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

Monday, September 6, 2010

511 - Madness in this Wondrous Land - Sentinel Assam

By Tavleen Singh
6th September 2010 


Madness in this Wondrous Land
 Nandan Nilekani, head of the UID project, should go and see Peepli Live if he has not already seen it and think twice about his grandiose scheme

ON THE SPOT

I n one of those coincidences that make the job of writing columns easier, I happened to see Peepli Live last week on the evening before yet another article appeared in yet another major newspaper in praise of Nandan Nilekani’s scheme to give every Indian a unique identity number. Nandan’s charm has so bowled over most commentators in the Indian media that nobody asks him the only question that needs to be asked: can it work? The other question that nobody asks him is: can thousands of crores of rupees of taxpayers money be wasted on yet another massive gamble?

Nandan has grown up in urban India where even if the bijli goes it usually comes back. And in companies like his own Infosys they make sure that it never goes by investing in their own power generation. If they relied on municipal sources Infosys could not have survived, leave alone become one of the most famous companies in the world. In rural India things are much, much worse. There is almost not a single village in the whole of our fair and wondrous land that can tell you with certainty that they can guarantee you 24 hours of reliable electricity. So can someone please explain to me how sophisticated electronic devices that can recognize you by your eyes will work? It is in the villages that nearly 70 per cent of our billion people live and  they have another problem that the Unique Identity scheme appears not to have noticed. They are mostly illiterate or semi-literate.  I must admit that even I, a college graduate, finds going through Iris at London airport intimidating.  Half the times I have tried using it, the machine has been out of order. It is beyond horror to think what could happen to an Iris machine in the heat and dust of an Indian village.

What connects Nandan’s expensive, futuristic scheme to Peepli Live is that the UID scheme is of a piece with the absurdities depicted in the film.  Let me explain how. Natha, a destitute farmer, is coerced into committing suicide because in his desperately poor village they hear that the government gives the families of farmers who commit suicide a compensation of Rs 1 lakh. A passing news hound hears about his plan and writes a story that gets picked up by a fancy lady TV anchor in Delhi. She swoops into the village and carries Natha’s story on prime time leading to an army of OB vans descending on Peepli village. When politicians are put on the line by about Natha’s suicide plans, they arrive in the village and offer him  a hand pump called Lal Bahadur, but do not pay for it to be installed, a massive colour TV set without noticing that his mud hut has no bijli and a plethora of other sops none of which are any use to him. When, finally, the Chief Minister offers him cash to stay alive, the Election Commission rules that this violates the model code of the election campaign. Natha ends up with nothing.


As someone who spends much time travelling in villages let me tell you some more examples of the Peepli Live kind. In villages in the Daltonganj district of what was then Bihar, I once came across a government scheme that gave goats to destitute families without noticing that there was no grazing land left in these villages. The goats ended up dead or eaten. In Kalahandi during a terrible drought in the eighties, I was horrified to see free food being distributed to children but only those who were under the age of five were allowed to eat at these free kitchens. So little children ate a few morsels and took the rest home for their starving brothers and sisters. Typically the food was only given in towns and villages to which there were roads. In remote villages in which children were dying every day of starvation, the only government assistance that arrived were malaria medicines. A local doctor had tears in his eyes when he told me that the only thing wrong with the dying children was that they had not eaten in a single real meal in more than six months.

In Maharashtra, one of our richest States, I came across a similarly useless attempt to save children from starving to death. This was no more than three or four years ago when reports of starvation deaths came from Nandurbar. When the children were on the verge of death they would be brought to the hospital in Akalkuwa town and given Rs 40 worth of food a day. They got eggs and milk and fresh vegetables, but as soon as they were well they would be sent home to starve again because the family could afford no more than Rs 10 worth of food a day. Articles appeared on the lunacy of this scheme, courts intervened to chastise the government, children’s rights activists got involved, but as far as I know the Integrated Child Development Scheme carries on unchanged.

If you are asking yourself why go and see Peepli Live. But I can offer you my humble opinion based on decades of covering politics and government. The simple reason why we continue to pour massive amounts of money into mammoth, unmanageable schemes is because they provide a thousand ways in which officials can line their own pockets in the name of social welfare. If we had simpler, decentralized schemes that were run by village panchayats and district councils, there would be less chances for officials to make money because in a village everyone knows when some corrupt sarpanch is stealing. If, under the orders of the Supreme Court, the Minister of Agriculture goes ahead and distributes the food grain that is rotting in the open, then would he please make sure that it is distributed in decentralized fashion.

Meanwhile, dear Nandan Nilekani, please go and see Peepli Live if you have not already seen it and think twice about your grandiose scheme that cannot possibly work until the fundamentals for such a scheme are in place. It is an irony that the scheme’s name is Aadhaar. This means foundation in Hindi and what is lacking is in fact the aadhaar for such a scheme. The article I read reported that Rs 3,000 crore was being set aside to give Rs 100 to each destitute Indian as an incentive to enroll in the UID programme. If this is not madness, will someone please tell me what is?

Tavleen Singh

(Follow Tavleen Singh on Twitter@tavleen_singh)
CLICK ON TITLE TO SEE ORIGINAL ARTICLE - Posted by