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

Saturday, October 13, 2012

2695 - India’s enduring problem with malnutrition


11 August 2012 Last updated at 02:34 GMT
By Andrew North
BBC News, Madhya Pradesh


Deshraj reaches out for his mother's breast as she balances him on her knees, sitting outside her low, mud-walled home.
The little boy cries, but with no strength.
Deshraj is two years old but barely larger than a newborn and crazed by hunger.
His hair is patchy, his eyes are sunken and his legs like twigs - he is so weak he can't even walk.
But his mother turns him away; she has nothing left to give.
"We can't get him to eat bread," she says in an irritated tone, clearly annoyed at being asked questions, and walks away.
Deshraj is one of millions of Indian children suffering severe malnutrition, an enduring problem Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has called a "national shame".
Continue reading the main story
Start Quote
Sometimes the mothers don't know how best to look after their children”
Health worker

Yet despite supposedly spending billions of rupees on poverty and food-relief programmes - and during a period of sustained economic growth - the government has made only a dent in the problem.
It is estimated that one in four of the world's malnourished children is in India, more even than in sub-Saharan Africa.
Weakened by hunger, they are more vulnerable to disease, with tens of thousands dying every year. Millions more will be physically and mentally stunted for life because they don't get enough to eat in their crucial early years.

'Hunger belt'

India has fallen in child development rankings, putting it behind poorer countries such as neighbouring Bangladesh or the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to a new study by the Save the Children charity.
So when UK Prime Minister David Cameron hosts a summit this weekend on child malnutrition worldwide, India is one of the countries of greatest concern.
Yet this is hardly a new problem. India has been arguing over what to do about hunger and the poverty that underpins it for years - while its farms produce ever more food.

The feeding centre in Markheda village is empty apart from a few sacks of emergency food

On paper there is already a multi-billion dollar network in place to look after children like Deshraj.

But too often, corruption and mismanagement mean it doesn't work.
Deep in the so-called "hunger belt" of central India, Deshraj's village, Markheda, has a government-subsidised food shop funded by the Public Distribution System (PDS).

It entitles every family living below the official poverty line to 35kg of grain or rice a month.

His extreme case is known too: he has been identified as one of 19 "dangerously malnourished" children in the village, making him eligible for emergency help from the local "nutrition rehabilitation centre" in the nearby town of Shivpuri.
But here it gets even more complicated.

"His family won't agree to send him," complains one of the health workers who suddenly arrive in the village while the BBC is there.
It is true that Deshraj's mother does not appear overly concerned about his condition. Like most people here, she's illiterate and doesn't seem to understand many of the questions she is asked before walking away.
Continue reading the main story
Start Quote
"I can't remember when we last saw someone from the government here”
Markheda villager
"Sometimes the mothers don't know how best to look after their children," says the health worker.
There are other boys and girls in this settlement of about 600 families who appear in better, although far from perfect, health.

Bottom rung
But it's questionable too how committed the local authorities are to helping remote villages like this.
Markheda's residents are all tribals, on the bottom rung of India's complicated social ladder and largely out of sight. No one would find this place by accident, a half-hour drive through scrub and forest from the nearest road.
Villagers say the government PDS store is usually closed. It just happens to be open when the BBC visits, but inside it is empty apart from a few small sacks of emergency food left in one corner.
"I can't remember when we last saw someone from the government here," says one villager.
And Om Prakash, the government team leader, admits they came to the village because "we wanted to see what you were doing".
In another hut, Dineshi and her husband Brijmohan are still mourning their four-year-old son, Kalua, who died a few weeks ago.

Brijmohan's four-year-old son died due to lack of medical care
"He got sick and stopped eating," says Brijmohan.
"We'd taken him to the doctor once before but we couldn't afford to go again and he got weaker and weaker."
There is no doctor nearby, and they have no transport. The family's only income is from selling baskets Brijmohan makes from tree saplings.
Blades of light pierce the gloom through holes in the thatched roof, catching their three-month-old son Mukesh as his mother Dineshi rocks him in a small hammock to relieve the thick summer heat.
He is still being breast-fed: the problems for children usually begin after six months, once they should start on solids.
The family gets food from the government PDS store, but sometimes "there's not enough, or it's bad quality".
"We're often hungry," Brijmohan says.
But there are plenty of people committed to tackling the problem.
At the nutrition rehabilitation centre in Shivpuri, Dr Raj Kumar is checking on a two-year-old girl called Anjini, brought in about a week earlier weighing just 3.8kg.
Many children are born heavier than that. Anjini has also picked up TB and pneumonia - common conditions among malnourished kids.
She is still in a dire state, barely able to lift her stick-thin limbs, but with constant feeding at the centre she has put on weight.
Dr Kumar says she will survive, but "she will be stunted for life".

'Left to rot'
Under pressure, India's ruling coalition introduced a Food Security bill last year, supposed to enshrine the right to food for all. But no one is betting on when it will be passed amid the country's current political deadlock.
And some critics say there is still not enough political will to tackle the hunger problem.
Other more free-market oriented voices argue that the whole approach of subsidising food and providing guarantees is wrong, simply creating a dependency culture.

India has had yet another record harvest
What is really needed, suggests Arti Tivari from the nutrition centre, is for existing programmes to be "implemented properly and for people to do their jobs properly" - a polite way of saying that graft and corruption still infect the system.
It is a simple fact that no Indian child needs to go hungry.
A short drive from the nutrition centre is a massive grain warehouse, sacks of wheat piled nearly to the ceiling - part of a network of government food stores across the country.
For years now, India has been producing more food than it needs. Yet every year large quantities simply rot in these warehouses.
The situation is much better than a decade ago, insists government minister Sachin Pilot, whose portfolio is officially telecoms but who has become closely involved in food policy.
But he admits "it's unacceptable having so many children with pot bellies and stick legs".
India still has a very young population, and politicians often talk of this future "demographic dividend".
But there will not be much of a dividend if so many Indian children continue to be held back and stunted in their first years of life.