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

Wednesday, June 6, 2018

13657 - ‘The nature of work is changing — it’s not about body-shopping any more’ - Hindu Businessline

‘The nature of work is changing — it’s not about body-shopping any more’
ABHISHEK LAW

Upskilling and reskilling are critical to stay afloat, says Persistent Systems CTO

KOLKATA, JUNE 4
Abhishek Law

With increased automation, there is a shift in demand for various types of IT jobs, according to Siddhartha Chatterjee, CTO, Persistent Systems. During a recent visit here, Chatterjee spoke about the outlook for the IT industry in India, reskilling requirements and growth areas for the company. 

Excerpts:
How would you describe the outlook for the IT industry in India?
The outlook for the traditional IT outsourcing business, which most Indian firms are into, isn’t very good. The nature of work is changing — it’s not about body-shopping any more. Digital native companies can do a lot more work with a lot fewer people. But, if you look at the work that people are in digital transformation, the outlook is excellent. People are trying to go with data analytics, machine learning, AI and so on. We (Indians and Indian companies) are on the global stage.
I have not seen any letdown in demand (for new contracts, infrastructure upgrade, etc). There may be some uncertainty, though.

This means there will be a change in skillset requirements, too?
Yes. Continuous upskilling and reskilling is the name of the game. And, because the tooling is getting better, the more routine tasks are getting replaced. Call centre stuff will of course go to lower-cost economies. But no economy can be low-cost for ever. India was at one point a low-cost economy for IT, now it’s Phillipines. At some point the automation will get so good that you will not require people to do low-skill jobs.

Should companies not take up the responsibility of upskilling or reskilling employees?
I think partly each one of has to do it for ourselves. It is a lot easier to do that. If a person wants to reskill, it is not very difficult. Companies also provide opportunities. Whether these people will get back into the workforce or not completely depends on how much they are willing to push themselves.

In this context, what are the growth areas that Persistent is focussing on?
Apart from traditional areas and cloud, automation, security and digital transformations are some of the things that have taken front-of-mind with our customers. Security is critical when you are doing an Aadhaar-like deployment and solutions around that through machine learning. Another area is the government business in India, which involves dealing with multiple regional languages and processing them. This isn’t much of a sweet spot for other companies.

What is the vertical revenue break-up?
While BFSI will be a major contributor, the other big chunk would be healthcare and life sciences. Traditional business or ISV (independent software vendor) is another big segment. Telecom and government continue to be comparatively small. If you look at growth, then machine learning, AI and blockchain continue to move back and forth.

So far, blockchain is being associated with crypto currency. How do you explain its other usages?
In fact, we are staying away from the crypto currency side of things. The blockchain technology follows a concept of distributed ledger — it’s immutable, it stays and you leave a trail of transactions that are auditable.
Blockchain actually allows multiple parties to work together without requiring trusting one another; and this is what makes the technology interesting in international trade finance, supply chain, maintaining land records and title insurance, among others. We are just scratching the surface.


Published on June 04, 2018
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