I’ the Indian
bharat jhunjhunwala
THE Government has launched the direct cash transfer scheme on the Aadhar platform with considerable fanfare. Biometric finger prints and the photograph of the iris and the face of the citizen will be collected and stored in a centralized computer. This will enable verification of the beneficiary when he approaches a ration shop for his monthly quota. These are indeed laudable objectives and the Government should be congratulated for moving from subsidies in kind to cash.
Some social scientists have, however, opposed the cash transfers on grounds of misuse. I am not convinced. The very foundation of democracy rests on the premise that the people know best. To say that the people are fools and do not know how to handle cash is to challenge the very core of their sanity. This objection smacks of a holier-than-thou patronising attitude.
Some problems have arisen in the distribution of wages for the Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Scheme on the basis of the Aadhar card. A study in Jharkhand, conducted by Prof Jean Dreze, revealed that dependence on fingerprint recognition, internet connectivity, and the goodwill of the banking correspondents have created certain vulnerabilities in the system. Fingerprint recognition problems alone affected 12 out of 42 respondents. Some workers did not have a UID number, and some had a UID number but no Aadhar-enabled account. None of them had received bank passbooks, making it difficult for them to withdraw their wages from the bank when the Aadhar system failed. These are essentially problems relating to implementation and can be sorted out in due course of time.
The major problem with Aadhar is the intrusion into the privacy of the individual. Say, one is taking part in an anti-corruption movement. The booking of rail tickets and withdrawal of cash from ATMs is linked to Aadhar. It thus becomes possible for the Government to pinpoint and track the movements of political opponents. According to Gopal Krishna of the Citizens Forum for Civil Liberties, such UID proposals have been abandoned in the USA, Australia and the UK. And the main reason is privacy. In the UK, the Home Secretary has announced that the government was scrapping the project because of the “intrusive bullying” by the State. Furthermore, the government ought to be the “servant” of the people, and not their “master”.
The Supreme Court of the Philippines struck down a biometric-based national ID system as unconstitutional on grounds of invasion of privacy. In a case decided by the European Court of Human Rights on the violation of the right to privacy and citizens’ rights, the unanimous decision of 17 judges was that the “blanket and indiscriminate nature” of the power of retention of the fingerprints, cellular samples, and DNA profiles of persons suspected but not convicted of offences, failed to strike a fair balance between competing public and private interests.
In India, the Government is trying to smuggle in a surveillance system under the guise of cash transfers. Such a system was once misused by Hitler. Germany had the list of Jewish names even prior to the arrival of the Nazis who received the names with the help of IBM. This company was in the ‘census’ business that included racial census. It entailed the counting and identification of the Jews. In the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC, there is an exhibit of an IBM Hollerith D-11 card sorting machine that was used in the census of 1933, which first identified the Jews. Such religious, racial, caste or even political profiling could also be introduced in India.
Another aspect of concern is that data management has been outsourced to US companies like Accenture which are associated with the US Department of Homeland Security.
Accenture’s profile includes developing prevention tactics and streamlining intelligence gathering. Another US company involved in India’s UID project is L-1 Identity Solutions. It is a US defence contractor whose name was associated with the CIA and other defence organizations. The former CIA director, George Tenet, and the former deputy secretary of Homeland Security, Admiral James Loy, were on the board of L-1 till 2010.
China had also embarked upon a UID type scheme. It was abandoned midway in the face of concerns expressed by the Communist Party. The Chinese project was being executed by a French company, Safran. Recently L-1 has bought Safran. In this way, the technology of profiling people developed by Safran in China will now come to India via L-1.
It is feared that the database can be used as a bulwark against India because all US-based firms are subject to the Patriot Act that obligates American companies to share their data with Washington. Aadhar insists that the information will be stored only in Indian computers. However, that is no guarantee of its misuse.
Wikileaks has revealed that Hosni Mubarak handed over similar data of Egyptian citizens to the USA before he stepped down. Opposition parties in Pakistan, where biometric cards have been introduced, allege that the government has handed over the citizens’ database to America.
There are two aspects of the Aadhar scheme. While the distribution of subsidies in cash is to be welcomed, the method adopted for doing this is wholly unacceptable. It seems the Government is surreptitiously smuggling in a powerful vigilance mechanism under the guise of cash distribution of subsidies. It is like a member of the security force handing over the country’s secrets to foreign powers so that he can build a school in his village. Collection of biometric data and possible handing over of the same to foreign powers cannot be justified on grounds of cash distribution of subsidies.
We should examine other alternatives. The Aadhar scheme has been justified on the plea that a range of subsidies have to be distributed to beneficiaries. We should think of removing this entire cobweb of subsidies and then distribute a consolidated amount to every citizen as his right to life. The complicated systems of food, fertilizer, LPG, kerosene and even health and education subsidies should be scrapped. People should be given money to buy all these services from the market according to their choice.
The UPA government seems intent on intruding into the privacy of individuals and to hand over the data to the US Government. The Opposition should wake up. The NDA lost the 2004 Lok Sabha elections because it had achieved nothing to provide relief to the common man. The NDA lost again in 2009 because the UPA had implemented MNREGA and loan-waiver. The UPA hopes to win the coming elections in 2014 on the strength of cash transfers. The Opposition should demand a universal and consolidated cash transfer through an organization like the Employees Provident Fund as a counter to this dangerous move.
The writer is former Professor of Economics, Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore.