Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Why we don't need an "Aadhar"?
Dear Mr. PM,
I am writing this to bring to your notice a matter of serious concern which has been conspicuously not taken up enough by mainstream media. While I have great respect for your vision, acumen and capabilities, I feel the confines of Z+ security at Race Course road has somewhat taken you away from the common man of India. Few months back, you quietly handed the first Aadhar ID to a bunch of poor Indians thinking you have found the panacea of all the problems facing the country today. You, on suggestion of few individuals equally disengaged from ground realities (read Nandan Nilekani), assumed that a 12 digit number would solve all the problems like corruption, poverty and hunger that face this country. While you were busy visualizing ways this 12 digit number could help in elimination of corruption, people like A Raja, Kalmadi and ISRO officials were busy creating scams running into 12 digits right under your nose. I am pretty sure, your 12 digit "Aadhar" has no aadhar to tackle this kind of rampant corruption. I find Aadhar to be grossly misleading, dangerous and a big blow to exchequer for the following reasons:
Panacea for all evils:
The biggest justification given to Aadhar is that it can stop the pilferage in Public Distribution System (PDS). There is no denying that poor don't receive allotted food grains, benefits under Govt. schemes etc as expected but that is not only because of lack of identity. In-fact if you travel to villages, you will find that large majority of poor people do have identities like Ration Cards, BPL cards, Voter ID card etc but the PDS distributors/NREGA coordinators don't give them their full entitlements. Basically, they get their signatures/thumb impressions on much inflated quantities/amounts, where the excess is sold in black market/their pockets. Even if you provide these people with Aadhar, they will end up being the victim just like they have been so far. The way to address this issues is not creating a new ID but making the grievance addressing mechanism stronger, where even a poor guy can complain and get action done against the corrupt officials if he/she is not given his/her due.
Wastage of Public Money:
Election commission of India started issuing voter ID cards over a decade back and still is not rolled out completely. Even where it is rolled out, there are major errors in the data. My card spells my name wrongly, whereas each of my family members has some or other mistakes in their cards including date of birth, address etc. Despite being educated and informed, I couldn't get my voter ID card rectified. What makes you believe that Aadhar will be different? Will it not be one of those mammoth projects that never achieved what they were set out for?
Countries like UK, Australia etc. have tried similar projects in past but concluded them to be infeasible. What makes you think that we would be any different given the much bigger size of our country and much lesser per capita resource available to Govt.?
If we have to utilize all the advertised benefits of Aadhar, we will have to put in place huge infrastructure in place such as millions of biometric scanners, thousands of micro ATMs and internet connectivity at every point where Aadhar will be verified. Is India currently in a position to undertake these kind of investments when we don't have adequate roads, metros, fly-overs and electricity in all homes?
A rough calculation shows that if each PDS shop were to utilize Aadhar identification for disbursing grains, they will have to shelve out roughly 2.5 Lakh rupees. Do you really think those people can afford that kind of money without extracting even more profit through black-marketing? Basically you are giving them more motive to be dishonest.
No project feasibility study was ever taken, no cost benefit analysis done (atleast to public's knowledge) and national debate held in parliament. Never in my professional life have I seen a project even above 1 Million dollars go to the execution stage without a feasibility study, brainstorming and discussions. Here we are undertaking a project worth billions without any such study.
Identity/Privacy Issues:
In a country as diverse as ours, there is a very high probability of Aadhar being misused by the ruling Governments against certain sections of society. While I agree that post independence so far we have been lucky enough to have a fully functional democratic setup, thus precluding such incidents from happening but that is no surety for future. If we ever have a totalitarian regime in the future, Aadhar can be used for catastrophic end results. Who would have thought of Jews persecution in Germany by Hitler in early 20th century, say 1901 AD.
A few key strokes will yield complete lists of males, females, Muslim, Christian and Hindus in that district. Imagine this information getting into the wrong hands. The argument will be but Aadhaar database does not include religion. Is it not possible to get around this by searching the database using names for example names like Raman, Rehman or Raymonds? This can be extremely dangerous to say the least.
How can the system protect ‘Identity theft’ in such a vast population? One of the major issues in the western world is identity theft. Even in countries with a fraction of the population numbers of India, there are fraudulent people drawing government pensions and social security benefits for years using dead people's IDs. Identity theft is an international issue and a thesis can be written on the topic.
Does being a ‘poor’ person in India leave him or her unprotected from all issues related to invasion of their privacy? (This topic is best left to legal experts on privacy and human rights issues.)?
I know 7 Race course is too far for my voice to be heard so I have put it in my blog.
Regards,
Gajendra
at 9:20 PM Posted by Gajendra Sidana
Why we don't need an "Aadhar"?
Dear Mr. PM,
I am writing this to bring to your notice a matter of serious concern which has been conspicuously not taken up enough by mainstream media. While I have great respect for your vision, acumen and capabilities, I feel the confines of Z+ security at Race Course road has somewhat taken you away from the common man of India. Few months back, you quietly handed the first Aadhar ID to a bunch of poor Indians thinking you have found the panacea of all the problems facing the country today. You, on suggestion of few individuals equally disengaged from ground realities (read Nandan Nilekani), assumed that a 12 digit number would solve all the problems like corruption, poverty and hunger that face this country. While you were busy visualizing ways this 12 digit number could help in elimination of corruption, people like A Raja, Kalmadi and ISRO officials were busy creating scams running into 12 digits right under your nose. I am pretty sure, your 12 digit "Aadhar" has no aadhar to tackle this kind of rampant corruption. I find Aadhar to be grossly misleading, dangerous and a big blow to exchequer for the following reasons:
Panacea for all evils:
The biggest justification given to Aadhar is that it can stop the pilferage in Public Distribution System (PDS). There is no denying that poor don't receive allotted food grains, benefits under Govt. schemes etc as expected but that is not only because of lack of identity. In-fact if you travel to villages, you will find that large majority of poor people do have identities like Ration Cards, BPL cards, Voter ID card etc but the PDS distributors/NREGA coordinators don't give them their full entitlements. Basically, they get their signatures/thumb impressions on much inflated quantities/amounts, where the excess is sold in black market/their pockets. Even if you provide these people with Aadhar, they will end up being the victim just like they have been so far. The way to address this issues is not creating a new ID but making the grievance addressing mechanism stronger, where even a poor guy can complain and get action done against the corrupt officials if he/she is not given his/her due.
Wastage of Public Money:
Election commission of India started issuing voter ID cards over a decade back and still is not rolled out completely. Even where it is rolled out, there are major errors in the data. My card spells my name wrongly, whereas each of my family members has some or other mistakes in their cards including date of birth, address etc. Despite being educated and informed, I couldn't get my voter ID card rectified. What makes you believe that Aadhar will be different? Will it not be one of those mammoth projects that never achieved what they were set out for?
Countries like UK, Australia etc. have tried similar projects in past but concluded them to be infeasible. What makes you think that we would be any different given the much bigger size of our country and much lesser per capita resource available to Govt.?
If we have to utilize all the advertised benefits of Aadhar, we will have to put in place huge infrastructure in place such as millions of biometric scanners, thousands of micro ATMs and internet connectivity at every point where Aadhar will be verified. Is India currently in a position to undertake these kind of investments when we don't have adequate roads, metros, fly-overs and electricity in all homes?
A rough calculation shows that if each PDS shop were to utilize Aadhar identification for disbursing grains, they will have to shelve out roughly 2.5 Lakh rupees. Do you really think those people can afford that kind of money without extracting even more profit through black-marketing? Basically you are giving them more motive to be dishonest.
No project feasibility study was ever taken, no cost benefit analysis done (atleast to public's knowledge) and national debate held in parliament. Never in my professional life have I seen a project even above 1 Million dollars go to the execution stage without a feasibility study, brainstorming and discussions. Here we are undertaking a project worth billions without any such study.
Identity/Privacy Issues:
In a country as diverse as ours, there is a very high probability of Aadhar being misused by the ruling Governments against certain sections of society. While I agree that post independence so far we have been lucky enough to have a fully functional democratic setup, thus precluding such incidents from happening but that is no surety for future. If we ever have a totalitarian regime in the future, Aadhar can be used for catastrophic end results. Who would have thought of Jews persecution in Germany by Hitler in early 20th century, say 1901 AD.
A few key strokes will yield complete lists of males, females, Muslim, Christian and Hindus in that district. Imagine this information getting into the wrong hands. The argument will be but Aadhaar database does not include religion. Is it not possible to get around this by searching the database using names for example names like Raman, Rehman or Raymonds? This can be extremely dangerous to say the least.
How can the system protect ‘Identity theft’ in such a vast population? One of the major issues in the western world is identity theft. Even in countries with a fraction of the population numbers of India, there are fraudulent people drawing government pensions and social security benefits for years using dead people's IDs. Identity theft is an international issue and a thesis can be written on the topic.
Does being a ‘poor’ person in India leave him or her unprotected from all issues related to invasion of their privacy? (This topic is best left to legal experts on privacy and human rights issues.)?
I know 7 Race course is too far for my voice to be heard so I have put it in my blog.
Regards,
Gajendra
at 9:20 PM Posted by Gajendra Sidana
