Nilekani Says India to Offer Poor $2 for Iris Scans (Update1)
April 27, 2010, 4:10 AM EDT
By Saikat Chatterjee
April 27 (Bloomberg) -- Billionaire Nandan Nilekani, who heads the government agency tasked with giving Indians a unique identity number, said the country will offer $2 to its poorest to compensate them for lost wages while they get iris scans.
India’s Finance Commission has granted 30 billion rupees ($676 million) over five years to the Nilekani-headed Unique Identification Authority of India to entice the nation’s poor to sign up for the world’s largest biometric database.
“Since the poor have to forego their income and go through great inconvenience to get the number, they should get reimbursed at least 100 rupees,” Nilekani, one of the founders of Bangalore-based software developer Infosys Technologies Ltd., said at a press conference in New Delhi yesterday. He stepped down as co-chairman of Infosys in July to set up the authority.
India appointed Nilekani to set up a fraud-proof system that will help the government provide access to banking services and state benefits such as food subsidies to the poorest, who are often excluded because they can’t prove their identity. Subsidies accounted for about 13 percent of the government’s total expenditure in the year ended March 31.
The plan to set up an identity database is part of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s effort to increase incomes and provide benefits to more of the 456 million Indians the World Bank says live on less than $1.25 a day.
Nilekani and his family rank 721st in Forbes magazine’s list of world billionaires.
Iris Scans
The authority plans to provide the first set of 12-digit numbers between August through February, said its Director General R.S. Sharma at the press conference to unveil a logo and name for the project yesterday. The agency plans to cover at least half of India’s 1.2 billion people by the summer of 2014.
The agency decided to use iris scans in addition to fingerprints because people engaged in activities such as making local hand-rolled cigarettes called bidis have worn out fingerprints, Sharma said. The authority is in the process of hiring companies to develop software to build the database that will include names, dates of birth and iris scans, he said.
The project’s logo consists of a fingerprint in red, ringed with the sun’s rays in orange. The name Aadhaar means foundation in Hindi.
The enrollment incentive will be given only to the poorest, identified as those living below the so-called poverty line, Nilekani said.
Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee has allocated 19 billion rupees to the authority for this financial year, which ends March 31.
India, the world’s fastest-growing major economy after China, may expand by as much as 8.25 percent in the year that began April 1, Prime Minister Singh said last week.
--Editors: Abhay Singh
To contact the reporters on this story: Saikat Chatterjee in New Delhi at schatterjee4@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Frank Longid at flongid@bloomberg.net
Why this Blog ? News articles in the Wide World of Web, quite often disappear with time, when they are relocated as archives with a different url. Archives in this blog serve as a library for those who are interested in doing Research on Aadhaar Related Topics. Articles are published with details of original publication date and the url.
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
