Why government's push to make Aadhaar mandatory could erode public faith in Aadhaar-enabled payments
BY KUNAL TALGERI, ET BUREAU | UPDATED: MAY 23, 2017, 06.14 PM IST
For a search giant that answers online queries instantly, Google raises deeper questions in the real world. What if internet users knew in 2005 that Google would be reading all our content on Gmail? Would we have sacrificed the convenience of free Gmail to protect our privacy?
Today, the company knows even more about our online habits, but the choice to use Google or not rests with the user. It's an interesting parallel to Aadhaar at a time when the government is making the unique identification number mandatory across a spate of services. The most controversial step in late March was a call to link the Aadhaar number with permanent account number (PAN), which identifies Indian nationals who pay income tax. Everyone has to work for a living.
In effect, Aadhaar—unlike Google or any digital service—is compulsory, when India doesn't even have a data protection and privacy law. On 19 May, according to a news agency PTI report, senior counsel Shyam Divan told the Supreme Court (SC) bench of Justices AM Khanwilkar and Navin Sinha that Aadhaar "cannot be made compulsory and they cannot coerce people to give their biometrics."
On the other side, Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi argued that making it mandatory is vital to eliminate fake and fraudulent accounts that get subsidies.
Ongoing SC petitions argue that Aadhaar was envisaged as a voluntary ID. The move to make it mandatory is seen as 'draconian' by activists, and as 'governance' by the other side. But there is a middle ground: of the people. And Aadhaar-enabled Payment System (AEPS) provides us with a statistical-perspective of people's position on Aadhaar's utility.
DIGITAL ID FOR SUBSIDIES
In April, a Lok Sabha question from Trinamool Congress MP Saugata Roy to the electronics and information technology minister elicited a remarkable growth stat. Roy's query was on services available through AEPS, and details of the transactions using this disbursement route to citizens. The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), an umbrella organisation of banks that validate retail payments, responded: 344.84 million approved transactions in 2016-17.
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