9th December 2010
Ram Krishnaswamy
Aadhaar is a technological solution looking for a problem.
To date we have had no clear explanation from UIDAI on what Aadhaar can truly solve yet the Government of India (GoI) has been coaxed to authorise an expenditure of Rs 45000 crores (about US $ 9 billion) just to issue a 12 digit number and a bar code to the most vulnerable people.
Any one questioning Aadhaar is given a standard response that reads “As I said...it is tough to 'debate' misinformation and disinformation.” This leads us to believe that all the information published in UIDAI web site is ‘misinformation and disinformation’ as most questions being raised are based on the information provided by UIDAI in the web site and propagated through the media.
On 28th August, Mr.R.S.Sharma, Director General of UIDAI, an IIT Kanpur alumnus and an IAS officer and second in command to UIDAI Chief Nandan Nilekani wrote in his EPW article “The article “A Unique Identity Bill” (EPW, 24 July 2010) reflects some fundamental misunderstandings on the objectives of the Unique Identity Authority of India, the features of the identity number, and the impact it will have on privacy”.
If Aadhaar was on strong footings, UIDAI officials will seize opportunities to answer questions raised as opposed to questioning people’s capacity to understand the objectives of UIDAI.
To date not only has there been no public debate on the authenticity of Aadhaar; the UIDAI chief will not agree to a public Q & A session. Several IIT alumni had requested a Q & A Session with Nandan Nilekani at the PanIIT 2010 meet in October at Noida and the request has been ignored to date. If he will not talk to other IITians it is unlikely he will agree to a public debate on TV.
The very foundation of Aadhaar that assumes that the “poor have no identity” is shallow and unstable.
Educated Indians will not accept being told that that they have “no identity” as it questions their parentage and legitimacy of birth.
Aadhaar is tantamount to bastardisation of the poor and branding the poor for life, institutionalising poverty.
Aadhaar will divide a nation already fragmented by religion, caste and language with a new criteria called Aadhaar that draws a clear & distinct line between the "haves and the have nots"
The poor who accept Aadhaar without fully understanding the lifetime implications will be branded “Poor for Life” and issued a Bar Code. No educated person with any self respect will volunteer to register for Aadhaar to be branded poor for life and this means it will result in victimisation of the illiterate masses who do not understand and who look up to the government for some aid to tide over poverty and hunger for the present and not necessarily in perpetuity.
The irony is that a scheme that assumes the poor have no recognisable identity for GoI to issue subsidies, demands that people produce identification papers as proof of identity to register for Aadhaar. Does this make sense?
Can Aadhaar fix the PDS that is leaking so badly? Afraid not - only because Aadhaar assumes that the PDS is not working as the leakage is in the “last mile”, where the needy poor are greedy and have multiple identities double dipping into govt subsidies. The ground reality is that the very poor do not even have enough money to be able to buy a full month’s ration and as such fore go a large percentage of their monthly entitlements.
What can Aadhaar do besides de-duplication and authentication to establish that a poor starving & malnourished Indian deserves his rations?
- How will Aadhaar save millions of tonnes of food grain rotting all over the nation?
- How will Aadhaar prevent illegal sales of PDS grains interstate?
- How will Aadhaar prevent millions of tonnes of PDS rice from being illegally exported to Singapore & Malaysia?
- Can Aadhaar stop local PDS officials selling food grains at a higher price?
- How will Aadhaar stop large scale diversion of PDS food grains in transit?
- Does Aadhaar not wrongly assume that it is the poor population “in the last mile”, who are the main cheats and have multiple ration cards under bogus names, which is to be tackled through de-duplication?
- Will UIDAI authority acknowledge that the bogus ration cards are mostly owned and held by PDS officials and Ration shop owners who fudge sales that never took place and then sell the grains at a much higher price to general public making huge profits?
- PDS is described as a sham and a scam and an abject failure. Will Govt money not be better spent plugging all the loop holes and cleaning up the PDS system, as opposed to targeting the very poor PDS is supposed to assist? Why create one more unwieldy monster called UIDAI to issue Aadhaar to resurrect an out of control PDS & NREGA?
Is it fair to state that UIDAI authority will take four or even five long years to issue Aadhaar to 600 million people and it will take many more years and many more billions to have biometric scanners, computers and internet connections installed in ration shops around the nation and that means for another ten years the PDS & NREGA rort will continue?
If Aadhaar is a mega project can we ask the Project Manager the following questions:
- Is there a cost benefit analysis for the Aadhaar project? If yes can it be uploaded in the UIDAI web site please.
- Aadhaar is useless until scanners are available for authentication. Finance ministry has approved a budget of Rs 7000 crores a year for the next four years. Does this budget include the cost of authentication equipment like biometric scanners, micro ATMs, computers and internet connectivity?
- Should the costing for the project not be disclosed to the public?
- If poor had money they would not be classified poor and would have taken to bank accounts as they have taken to mobile phones in India. Poor do not need bank accounts as they have no money to deposit in banks. Is the nation justified in forcing national banks to create about 600 millions bank accounts that would be dormant but for two transactions a month, one for the govt deposit and the other for withdrawal of this paltry sum?
- What is the opportunity cost to India? Alleviating poverty levels? Investing in agricultural projects and assisting the farmers? Creating employment for those Aadhaar is claiming to assist and help them come out of the poverty trap?
- As Aadhaar is not compulsory can an individual not have two identities; one with real name and identity documents like passports, driving license and bank accounts and the other with Aadhaar using an alias with associated biometrics? Can Aadhaar prevent this fraud as it is not compulsory?
- If the concept of ID Cards has been abandoned in USA, UK and Australia due to cost & privacy implications why are these not real issues in India? Do the poor in India not have a right to Privacy?
- How can any system that is optional provide a complete solution? Does this not mean that despite Aadhaar large sections of disadvantaged people will still be left out of the system?
These are just a few questions and there are many more related to biometrics which shall be raised when some of these questions get answered.
The questions raised by the concerned members of the public need to be answered; they cannot be dismissed as results of ‘misinformation and disinformation’.
UIDAI cannot coerce an entire nation into Silence on the Aadhaar Project.
About the author:
Ram Krishnaswamy
B.Tech. IIT Madras, M.Bldg.Sc. Uni of Sydney. MIE(Aust) MAAS
