Berges Malu / Monday, February 18, 2013 0:38 IST
The UPA government operates by stealth these days, everything from passing IT laws (remember how the IT Law was passed without any opposition) to executing terrorists, all committed through stealth. It seems the government either doesn’t seem to have the guts or the wherewithal to be bold about the decisions it would like to take.
The latest stealth move by the current government, is to demand citizens have an Aadhar card for such regular things as buying cooking gas to demanding information under the Right to Information (RTI) act. This shows how the current government would like to turn India from a liberal democracy into a closely monitored police state cause let’s be honest, this government has no intention of taking care of the aam aadmi, if it did, it wouldn’t let lakhs of farmers commit suicide around the nation, displace thousands in the commonwealth games and let the economy slow down thus stifling the creation of new jobs for youth coming out of school every year. The UID is simply a method of surveillance, surveillance not to prevent rapes, thefts and murders, which this government has no intention of preventing, but instead to make the life of the common man a bigger struggle than it already is.
The Aadhar card was introduced by the PM along with Nandan Nilekani and his ‘dream team’ (which comprised of mostly NRI’s- an issue for another debate) as an optional card that wasn’t meant to be mandatory for all citizens. What started out as a simple identity card that would be provided to all Indians, turned into a card that would benefit the poor and now into a card mandatory for receiving all/any benefits from the government. Recently it was reported schools in Thane started demanding that parents provide an Aadhar card number or admission wouldn’t be granted to their children and in a separate move the chief secretary of Maharashtra JK Banthia sent out a circular saying one should provide their Aadhar card number to demand information under RTI. This deception by the government is unsurprising what with the massive scams we hear about daily.
The writing on the wall is thus clear, the government is slowly using stealth means to make the Aadhar card mandatory for all citizens. And oddly enough, the Aadhar card by itself is illegal, as Parliament has refused to pass a bill that was aimed to legalize the Aadhar card, and the government is pumping large amounts of money into the scheme, according to some estimates nearly Rs 150,000 crore. I won’t be surprised, if a scam turns up out of this too.
Besides there’s no clue where all that bio-metric data that the government plans on collecting may land up, as The Hindu recently had a story that mentioned that much of the data is being collected and collated by an American company that under US law would have to turn over data to the US government if asked for it.
Soon power will not be measured in how much money you acquire or who you know but the anonymity you possess.
"You don't have a digital footprint... people with that kind of anonymity in this age, that's true power" – Logan Pierce - Person of Interest
The views expressed here are personal and not of the newspaper.
