Open Letter to the Supreme Court Judges of
India hearing PIL’s on Aadhaar
By
Ram Krishnaswamy – NRI
Sydney, Australia.
Respected
Judges of the Supreme Court of India,
I am an Australian Citizen and as an NRI, I am
totally confused about Aadhaar. Is it Mandatory for NRIs? Many news
reports are floating around, yet none of the NRIs are sure to date.
As an NRI, I am physically here in Australia as a
law abiding citizen but my heart somehow is throbbing for India; I must say it
is “Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani” ailment like one’s first love; as we
all know our “First Love” lasts forever in our hearts.
The Aadhaar (Targeted delivery of Financial and
other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act of 2016, makes Aadhaar numbers
legal for all Indian Residents, however is voluntary and necessary only
to receive Government subsidies that are paid from the Central Fund.
An amazing move by the former UPA II
Government, to serve the needy poor and even more amazing that the current NDA
Government, having unanimously condemned the scheme, have now gone full
throttle with Aadhaar.
Former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi’s
famous remark in 1985 that only 15 paise of every rupee meant for welfare of
downtrodden reaches them has found mention in the judgement of the Supreme
Court which said this “malaise” can be taken care of by Aadhaar scheme.
Anything to serve the 350 to 400 million BPL
population is most welcome and the nation salutes the visionaries.
However, not being a lawyer, I am totally confused
as to how the main Aadhaar Act says it is Voluntary and endorsed by UIDAI, yet
every other Central Government and State Government body and even Banks, Telcos
and Insurance Companies are making it compulsory and they are not being questioned
by the Govt.
Not only that the same BJP Government has created
another Finance Act, that makes Aadhaar, (which is Voluntary according to
the Aadhaar Act,) Mandatory for PAN cards and IT Returns. Is this legal for one
law to circumvent another original law?
Nandan Nilekani, the Prime Mover for Aadhaar once
said “Aadhaar is Not Mandatory yet is Ubiquitous”; meaning it
will be virtually impossible to live in India without Aadhaar even though it is
Voluntary. I find this whole thing so deceptive, of the Government and UIDAI
fooling the entire population of India.
Why is Aadhaar not mandatory by Law? Is this
a ruse to leave out the rich and powerful people in India ? If it was made
Mandatory there would be no PILs in the Supreme Court today. Current BJP
Government have the numbers in the Parliament anyway and the Money Bill route
to bypass the Rajya Sabha. Very confusing indeed.
Supreme Court Rulings: In 2015
the Supreme Court ruled that Aadhaar was not mandatory nor a condition for
accessing benefits one was already entitled to. The SC also ordered the
Government to give this wide publicity. SC also ruled that Aadhaar Card will not be used for any
purpose, other than the PDS scheme for distribution of food grains and cooking
fuel such as kerosene and LPG.
Government bodies, both State and Central, have
blatantly gone against this SC ruling.
The question is, can an elected Govt and Govt
Bodies ignore Supreme Court Rulings?
Why has UIDAI not enforced the Supreme Court
rulings to the word?
Does this interim 2015 ruling by SC not stand until the
Supreme Court rules after the current hearing of all PILs opposing Aadhaar?
Aadhaar for PDS
India has nearly 400 million people (2012 estimate
says over 22% of the total Population of India) who are below poverty line
status. This is more than the total population of USA.
Poverty line has been defined by World Bank as
people having an income of US$ 1.25 per day max. Ex Planning Commission
Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia declared that Rs 32 income per day would define
the Poverty Line.
What can Rs 32 buy today in 2018 in India is
the question ?
Well off Indians are so blinded by our own Cushy
Lives, wealth creation and entertainment that we seldom think of the wretched
lives of these poor and abandoned people. From the 50s to the 70s, prior to
gated communities in the cities and before most people could afford to buy
fridges, most people fed beggars at night with all the left overs. Today this
has disappeared in the cities and children probably seldom see the starving
poor in the metros.
PDS was launched in 1944 Pre WW II and was
relaunched in 1947 in its current form and included wheat, rice, sugar and
kerosene. Today GOI spends about 1% of its GDP which is about Rs 750
Billion subsidising food grains for the 400 million BPL population which works
out to approximately Rs 1875 per poor person per annum or Rs 5.136 a Day (Plus
or minus as these are guesstimates). To be truthful no one knows the
exact figures including GOI, as India does not have a Database on its BPL
population to determine who requires PDS Subsidy. Truly Ironic.
Time and gain the pathetically poor BPL
population is blamed for rorting the
Government PDS system and this really IRKS me.
Note: (rorting
- is an informal Australian expression - to take unfair advantage of a
public service: eg. Gary's been rorting the system, getting both a
student allowance and unemployment benefit. Fraud & corruption.)
The very basis of Aadhaar was the hypothesis that
“most Indians” meaning the poor do not have identities so they needed to be
branded with a UID, but nothing was unique about it as it was a blatant copy of
the US Social Security Card.
That the poor in India do not have identities
implies that 400 million poor people were illegitimate or born out of wedlock.
I do not blame Nandan Nilekani for his assumption, as this is the way the Rich
people in India with tinted glasses see the poor people. They see them as pests
whose lives were not worth living. Perhaps what Nandan Nilekani meant was “the
Government did not have any way to identify the needy poor”. Yet his Aadhaar
does not solve this problem either.
Despite Aadhaar being voluntary, in 2018 nearly 90%
of the Population have registered for Aadhaar, which is a unique 12 digit
number and a bar code that no one else in India can possess. The irony is
definitely 90% of India’s population does not receive Government Subsidies like
PDS.
UIDAI has admitted to an RTI that only 0.03% of the
total number of Aadhaar registrations used introducers to register for Aadhaar for
lack of identity proof and we can guess that a large portion of this 0.03% will
be made up of Illegal migrants from bordering countries anyway. This negates
the hypothesis that the Poor in India are faceless with no formal
identification papers.
Savings to Government from Aadhaar in PDS
alone:
This month’s newspaper headlines ( March 2nd
week 2018) says “Aadhaar Linking weeds out 2.75 crore Bogus ration cards
Saving GOI 17,500 crores of Rupees.”
Any one reading is misled into believing that the
Poor BPL population were abusing their privilege to receive Government
Subsidies through PDS and that poor people were all natural born thieves.
Justice A.P.Shah said recently that “We
live in an age of Propaganda and Half Truths”. True and this single
statement alone Paints India the Way she is today. But then even ‘Blind
Freddie’ knows that poor people earning less than Rs 32 a day do not have the
clout or buying power to bribe Government Babus issuing Ration cards. Being
dirt poor most poor are also illiterate and they are at the mercy of the Fair
Price Ration shop owners.
India has 500,000 Fair Price Ration shops; a
staggering Half a million of them. It is common knowledge that the Ration shop
owners in nexus with Government Officials who issued Ration cards generated the
2.75 crore or more Ghost Ration cards to bleed the PDS System and sell in the
black market for huge profits. A few years ago, there were news reports that
PDS Grains were even being exported in shipping containers from some states to
countries like Philippines and Indonesia.
This will explain why today Ration Shop owners are
doing everything in their capacity to deny the poor people their due amount of
subsidies and have turned away many who have even died of starvation; this
despite UIDAI proclaiming that no one is to be denied PDS for want of an Aadhaar
card. The fact is even people with Aadhaar cards have been denied rations due
to authentication failures. Can UIDAI and the Government not see who is
causing the problem and why?
The other common trick used by Ration shop owners
is using dodgy weighing scales so the poor are made to believe they have
received their quota but have received much less. Even if the poor are aware of
the fraud, there is not much they can do but shed tears and grin and bear it
rather than being targeted and victimised.
It is very clear now as to why the Fair Price
Ration Shop fellows have gone on strike in some states, as thanks to Aadhaar it
has made useless 2.75 crores of fake or Ghost ration cards used to gouge the
PDS system.
Is Poverty a Crime in India ?
Now the question is, Considering that the 2.75 crore fake
Ration cards have now been wiped out from the PDS system and all the poor people
who desperately need PDS Grains to survive have Ration cards as well as Aadhaar
cards, what is the need for Biometric Authentication ?
Can PDS subsidies not be
issued to the Poor People without Biometric Authentication? After all UIDAI only aids with
Authentication but does not monitor PDS issues.
Imagine being finger printed each and every month
for the meagre Government PDS subsidy. That is adding insult to Injury, only because the recipient is Poor.
Should we as a nation not treat the needy and
desperately poor with some compassion, respect and dignity ? Is poverty a Crime
?
I ask this because only criminals are finger
printed in western democracies; and USA, UK, Australia and NZ do not believe in
ID Cards as it invades peoples rights & privacy.
Why then are we victimising the poor in India
who are already the victims of poverty ?
Lastly
your Honours, BPL is defined as people in India earning below Rs 32
per day and that is a whopping Rs 11680 per annum and UIDAI CEOs wants these
people to use their smart phones to avail Govt subsidies, receive SMS messages,
Understand KYC, using one time OTP etc. These are poor people who have no money
to buy clothes to cover their bodies or afford food to stay alive and live in
huts and slums of India, and they are also mostly daily wage labourers in rural
farms and have worn out finger prints that lead to authentication failures.
We
obviously have fairies running the “UIDAI”. We should not allow Billionaires
sipping champagne and eating Caviar decide and create Govt Policies.
As for activists who have been labelled as Wine Drinking Cheese eating
creatures, Your Honours, the poor have no voice in India to express their
grievances and cannot take the Govt to the Courts through class actions as
happens in western democracies. They need Activists.
I am left wondering, if ensuring govt subsidies reached the last mile
was just a ruse to tag the entire Indian population through deceit.
"I have deliberately avoided issues
such as Privacy, Money Bill, Surveillance, National Security, Database
Vulnerabilities etc as they are now being looked at by Your Honours and have
only batted for the voiceless 400 million poor Indians who belong to BPL
requiring Government Subsidies."
Mahatma Gandhi said “In matters of Conscience the law of Majority has no
place”. As a Nation, Your Honours, we are holding our breath for your final
verdict to redeem democracy and people’s rights.
Satyameva Jayate.
