AADHAAR RELATED ARTICLES: 7832 - Aadhaar and Brazil soothe French heartache

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

Thursday, April 30, 2015

7832 - Aadhaar and Brazil soothe French heartache - Telegraph India

Aadhaar and Brazil soothe French heartache

K.M. Rakesh

Revanna at the Football for Hope Festival in Rio de Janeiro last year

Bangalore, April 21: Six years ago, a 16-year-old Revanna M had missed a chance to travel to France for football training because, as an orphan, he didn't have the documents to obtain a passport.

Memories of that heartbreak returned to haunt him last summer when he was chosen by an NGO as one of six underprivileged youths to visit Brazil during the football World Cup. Again, a passport seemed elusive for Revanna, now a young man.

But the story had a happy ending. Just months earlier, the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) had begun a drive to enrol street children and orphans in the Aadhaar programme, allowing NGOs and government child welfare committees to "introduce" them.

Bosco, the orphanage where Revanna grew up and which he now serves as football and rugby trainer, decided to enrol him for an Aadhaar card, paving the way for a passport.

Revanna made it to Rio de Janeiro with five other Karnataka youths, three of them women, as part of the Football for Hope Festival project by the NGO Dream a Dream.

"I missed a chance to go to France when I was a minor with no documents," Revanna, who had been selected by a group of NGOs for football training in France in 2009, told The Telegraph.

"Without the documents our Father (Bosco executive director Fr George PS) managed to get for me this time, I would have missed the Brazil trip too," the 22-year-old added.

"It was so fulfilling for us too," Fr George said. "It was always difficult to get any kind of government identity for orphans. Then we started signing for them as guardians."

Most of Bosco's orphans now have Aadhaar cards.

Revanna trains underprivileged children from Round Table School at the IIM campus in Bangalore

Orphans, lacking proof of age, identity and address, have often found it harder to enrol in government schemes than, say, street children living with their migrant-labourer parents in roadside camps or runaways whose families could be traced.

But in late January last year, an effort began to issue Aadhaar cards to all distressed children to allow them, in principle, to obtain school admission, open bank accounts and secure government welfare.

Now the drive has been extended to even one-year-old babies in orphanages to check illegal adoptions and help the government monitor the children, prone to abuse at the shelters or to delinquency later.

"They took my picture last year," said a 14-year-old at a state-run orphanage in Bangalore who had been rescued from a bus terminus. "Now the card is with my master (the orphanage administrator)."

Like his "brother" - an older inmate - he too plans to get a driver's licence in future because "a master told us drivers get jobs in foreign countries".

After years of slack, the Karnataka government has over the past few years provided government IDs to inmates at all its 56 rescue homes, called Children's Homes.

"We have covered more than 75 per cent of the children," said Narmada Ananda, programme manager for the Integrated Child Protection Scheme, which comes under the department of women and child development.

"Once out of our watch, they tend to take to drugs and dangerous social behaviour. It's important to get them gainfully employed, for which they need ID."

Minors rescued from the streets are sheltered in these homes and given vocational training before they leave at 18.

"Lack of any kind of identification had been the biggest problem all these years," Ananda said. "We usually gave them letters of release with their personal details, but now we are enrolling them in Aadhaar."

The homes' wardens hold on to the cards till the inmates are discharged.

"Our field workers used to report that these children found it difficult to get jobs. But now that they have an ID, life is better," Ananda said.

Just yesterday, the government announced that an Aadhaar or voter I-card would be enough to obtain a PAN card.

Anjali Ellis Shankar, assistant director-general of UIDAI in Bangalore, said nearly 4,000 children at 129 homes - including those run by NGOs - had been enrolled in the state. Only about 400 are awaiting enrolment.

"An ID like this later helps them secure jobs even under the national rural employment guarantee scheme," Shankar said.