Saturday, 29 March 2014 | Ashok Malik |
There is potential in Aadhaar. A smart politician can make it a political winner. A stupid politician could reduce it to a mess. Alas, the UPA Government did not have a smart enough politician
Earlier this week, the Supreme Court directed the Government to desist from making an Aadhaar number or identity a prerequisite for availing a public service or accessing a welfare programme. This has raised questions about the viability of the entire Aadhaar project. With Mr Nandan Nilekani, former Chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India, joining the Congress and contesting from Bangalore (South), the Aadhaar issue has also figured in the election campaign and to that extent become more controversial. Since the UPA Government is likely to be voted out, is the game up for Aadhaar and is it going to be junked?
This is a valid question. In the heat and dust of an election, it is also a confused question. It is necessary to examine the various strands of the Aadhaar debate and pick and choose what is useful and what went wrong. Faulty implementation of the Aadhaar idea — primarily because the UPA Government did not do its homework — does not ipso facto make the idea itself a bad one.
The biggest lacuna in the Aadhaar framework is the absence of an underlying law and the fact that the UIDAI has functioned on the basis on an executive order. It is unconscionable that the UPA Government did not find the political capital or the urgency to push through such a law in the past five years. The UIDAI Bill was introduced in the Rajya Sabha in December 2010. It was referred to the Standing Committee on Finance, which presented its report in a year’s time, in December 2011, with several suggestions and recommendations.
The Government should have expedited the drafting and parliamentary passage of a revised Bill, but did not do so. It introduced a new Bill in 2013 but shrugged its shoulders when the legislation was not taken up. The Government can claim today that it did not receive cooperation from the opposition, but the broader point is the Congress itself did not deem it important to put its weight behind the UIDAI Bill. Deprived of a strong and rigorous base law, the UIDAI and Aadhaar mechanism will always lack that authentic credibility. This needs to be addressed, and addressed quickly.
However, it would not do to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Some 600 million people have been registered by UIDAI and provided their Aadhaar identities. There is capacity to issue 300 million more identities each year. As such, in about two years, every Indian can be issued a unique identity, complete with biometric data. This is no mean achievement and makes Aadhaar an excellent tool. How the tool will be used is another matter. Technology is value neutral; its deployment can be open to subjective interpretation.
Two principal objections have arisen to the Aadhaar idea. First, that it includes residents and not merely citizens; second, that it endangers the citizen’s privacy. Can one ignore these? Frankly, giving an Aadhaar identity to all residents of India — some of whom could be illegal migrants — may not be a problem if it is made clear that the Aadhaar will not be considered a valid document for getting a passport or enrolment as a voter. If it can store the resident’s biometric data — which will not change in a lifetime — it can actually work as a security enabler.
That apart, if the Aadhaar is considered a valid document — even without any supportive papers — to open a bank account or invest in a post office savings scheme or a mutual fund — then it would serve to bring many people in the informal sector into the formal financial universe. Does it really matter if a section of these investors are not citizens or are illegal migrants? Surely there are other means of detecting that?
Several years ago, as Union Minister for Home Affairs, LK Advani had proposed granting some rights and papers to non-citizen migrants, largely from Bangladesh, to incentivise them to identify themselves, open bank accounts, and enter into recognised financial transactions. This would formalise or legitimise a phenomenon that was a reality and had to be dealt with an innovative manner, without in any way taking away from the need to stop any further illegal migration. It was an enlightened plan and would keep at least part of the wages Bangladeshis earned in India in this country itself (as an investible surplus) rather than have all of these remitted. Could Aadhaar become a trigger for such an approach?
Second, there is the issue of privacy. Extreme Left intellectuals and drawing-room activists have been going on and on about a ‘big brother’ state and arguing that UIDAI is an invasion of private lives. The BJP has to be careful here. An un-nuanced attack on Aadhaar could see the party on the same side as professional naysayers who are no friends of the BJP and will be at war with it from day one, should it come to power on May 16.
Privacy protection is a noble thought but it is also a privilege of those who possess a sense of privacy and a notion of identity in the first place. To be honest, the Aadhaar identity is not for you and me. If you are reading this newspaper, chances are you have half a dozen identity cards — from a driving license to a PAN card to a voter card — in your wallet, not to speak of a house purchase agreement or rent lease. Many common citizens are simply not as fortunate.
A year ago, I went from bank to bank seeking to open an account for the domestic help who works at our residence. She is a migrant from Darjeeling, has lived in Delhi for a decade, and had some but not all the documents the banks demanded. It was a harrowing experience and led to refusal from bank after bank. The Aadhaar is meant for her. If it can be made the one identity — complete with biometric data that can be accessed by multiple agencies using an IT network, after seeking the individual’s concurrence and adhering to appropriate data protection — that will allow her to open a bank account or invest in Government bonds or get a voucher for a free course at a public-funded skills institution, it will change not just her life but that of millions.
That is the potential of the Aadhaar. A smart politician can make it a political winner. A stupid politician could reduce to it a mess.
