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, October 15, 2015

8937 - Editorial | Fake arguments: Those underestimating LPG savings don’t get it


Those underestimating LPG savings don't get it

By: The Financial Express | October 10, 2015 12:54 AM

The best solution to LPG subsidies, there can be no doubt, would be one where the government slowly reduced them as was done in the case of diesel by the UPA—over a period of time, as the fuel finally got deregulated, there would be zero subsidies. 

The NDA, however, chose not to do that and put a cap on the subsidy instead—of course, with global prices falling, the government pays out a lot less than the Rs 18 per kg cap; so when prices start rising again, the government will pay more than the Rs 99 it is paying per 14.2kg cylinder right now. None of this, however, should take away from the massive success achieved by linking subsidies to bank accounts and Aadhaar—it is based on this that the government claimed it had saved Rs 12,700 crore in FY15 and is likely to save around half this amount this year. 

This number, however, has been challenged by the Candadian International Institute for Sustainable Development (ISID) and widely publicised in Indian newspapers. ISID puts the actual savings at Rs 143 crore, a fraction of what the government claims, much to the delight of many opposed to either it or the Aadhaar programme. The analysis, however, doesn’t account for the fact that savings take place at two levels.

Assume there are 100 persons who can theoretically get a food subsidy of R100 per month, but when the government decides to get the biometrics of these people, and runs this through the Aadhaar de-duplication software to remove fake or ghost subscribers, this gets reduced to 75. 

Now, assume the government tells people that they have to go to the ration shop and get their biometrics checked in order to get this subsidy—let’s say that only 70 people actually bother to go to the shop. The most accurate way to calculate the saving is 30 x 100 or Rs 3,000 per month—the ISID method, however, would calculate the subsidy as 5 x 100 or Rs 500. To get back to LPG, the government’s maths was simple: 3 crore subscribers were removed from the rolls and with an average per cylinder subsidy of Rs 361 in FY15 and a cap of 12 cylinders per person, this works out to Rs 12,996 crore. You could argue, rightly, the actual consumption per registered user is only 7, so the subsidy saving is R7,581 crore, but there is no doubt the savings are substantial.

Indeed, were the ISID methodology to be used, Aadhaar is really a waste of time—whether it is a breach of privacy is really moot then. In various states like Andhra Pradesh where considerable progress has been made in taking the biometrics of those availing of PDS, for instance, the number of people entitled to benefit from it fell from 4.53 crore to 3.86 crore after de-duplication, or by 15%. If roughly 3.7 crore of these people actually take the trouble of going to the PDS shop each month to get rations, that works out to a saving of just 4%, a number that doesn’t really add up to much, especially in contrast to the 18% the conventional methodology throws up. Whether you are in favour of Aadhaar or against it, let’s not get the arithmetic wrong.

First Published on October 10, 2015 12:17 am