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

Friday, August 5, 2011

1492 - The cash mantra by Jean Dreze - Indian Express

Posted: Wed May 11 2011, 01:10 hrs

Conditional cash transfers” (CCTs) are a new buzzword in policy circles. The idea is simple: give poor people cash conditional on good behaviour such as sending children to school. This helps to score two goals in one shot: poor people get some income support, and at the same time, they take steps to lift themselves out of poverty.
 
CCT enthusiasm, however, is often based on a superficial reading of the Latin American experience. In Brazil, Mexico and other pioneers of this approach, CCTs were used to bring into the fold of health and education services a fringe of marginalised households, in a situation where a large majority of the population was already covered by extensive social insurance systems. CCT is basically an incentive and, predictably enough, it often works: if you pay people to do something that benefits them anyway, they tend to do it. It is the same principle as scholarships for disadvantaged children. Incidentally, there is no evidence that scholarships — that is, conditional cash transfers — work better than “conditional kind transfers” like school meals or free bicycles for girls who complete Class 8. In fact, I submit that the latter would win hands down in any sensible and sensitive evaluation of the two approaches. Be that as it may, I am not questioning the potential effectiveness of CCTs in their limited capacity of “incentive”.

What is remarkably dangerous, however, is the illusion that CCTs can replace public services by enabling recipients to buy health and education services from private providers. This is not how CCTs work in, say, Brazil or Mexico. In Latin America, CCTs are usually seen as a complement, not a substitute, for public provision of health, education and other basic services. The incentives work because the services are there in the first place. In India, these basic services are still missing to a large extent, and CCTs are no substitute.

Consider, for instance, healthcare. In Brazil, basic health services such as immunisation, antenatal care, and skilled attendance at birth are virtually universal. The state has done its homework — almost half of all health expenditure in Brazil is public expenditure, compared with barely one quarter (of a much lower total) in India. In this situation, providing incentives to complete the universalisation of healthcare seems quite sensible. In India, however, public health services are virtually non-existent, and it would be very unwise to think that CCT-type programmes like the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY) can fill the gap.

Another contextual difference, mentioned earlier, is that Latin American countries tend to have highly developed social insurance systems, with wide coverage. “Targeting” CCTs to marginalised groups in such a situation makes some sense, because the bulk of the population is already covered and the rest is (relatively) easy to identify. In India, however, large sections of the population are in dire need of social support, and the experience with targeting is quite sobering. Indeed, every known method of identifying “BPL” (below poverty line) households involves large exclusion errors. This is an unresolved issue for any targeted CCT initiative in India.

In short, a nuanced approach is required to the design of social security transfers. CCTs are useful in some circumstances: scholarships are one example. In other situations, like pensions for widows and the elderly, there is a case for unconditional cash transfers. Conditional transfers in kind, such as midday meals in primary schools, also have a role.

Finally, there is a place for unconditional transfers in kind, such as the Public Distribution System (PDS).

A wholesale transition from the PDS to cash transfers in rural India would, in my view, be misguided and at the very least premature. For poor people, food entitlements have several advantages over cash transfers. First, they are inflation-proof, unlike cash transfers that can be eroded by local price increases, even if they are indexed to the general price level. Second, food tends to be consumed more wisely and sparingly; cash, on the other hand, can easily be misused. Third, food is shared equitably within the family, while cash can easily be cornered by selfish individuals. Fourth, the PDS network has a much wider reach than the banking system. In remote areas, where the need for social assistance is the greatest, banking facilities are simply not ready for a system of cash transfers (as it is, they are unable to cope with NREGA wage payments). Last but not least, cash transfers are likely to bring in their trail predatory commercial interests and exploitative elements, eager to sell alcohol, branded products, fake insurance policies or other items that would contribute very little to people’s nutrition or well-being.

Of course, cash transfers have their advantages too: they have lower transaction costs, are (potentially) more convenient for migrant labourers, and may be easier to monitor. Sometime in the future, when the banking system has a wider reach and the food security problem has been resolved, a cautious transition to cash transfers may be advisable. Indeed, I am not averse to the idea of a “universal basic income”. But this is a somewhat futuristic idea, and for the time being, food is best.

The most common argument for cash transfers is that cash makes it possible to satisfy a variety of needs (not just food), and that people are best judges of their own priorities. Fair enough. But if people are best judges of their own interest, why not ask them whether they prefer food or cash? In my limited experience, poor people tend to prefer food, with a gradual shift from food-preference to cash-preference among better-off households. Further, poor people tend to give very convincing reasons for preferring food. I am more inclined to listen to them than to the learned champions of cash transfers.

The writer is an honorary professor at the Delhi School of Economics and a member of the National Advisory Council