AADHAAR RELATED ARTICLES: 2845 - A question of identity By Tim Harford

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

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

2845 - A question of identity By Tim Harford

A question of identity

By Tim Harford

Anti-poverty programmes in India have benefited from an iris-scanning ID system that dramatically reduced fraudulent duplicate payouts

Imagine you’re a government minister in a developing country, with responsibility for improving the lives of the poorest 20 per cent of the population. Given a blank slate, it’s not hard to make a list: get everybody a basic bank account; pay a small cash sum to the poorest households; enrol every poor child in primary school, using sticks or carrots to make sure the children show up; provide handouts of cash or food to those hit by natural disasters; provide free basic healthcare and vaccinations. Such a list is ambitious, but not because it’s too expensive. The real constraint is that to implement any of these policies, you need to be able to identify your own citizens.

In spy thrillers, the ability to disappear from official databases is rare and highly prized. In most poor countries, the reverse is true: it’s useful but hard to acquire an official identity. A state that can cheaply and reliably identify individual citizens can also provide services that would be hard to imagine without a universal identification (UID) system.

UNDERCOVER ECONOMIST

Stop banging the vending machine

Bombarded by figures and wet socks

Dreaming of a tight Christmas

The high risk of living on a low floodplain

Lacking UID, well-meaning governments are forced to resort to cruder approaches to poverty reduction: grain handouts that are hijacked by well-connected middlemen; subsidised fuel that’s expensive and ill-targeted and distorts the economy. According to a World Bank report last year, Social Protection for a Changing India, the country has hundreds of official anti-poverty programmes, and many of those who enjoy the benefits are not poor.

You can get a sense of the opportunities available from the iris-scanning ID system introduced by the state of Andhra Pradesh in 2008 after a botched effort in 2005. The system dramatically reduced fraudulent duplicate payouts. Frances Zelazny of the Center for Global Development estimates that the system paid for itself within one month.

ID systems have proved their worth elsewhere. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, 180,000 former soldiers have received cash pensions as an incentive to demobilise. The system uses mobile ATMs, smart cards and iris-scanning technology.

Alan Gelb and Julia Clark, also researchers at the Center for Global Development, draw a distinction between “functional” and “foundational” ID systems. Functional systems are set up to support a particular policy – child benefit, perhaps, or flood relief. Foundational systems are designed to support any and all policies requiring unique identification.

My personal prejudice is towards the functional. I fear foundational systems will become unwieldy and bureaucratic failures. It seems better, if messier, to get something up and running with a particular policy in mind, learn as you go along, and extend the system later.

But I may be in the process of being proved wrong in India, where a fantastically ambitious UID scheme is taking shape under the gaze of Nandan Nilekani, who made his fortune running Infosys and now holds cabinet rank. The scheme aims to give everyone in the country a number and to be able to identify them through fingerprints and iris scanning, using remote systems that consult a central database over the internet. If it works, it will open the way for well-targeted government handouts and for incentive payments to encourage parents to take their children to schools and clinics. It can underpin other systems such as crop insurance, bank accounts and driving licences. The growing system already holds more than the combined population of the UK, France and Germany. Nilekani hopes to enrol 600 million of India’s 1.2 billion people by the end of 2014.

Despite glitches, the system mostly seems to be working well: cheap and flexible, it accommodates those with damaged eyes or fingers, and has a tolerably low error rate. A great deal is riding on its success. No wonder development geeks are watching.

Tim Harford is the presenter of Radio 4’s ‘More or Less’