By Hemanth V on June 6, 2013
When the UIDAI was constituted in January 2009 and it was decided that Nandan Nilekani, a man for whom many in this nation had great regard, would head the project, I was overjoyed. I thought this was a transformational initiative which could impact millions of lives in making sure subsidies do not leak and the poorest of the poor get the benefits from the Government. This way, it will also reduce the involvement of middlemen and bring the system in place.
Four years down the line, looking at the way it has progressed inspite of all the PR blitzkrieg that goes on to show how many millions have been enrolled into the system, there are lots of issues at the ground level which have far reaching consequences.
On data security
The UIDAI has empanelled 153 enrollment agencies for enrolling residents for Aadhar. These enrollment agencies are responsible for capturing the biometrics of people using various devices, capturing fingerprints, scanning eyes. This is where the trouble begins, since there seems to be no mechanism to audit the enrollment centres. At some places in Andhra Pradesh, the agencies have further outsourced the enrollment task. There’s no track of who actually manages these centres and no security check is provided in most of these centres. People in these centres capture data the whole day and then upload them only once at the end of the day onto a centralised server that is managed in Delhi.
What if people who capture this biometric data decide to play foul and sell this information before uploading into the central server? They can easily copy all personal information into their own disk. There are so many places in AP where these enrollment centres are being maintained in fake addresses and homes.
Having been in the US for sometime and looking at the way, how Social Security Centres are managed, it is really scary to know how easy it is to compromise on this data security. In the US, they don’t even capture biometrics but still every centre is cordoned off with heavy security and it is almost impossible to do anything with the personal data of any individual inside these centres.
On homeless, BPL families
There is a provision in the Aadhar Act called ‘introducer’, which helps homeless people who do without any address proof to get enrolled into the system. Great idea! But look at how it has become messed up in Andhra Pradesh. Recently, we had filed an RTI query to find out the number of homeless people enrolled into the system. Here is a sample from an IAS officer who ideally should have been trained on the objectives of Aadhar.
“We do not maintain any such data, we do not issue Aadhar cards to people without address proofs.”
We were stunned with this reply. This is not the case with one district. The whole of Andhra Pradesh has no district which could provide this information.
These to aspects raise extremely serious questions on Aadhar. While cases of corruption in the Aadhar scheme, like issuing of duplicate cards to people, cards issued in the name of dead people or cards being sold in several places where the LPG alignment to Aadhar is forcing people to get enrolled by bribing officials.
UID Card/Aadhar – Beyond the rose tinted view
If logistics is an issue in enforcing data security or training people, why was this mad rush created to complete this and increase the number of enrollments?
If the primary objective is to bring in people who are not a part of the system, why not concentrate on making sure all BPL and homeless people get enrolled first? Others wouldn’t mind waiting for a few more years, if proper security and implementation are guaranteed. Why do some of us, who already have many ‘identities’ need another identity so urgently?
An initiative that was started with a great objective has become a mockery which allows another means for contractors, sub-contractors and other sub-sub-contractors to bleed the Government exchequers. The fallout is equally dangerous since it is going to cause large-scale data security issues and certainly not going to help homeless people.
That is why this has become a project with ‘mixed up objectives, messed up system’.
