AADHAAR RELATED ARTICLES: 4616 - Khosla Labs Seeks Viable Firms to Solve India’s Problems

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

Monday, September 23, 2013

4616 - Khosla Labs Seeks Viable Firms to Solve India’s Problems _ India West

Khosla Labs Seeks Viable Firms to Solve India’s Problems

By News Dispatches
Sep 15, 2013

President Barack Obama visits the Aadhaar enrollment station and meets with Srikanth Nadhamuni (center), then head of technology of the Unique Identification Authority of India and co-founder of Khosla Labs, and Sumnesh Joshi, assistant director general, UIDAI, Nov. 7, 2010, in Mumbai (Aadhaar photo).

United States
Venture capitalist Vinod Khosla is giving support to ventures that he hopes can solve India’s problems in the financial inclusion and unorganized retail sectors, Indian journal Mint reported Sept. 1.
Khosla Labs, a tech incubator launched in November 2012 with Srikanth Nadhamuni, former technology head of the Unique Identification Authority of India, is funding firms that can be spun off as stand-alone companies and get funded by venture capital fund Khosla Ventures when they are ready to launch.
Nadhamuni said Khosla had for a long time been discussing large transformational projects in India, “like Aadhaar (the 12 digit number issued by UIDAI), where I headed the technology team for four years since inception. I was planning on transitioning from Aadhaar since the technology platform and operations were stabilized and the managed service provider had been commissioned,” Nadhamuni said
“I set up office in the garage of our house in October 2012. This was the beginning of Khosla Labs,” he told Mint.
Three entrepreneurs in residence are leading the first ideas being incubated by Khosla Labs. They are Sanjay Jain, a former Google product manager who built Google Map Maker; Gautam Bandyopadhyay, an Infosys veteran behind the company’s Airtel Money solution; and Sridhar Rao, a former Vodafone Essar executive who led the phone firm's mobile money initiative in India, Mint said.
Jain and Bandyopadhyay are running pilot efforts for a cashless, non-branch banking system powered by mobile phones. Rao is testing a product to assist small retailers to manage inventories. The start-ups hope to launch as companies and be funded by Khosla Ventures.
Khosla Labs doesn’t follow the Silicon Valley model of choosing entrepreneurs in hot sectors, providing seed finding and taking equity stakes.
“We thought that a better model would be to actually work with the entrepreneurs, so we bring entrepreneurs on board as entrepreneurs in residence,” Nadhamuni told Mint. “We all brainstorm, come up with ideas, and then go on to experiment, prototype the ideas, do market validation. If after all this there is traction, we fund them through the Khosla Ventures fund.”
The three entrepreneurs and Nadhamuni were “tight-lipped” about their products, Mint reported. “The mandate we got from Vinod was to solve problems around us, using technology at a scale. We are in a phase where we are working with multiple partners and figuring out. We are now beginning to pilot and test," said Jain.
Khosla Labs is testing a solution that could use Aadhaar numbers to enable transactions. Nadhamuni said it could have an impact similar to how PayPal uses e-mail addresses for money transfers.
“PayPal said, ‘If you have an email address, we can send money,’ and that was over 10 years ago,” Nadhamuni said. “Can we apply that with Aadhaar numbers?”