AADHAAR RELATED ARTICLES: 8726 - The promise of Aadhaar and Digital India

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 21, 2015

8726 - The promise of Aadhaar and Digital India - Live Mint

Last Modified: Sun, Sep 20 2015. 08 26 PM IST

The promise of Aadhaar and Digital India

Governing 1.2 billion people with an army of bureaucrats is clumsy

Illustration: Shyamal Banerjee/Mint

In his interactions with business and technology leaders at Silicon Valley next week, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to showcase the potential of the Digital India programme that is expected to build a nationwide digital infrastructure that will allow the government to deliver many services to citizens directly.

Predictably, it has led to a firestorm: influential academics in the US and privacy activists in India have issued dire warnings about the programme.

These warnings must be seen against the administrative nightmare that India is turning out to be. Some magnitudes can better help understand the challenges faced by citizens and governments alike. Take a simple number, the population of the country.

By the 2011 Census, this number was 1.2 billion people. This is expected to rise to 1.35 billion by 2020. Even if the government is equipped with an army of officials to deliver basic services, it is unlikely that it will be up to the task. In recent years, even trivial administrative tasks—allocating the number of toilets in school; ensuring that doctors and teachers come to work; that government carry out fumigation services and a host of other piffling but essential jobs—have required the intervention of courts just to get the government moving.

It is not difficult to understand this state of affairs. For each official handed out a particular job—say, issuing a certificate required to avail further services, for example an old-age pension or a scholarship—there are thousands of citizens queued up to demand the service. In a perfect world, the official will simply do what is expected of him. That rarely happens to be the case: the mismatch between the number of people demanding a service and the number of bureaucrats delivering them bestows immense discretion in the hands of officials. Even the most dedicated believer in operations research will agree that no easy answers are available to smooth the process of service delivery in the face of such disproportionate numbers.

The Digital India programme—which is expected to be completed in 2019—hopes to sort this by ending the physical interface between those who demand the service and those who deliver them. If implemented properly, it has the potential to greatly reduce discretion and corruption. The project is still in its infancy and the task of creating an India-wide digital infrastructure is hugely ambitious and, like many other government programmes, may leave a gap between what is promised and what is delivered.

The other face of this service delivery system is the Aadhaar number rollout. Once matched with the digital service delivery platform, this combination has the potential to greatly reduce discretion and its other face, corruption. There will be plenty of problems—technical and administrative—but with trial and error, they are likely to be weeded out.

The resistance to these programmes is twofold. On the one hand, there is a fat layer of intermediaries who lubricate the system by smoothing the interface between officials and, for the lack of a better word, supplicants. These intermediaries—local power brokers, low-level politicians and even outright thugs—stand to lose almost everything if Digital India and Aadhaar succeed.

On the other hand are activists and academics who fear for the destruction of the right to privacy. Some of these concerns, while somewhat valid, overlook the benefits of direct service delivery. If it were not for their learning, scholarship and genuine concerns, one would be forced to conclude that they see a complete trade-off between service delivery and privacy and that a corrupt and inefficient system is preferable to a seamless process of delivery. This is, of course, not true. These critics are merely misinformed. The government should try to reach out to them and, if possible, address their fears.

It is the danger of bureaucratic resistance that needs some political firefighting. Official resistance may take the form of delays and time overruns in implementing these projects. These impediments must be wiped clean.

Can India create a seamless digital infrastructure for service delivery? Tell us at views@livemint.com

Livemint