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, August 8, 2018

13830 - I “Dare” My Critic to Criticise Me; Welcome to Post-Truth India - Quint

I “Dare” My Critic to Criticise Me; Welcome to Post-Truth India


Something strange, really strange, happened on last Saturday, 28 July 2018. Our IAS (Indian Administrative Service) policy makers, usually imprisoned in dusty, yellowing, red-taped files, broke away into the aggressive, either-I-will-or-you-will-screw-me arena of WWE showmanship.
The man whose job is to secure our telecom and broadcast infrastructure suddenly wanted to play “cowboy cowboy” in a Wild West bar duel.
He unsheathed his Twitter handle (the 21st century equivalent of the hip-strapped leather holster), and let fly – “here is my Aadhaar (biometric ID) number, you b---dy hackers (synonym of the “n” word in 19th century America); I dare you to harm me now”.

(Photo: Twitter Screengrab) 

No Humility or Grace in Defeat

Much to the IAS fraternity’s chagrin, the response and annihilation was brutal.
The protagonist’s daughter’s email ID, his own demat/bank accounts, airline frequent flyer number, subscription accounts, income tax unique number and demographic details – everything was hacked and manipulated (in a dangerous breach, an unsolicited one rupee was deposited in his savings account) in a matter of hours.
But did he accept defeat with humility and grace? Did he say “oh great, thank you for showing us the path to a million correctives which we shall now develop to ensure that our security features are enhanced”?
No sir. The response was “typically IAS”. They invented a new challenge to somehow win the argument: “but the biometric database has not been breached”.
Hey, the dare was “do me harm”, not “breach the fort”. But now that “harm” had been visibly and demonstrably inflicted, the dare was changed to “try and breach the fort”!

Criticism, Like Pain, Can Heal

I felt very queasy about this fiasco.
Mahatma Gandhi once said that “no school of thought can claim a monopoly of right judgement. We are all liable to err and are often obliged to revise our judgement”.
His arch rival, Winston Churchill, concurred: “criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. If it is heeded in time, danger may be averted; if it is suppressed, fatal distemper may develop”.
There has to be something “fatal” in our current political environment if a God-fearing 63-year-old bureaucrat with impeccable credentials – a mathematics major from IIT Kanpur and Masters in Computer Science from University of California – suddenly begins to act like a renegade teenager on Tinder.
In 1986, he had written a pioneering DBASE search program to nab 22 firearm thieves in 30 days. But now he had committed a criminal act himself – remember, revealing your Aadhaar number is an offence punishable by three years in jail – why?

A Critic Today is Intimidated, Treated Like an Enemy

Then a revelation struck me in a flash. A critic today is treated like an enemy. He is an adversary who needs to be eliminated.
You do not debate with him on merits. You do not want to convince him on substance. You have no patience for Gandhi’s exhortation that “we owe it to ourselves as to others to try to understand the opponent’s view-point and, if we cannot accept it, respect it as fully as we expect him to respect ours”.
Instead, today’s discourse is defined by intimidation:
  • “Congress kay neta kaan kholkar sun lijiye, agar seemaon ko paar karoge, toh yeh Modi hai, lene ke dene pad jayenge” (Congress leaders, beware; if you cross your limits, then remember, I am Modi, I shall retaliate with disproportionate force) – this statement by Prime Minister Modi at an election rally in Hubli on 6 May 2018 is perhaps the closest a democratic leader can ever come to advocating violence on his opponents.
  • “I want to tell Kashmiri youth that azadi (independence) is not possible. But if you want to fight us, then we will fight you with all our force. Kashmiris have to understand that the security forces haven’t been so brutal – look at Syria and Pakistan. They use tanks and air power in similar situations” – this chilling threat (invoking images of mass genocide) was uttered by Indian Army Chief Bipin Rawat in an interview just 4 days after the Prime Minister, above.
  • Even harmless popular fiction is not spared. Fanney Khan, a simple film about a cab driver and his dreams, featured a song “merey achche din kab aayengey” (when will my good days come). It was a sarcastic take-off on Prime Minister Modi’s 2014 electoral slogan of delivering “achche din” (good days) for all Indians. Within 10 days, the film-makers were forced to change the song to “merey achche din ab aaye re” (my good days have come!).
  • Why, just today, three journalists of ABP News have been forced to quit. Their folly? Criticism of government propaganda.

I’ve Faced Similar Wrath…

On 8 November 2016, when Prime Minister Modi stunned the world by outlawing 86 percent of India’s currency within four hours, people were unsure about the impact of his “demonetisation”.
A few applauded, buying into the “cleansing and windfall gains” theory put out by the government – i.e., that it would nullify the illegal cash and hand the government an extraordinary dividend of Rs four lakh cr (incredibly, this was a legal submission by the government in the Supreme Court!), about three percent of GDP, to lavish on India’s poor. But I had minced no words in debunking these claims. Here are snatches of what I had written in three stinging columns within three weeks of “demonetisation”:
“We pick up the story from where Rambhai is sweating, palpitating and cursing at 8.45 pm on Nov 8, after Prime Minister Modi has concluded his sensational address.
Rambhai is one among a million other minds which are dizzyingly trying to figure out a way to save the Rs 4 lakh crore that are lying in more than a million basements, mattresses, suitcases, lockers, and even in household utensils. Do you think they will just roll over and die, quietly giving up their lifelong “earnings” to a “rapacious taxman”? No sir, they won’t.
They will try every jugaad, any manoeuver - good, bad, ugly, clever, criminal - to salvage their cash…
Here's where the story gets really ironical. This Rs 1 lakh crore will be the good old "speed money" paid to complicit bank branch managers, postmasters, touts, couriers, sundry middlemen, and body contractors. Welcome to Swachh New Bharat (Clean New India)…
The Official Spin: Prime Minister Modi has created “Ram Rajya” (Utopia) for India’s poor… He will now use this money to build more schools, rural roads, hospitals and give what-not to India’s poor.
The Reality: This is very bad news… if “demonetised” cash continues to gush in at this rate – 40 percent of the total hoard in just 10 days - the whole manoeuvre would become a colossal flop.
Why? Because scamsters would have managed to convert all their black money into white, routing the government at its own game!
So the full amount of Rs 15 lakh crore will come back. Period. QED.”
I had predicted this on 1 December 2016. I don’t want to boast, but two years later, it’s clear that I was spot on. Prime Minister Modi has often said that “to criticise, one has to research and find proper facts. Sadly, it does not happen now. What happens instead is allegations”.
Then, by your own yardstick, sir, I should have been feted, right? I had used “research and proper facts”, hadn’t I? Yet I was relentlessly trolled, abused, and never forgiven.
So, dear Prime Minister, unfortunately and sadly, intelligent (and eventually vindicated) criticism continues to be called “allegations” in today’s post-truth India. It’s this very culture of enmity that also encourages a God-fearing, sober bureaucrat to “dare” and damn his critics, instead of embracing and learning from them.
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