AADHAAR RELATED ARTICLES: 9350 - India gears up for mobile money for everyone through UPI

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

Saturday, February 13, 2016

9350 - India gears up for mobile money for everyone through UPI - Business Standard

India gears up for mobile money for everyone through UPI

Platform will give very small borrowers a choice of lenders whom they can repay via mobile at the end of the day

Alnoor Peermohamed | Bengaluru

February 12, 2016 Last Updated at 15:28 IST

In the next two years, a bank can lend a vegetable vendor of a few hundred rupees which she will be able to repay at the end of the day. All this will be done via mobile in a matter of a few minutes and in fact, she'll have a number of firms offering her loans allowing her to pick and choose the one that suits her the best.

One of the biggest pieces of the puzzle to make this possible, digital payments, will soon be accessible to players -- banks, lending firms, mobile wallets, to begin tinkering with and build their services. The unified payments interface (UPI) that's being built by the National Payments Corporation of India along with a bunch of volunteers, will be launched for testing tomorrow.

UPI will allow seamless movement of funds from one bank to another, from a bank to mobile wallet, mobile wallet to bank and mobile wallet to mobile wallet. One of the earliest adopters of the system has been India's largest mobile wallet firm Paytm, which in turn has boosted adoption by the competition due to the fear of being left out.

"We're building an ecosystem in this country. There's absolutely no doubt that we want to be identified as the people who brought in change," said Vijay Shekhar Sharma, co-founder and CEO of Paytm. "We believe we will be the significantly large beneficiary in this because consumers will be able to move money from their bank account to our wallet easily."

UPI is part of the technology backbone that has come to be known as "India Stack", a name given to the tech stack internally which just stuck. India Stack will enable consent, cashless payments, paperless and presence-less verification which will be crucial in making transactions such as the one mentioned above possible.

Over 942 million Aadhaar cards have been issued so far and that number could reach 1 billion people by March 2016. If Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is to believed, the turning point of any product is when it hits the billion user mark, and Aadhar is closing in on goal quickly. Aadhaar will be crucial for UPI to work and in turn both are necessary for India Stack.

So Paytm is not the only wallet betting on UPI. Rival Freecharge, owned by Snapdeal, Novopay, a firm that is run by former Aadhar chief technology officer Srikanth Nadhamuni and others are also betting on the shift.

"When inter bank settlement of cheques went online, it reduced time for cheque clearance from a month to one day. So the volumes just went up," said Govind Rajan, Chief Operating Officer, FreeCharge in a recent interview. "UPI will do that for e-payments and this will only the market grow and help India to become a less cash economy faster."

Over three hundred firms and individuals will be taking part in the hackathon that's organised at the launch event. Despite the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) mandate that all financial service providers in the country should adopt the UPI standard within three years, no one is waiting. The haste in jumping onto enabling seamless digital transactions is being pushed thanks to players such as Paytm, Freecharge and a few banks too.

"It is a win-win situation for banks as well as customers. There will be loss of revenue when business goes to alternate channels, but the revenue pressure will actually help serve the customer better and in turn, retain them," said A P Hota, chief executive and managing director of National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), in an earlier interview with Business Standard.