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

Friday, January 10, 2014

4951 - Six Aadhaar lessons from Maharashtra - Governance Now


State has set the golden standard in best practices in enrolment setting a high bar for other states
GEETANJALI MINHAS | MUMBAI | NOVEMBER 01 2013


Governance Now Image
Farzana Pathan (right) withdrawing money transferred to her Aadhaar-linked bank account under Janani Suraksha Yojana.

Farzana Pathan will always remember December 28th of 2012. On that day the young mother received money from the government directly into her account minutes after delivering her baby in the hospital. Not only that, she was also able to withdraw her Janani Suraksha Yojana (JSY) subsidy almost immediately with the help of a business correspondent (BC) carrying an Aadhaar-linked handheld micro ATM. Pathan’s Aadhaar-linked bank account made all the difference.
Santosh Thakur had almost given up on his attempts to open a bank account. He came to Navi Mumbai as a migrant worker a couple of years back and is today employed as a driver. With no documentation to prove his identity or address, each and every bank that he approached closed its doors on him. It was only after he enrolled in Aadhaar that he was finally able to open a bank account in Punjab National Bank (PNB).
Farzana and Santosh are two of the countless examples of unique identification (UID)-enabled financial inclusion that’s taking place in Maharashtra. 
“The state was the first to start UID in 2011 when it piloted it in the Thane district,” recalled Maharashtra information technology (IT) secretary Rajesh Agarwal proudly. Aadhaar was nationally launched only in 2013. “Wardha also become first district in the country to implement an end-to-end UID-linked direct benefits transfer (DBT) facility,” he added. The state is the leading registrar for UID enrolments, with Aadhaar numbers generated for 67 million out of the state’s total population of 73 million. There’s something that it is doing that’s yielding such spectacular results. It’s not often that one encounters such a large-scale government initiative implemented in such an efficient manner. So, what’s Maharashtra got right so far, which can be a beacon of hope for other states wanting to implement Aadhaar effectively and efficiently?
First, the state government involved public sector banks and the National Securities Depositories Limited (NSDL) to work as registrars to drive up enrolments. This single step enabled the process of final enrolment to be carried out by agencies appointed by these organisations. “After an open and transparent tendering process, agencies were appointed as L1 agencies on the basis of lowest bids,” said state IT director Virendra Singh. “Moreover, 13 agencies empanelled with UIDAI were appointed on the same rates through tenders. The district collectors (DCs) were also asked to appoint local agencies meeting the parameters.” As a result favouritism was eliminated and agencies meeting standards, and engaged through non-state registrars like public sector banks and NSDL, were allowed to start registration. This step also removed procedural delays associated with obtaining permissions from DCs.
Second, the policy regarding ‘know your resident’ (KYR) norms was changed. The earlier policy required the recording of additional data like ration card number and details of MNREGS job card. This was done away with, as this additional data would go to UIDAI’s Bangalore office to be processed slowing down the registration itself. Guidelines were also issued to do away with the requirement of a dedicated government verifier and the job was entrusted to enrolment agencies to have their own supervisory staff for verification.
“We also set up a UID innovation lab with state-of-art infrastructure where experiments relating to biometric cards and seeding of databases and bank accounts with Aadhaar are conducted,” said Agarwal. Maharashtra is the first state to establish a state resident data hub (SRDH) repository and will have standardised and cleaned data related to demographics, names, places and photographs that will help facilitate data integration with other social welfare services.
Third, the state did not hesitate to press into service extra computers and biometric capture machines when required. Maharashtra rolled out 4,000 computers for enrolments; the highest number of machines in the country. Such a rollout turned out to be a win-win for all parties involved. “Every successful UID generates money for the private company. Hence there was an incentive for the private sector companies to increase the footfalls at a centre. It also made private operators reach areas that otherwise would not have been reached,” explained Maharahtra’s principal consultant for IT Devroop Dhar. “As UID enrolment is a continuous process, 2,000 additional machines have been procured by the government to be installed at permanent UID centres.”
The UID kit includes a laptop, a monitor for a person who is registering, a printer for giving acknowledgement slip, an IRIS and fingerprint scanner and a web camera. In rural areas an inverter or generator is also provided.
Fourth, the state’s IT department came out with innovative measures to keep the project running in a self-sustaining manner. After all, enrolments require real hard cash. “The central government gave us Rs 50 per enrolment,” explained Agarwal. “The steps we took increased our efficiency resulting in us spending only `28 per enrolment last year. This saved us `22 per enrolment. This year the central government reduced their funding to `40 per enrolment, and our own cost has gone up to `28 per Aadhaar number. But we are still saving `12 per person.” With 67 million enrolments completed, the state government has saved over `90 crores till now, and more is expected. “It’s only from these savings that we were able to deploy an additional 2,000 machines on a permanent basis to deal with births and deaths,” said Dhar.
Fifth, the state created a proactive monitoring mechanism of checks and balances to ensure that the private agencies were uploading encrypted UID data and documents within a specific time-frame to the central servers in Bangalore. Agencies that were lagging behind were penalised, which created a sense of urgency among every stakeholder in the enrolment process. To ensure quality random survey and audit was done at the ground level and such checks were video-recorded and uploaded on the central servers. “This helped us to cross-check claims of the agencies with the actual progress at the ground level,” said Dhar.
Sixth, there was a special effort to rope in as many people as possible within the ambit of Aadhaar. During enrolments it was observed that in urban areas of Mumbai and its adjoining municipalities and Pune elderly people and others who went out to work were getting left out. “To plug this gap enrolment centres were set up in housing societies and company offices,” said Agarwal. “Mega centres with up to 25 UID machines were set up in certain urban centres that were overcrowded between 7 pm and 9 pm.” To enrol differently abled people mobile vans were put in service, and special camps were held for leprosy and oral cancer patients. “In order to increase our coverage potential an android-based application was also developed and deployed,” said Singh.  “Our teams also noticed that villages off highways and railway stations were being left out. To enrol this population in a planned manner a certain number of machines were exclusively deployed in those villages.”
The stupendous success achieved by Maharashtra is being noticed. The UIDAI itself has adopted the concept of self-seeding introduced by the state. “Under this concept `1 is transferred to a beneficiary bank account for the first time,” explained Agarwal. “It’s only when we get an acknowledgement does the rest of the subsidy amount get transferred.” This has eliminated duplication and as well as false beneficiaries. Several states have expressed interest in learning from Maharashtra. “We feel vindicated and are happy to lend our expertise to other states,” said a beaming Agarwal.

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