AADHAAR RELATED ARTICLES: 9826 - Payments revolution: After Aadhaar, NPCI showcases India’s tech talent

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 14, 2016

9826 - Payments revolution: After Aadhaar, NPCI showcases India’s tech talent - Financial Express

Payments revolution: After Aadhaar, NPCI showcases India’s tech talent

The spread of internet banking and, after that mobile wallets, has done wonders for India’s digital payments economy and the number is set to grow exponentially.

By: Ishaan Gera | New Delhi | April 12, 2016 2:18 PM

Just as it changed the card business with its RuPay, the state-owned NPCI has come up with a revolutionary payments concept that is both interoperable and is fully mobile. (Reuters)

The spread of internet banking and, after that mobile wallets, has done wonders for India’s digital payments economy – according to the latest FIBAC report, though the value was far smaller, there were more transactions on non-bank digital wallets (255mn transactions) in FY15 than there were mobile banking transactions (172mn), and the number is set to grow exponentially. The problem is, much of this is not inter-operable, so what is being created was a series of silos – banks put restrictions on their customers loading cash on to other wallets, many taxi aggregators accept digital payments only through their wallets and transferring money from one wallet to another is next to impossible though the presence of platforms like Chillr does help to some extent. The fact that India has just 1.2 million point-of-sale (PoS) devices that can read debit/credit cards – in around 25 million or more merchant outlets – also puts a limit to the spread of cards. Also, using debit/credit cards exposes user to the risk of their cards being cloned and internet banking is time-consuming given how details of the user’s bank account and IFSC code need to be fed in – creating a beneficiary account for internet banking also takes a few hours, taking away the necessary flexibility so important in a digital age. Hardly surprising then, that the bulk of transactions in India tend to take place in cash.

Just as it changed the card business with its RuPay, the state-owned National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has come up with a revolutionary payments concept that is both interoperable and is fully mobile – with this, NPCI joins an illustrious list of state-promoted initiatives like NSE, NSDL and UIDAI that both revolutionized their businesses and showcased India’s tech talent and ability to come up with easy solutions to truly large problems. Unlike the existing systems that are time-consuming and require users to input lots of details (like the IFSC code of the beneficiary or your credit card number, expiry date and CVV), NPCI’s United Payments Interface allots each user a unique number – financialexpress@sbi, for instance – which is linked to his/her bank account. A user may or may not wish to link an Aadhaar number to a UPI address and can even create different UPI addresses for different people – one for the kirana shop and another for buying on Amazon. If a payment has to be made, it can be made to this ID without any personal information being shared, making the system a lot safer than others. With most banks expected to be on UPI quite soon, digital transactions get a huge leg up since the system is bank agnostic. Also, since any individual with a bank account and a phone – right now, UPI cannot be used by wallets – can receive money, the restriction put by having just 1.2mn PoS devices goes away. UPI also allows a seller, for instance, to raise a bill on someone and if the person okays the transaction – by inputting a PIN number – the payment gets made. This is just the beginning since, as happened with Aadhaar, you can expect to see a host of apps getting built using UPI. Truly, a great day in India’s payments history.