Saturday, 10 May, 2014
In a welcome move, the Reserve Bank of India has decided to put on hold the possession of an Aadhar card to be the condition for getting a credit card. Initially, a pilot project will be undertaken in which holders of pre-paid credit cards will be allowed to withdraw cash on the basis of ‘biometric authentication’ provided by the Aadhar card. It is the correct decision and possibly the RBI has mustered the courage to assert its authority in view of the imminent change in government.
The Supreme Court had pronounced in November last year that the Aadhar card cannot be made mandatory where a citizen’s entitlement of access to public services and subsidies (like that on cooking gas cylinders) is concerned. Aadhar cards, the brainchild of Nandan Nilekani of the Congress, are issued by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI). Hundreds of thousands of citizens across the country are yet to get their Aadhar cards even after completing the necessary formalities months ago. But experts have questioned the very legality of the Aadhar card, because of its unacceptable intrusion into the privacy of a citizen.
The Standing Committee of Parliament has also struck down the provision in the National Investigation Agency (NIA) Bill to legitimise the UIDAI’s actions and the Aadhar scheme itself. The Aadhar card, in fact, enables the State and its various agencies to have complete information on every citizen of the country. In spite of the Supreme Court’s directive, the Centre has shown an indecent zeal to make the Aadhar card mandatory for everything – from opening a bank account to getting gas cylinders at subsidised rates.
The electronic revolution has vastly widened the scope and quickened the exchange of information throughout the world. In fact, it has made the world a global village. At the same time it has enabled the State to keep every citizen under close surveillance. Telephone calls, e-mails, exchanges between citizens through Facebook, Twitter and blogs are being snooped upon round the clock by almost every country in the world. The US, for example, regularly spies upon tens of millions of telephone calls and exchanges of information through the Internet, including those by foreign governments, their sensitive departments and their embassies. The ostensible excuse is to deal with terror and terrorists. But despite the electronic surveillance, terrorists and other armed groups are regularly making strikes and killing people. The Aadhar card is but a piece of this uncalled for surveillance: it puts every bit of personal information concerning a citizen at the disposal of the State. It needs to be scrapped.
Saturday, 10 May, 2014
