriotism and her commitment to the newly launched moral crusade to ‘purify’ India. Not guilty? Prove it on a daily basis, because Big Brother is watching. As former PM Manmohan Singh said, the attitude of suspecting everyone to be a thief is damaging to democratic discourse.

This week last year, every 500 and 1,000 rupee note became illegal by sudden prime ministerial command. Any Indian citizen who kept a bit of cash for rainy days (as home-makers routinely do), or dealt in cash for their business became, in the eyes of the state, a quasi-criminal, a possible hoarder of kaala dhan. 

The PM likened demonetisation to a “yajna”, an enforced puja to clean India of the ‘sin’ of black money by an endurance test of standing in endless queues, risking death (over 100 deaths allegedly resulted from demonetisation) and suffering acute daily hardship. This was not about economic reform, but about paap and punya, a rigorous moral pilgrimage to atone for past immorality.

                         Illustration: Ajit Ninan

In actuality demonetisation was the apotheosis of state power in India, the super state flexing its muscles over citizens, a national ‘purification’ ritual dictated from on-high that assumed that every citizen was a sinner and needed shock treatment to prove her innocence and patriotism.

The manner in which the Aadhaar card is being relentlessly imposed almost as a punitive measure is another example of the Modi government’s fundamental mistrust of the Indian citizen. Aadhaar was meant only as a means to ensure better delivery of services. Instead it has now become a stick with which to beat citizens, a means by which the government can scrutinise an individual’s private life from birth until death.

There is panic among the public, the Supreme Court recently stated, asking telecom companies and banks to stop harassing customers with warnings about Aadhaar linkages. The word Aadhaar was supposed to suggest welfare, it now evokes fear.

India’s Constitution puts individual rights first but increasingly it is citizens who are the focus of suspicion. In certain authoritarian quarters, wielding the danda has long been argued as the way to bring notoriously lawless Indians to heel, but India’s greatest resource has always been its people. If Indians are subject to endless surveillance, checks, identity searches and become the target of perpetual government mistrust and suspicion, the question arises, can the Indian people realise their full potential? 

The regimented Indian is the unsuccessful Indian, it is the free Indian who is the soaring thinker, sparkling innovator, business builder and high achiever. The phenomenal success of Indians in the US shows how well the Indian genius thrives in the land of the free. When the Indian is brow-beaten and cowed, how can he or she be a super achiever?

Our founders dreamt that India too would be a republic of the free but today it’s not citizens but the state that is free to do exactly what it wants. A year after demonetisation the state rules supreme. Governments across India are dictating how patriotic feelings must be expressed. 

In Jaipur municipal officials must sing the national anthem and Vande Mataram. Government teachers in Haryana must be trained as priests. In UP, social media posts against the ruling party can get you arrested. Rules on cattle slaughter have meant that the citizen can’t pursue the cattle trade or eat beef. Rumours that khichdi was about to be declared a ‘national dish’ contained an important subliminal message: if India ever gets a national food it will be a vegetarian one that gets the official stamp.

While the drive across the world is how to make governments more transparent and accountable to citizens, the animating spirit of this government seems to be the reverse: that citizens are by nature corrupt, they’re hiding personal information, they evade taxes, they’re slothful, lawless, don’t do enough yoga and must be reined in and made accountable to the government.

Why this mistrust? Precisely because the remaking of India according to the ideological Hindutva blueprint is such a priority. Individual rights are an obstacle to the creation of the Hindu rashtra. Whether on vegetarian food for girls in BHU or the fact that in Kashmir any newspaper with “anti-national” content may now be denied government advertising, the citizen must repeatedly be subjected to a rigorous moral and patriotic examination. Yet at the same time the ruling party itself is seen in an embrace with the likes of Mukul Roy, accused in Narada and Saradha scams. It may even flirt with a Narayan Rane in Maharashtra who BJP once accused of being steeped in corruption.


When the prevailing mindset is everyone-is-guilty, then even the guilty are easily normalised in politics. The sab neta chor hai is a highly anti-democratic sentiment, equally repressive is the belief by a government that every citizen-is-guilty-of-something. Without trust there’s no openness and without openness the aspiring Indian will not be able to lift off into uncharted skies.