As Bright As Night, or, How Nandan Nilekani Blindsided A Nation with Aadhaar
By Ram Krishnaswamy & Vickram Crishna
On many occasions, after my graduation, riding the city roads in Chennai on my Royal Enfield Bullet, I would be forced off the road, or have to stop by the roadside for my safety, when the car coming in the opposite direction, most often an Ambassador, would be driving with the high beam on. By the rule of law, high beam headlights are not to be used on roads well lit by street lamps, but who cares for traffic rules in India?
The high beam was often used by drivers to spot potholes early enough to avoid them; a reasonable enough justification for preserving the car's condition, but an action that directly jeopardised the lives of other people, especially those riding two wheelers, bicycles and motorbikes.
Full beam headlights are blinding, and as such, one has no option but to yield right of way, no matter what the actual scenario, right or wrong.
The Indian government is now busy producing an ersatz Ambassador – not the car, but a cloned and compromised vehicle for the most egregious intrusion into personal privacy and information the world has ever seen.
The Prime Minister, Mr Manmohan Singh, appointed Nandan Nilekani as Chairman of the Unique Identity Authority of India, an arm of the Planning Commission. He was given the responsibility of issuing numbers to every living human being in India.
Why this man?
The following list is easily found, in Wikipedia:
· One of the youngest entrepreneurs to join 20 global leaders on the prestigious World Economic Forum (WEF) Foundation Board in January 2006.
· Member of the Board of Governors of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi
· Member of the review committee of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission.
· Forbes “Businessman of the Year” for Asia in 2007.
· He, along with Infosys founder (and currently non-executive chairman) N. R. Narayana Murthy, also received Fortune magazine’s ‘Asia’s Businessmen of the Year 2003’ award.
· Named among the ‘World’s most respected business leaders’ in 2002 and 2003, according to a global survey by Financial Times and PricewaterhouseCoopers.
· Awarded the Corporate Citizen of the Year award at the Asia Business Leader Awards (2004) organized by CNBC.
- Joseph Schumpeter Prize for innovative services in economy, economic sciences and politics - 2005.[11]
- Padma Bhushan, one of the highest civilian honors awarded by the Government of India - 2006.
- Was presented the 'Legend in Leadership Award' by the Yale University in November 2009. He is the first Indian to receive the top honour.
- First Indian to be honoured with the Legend in Leadership Award of Yale University.
- Annual global ''ID People Awards'',
- Was awarded the 12th Sir M Visvesvaraya Memorial Award on Founder's Day, organised by the Federation of Karnataka Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FKCCI), to mark the birth anniversary of Sir M Visvesvaraya.
This list may not be fully comprehensive, but it certainly implies that this person is, indeed, a luminaire extraordinaire – literally, a very bright light.
When the oncoming headlights are too bright, you just step aside, no matter if the driver is driving on the wrong side of the road, or driving the wrong way down a one way road.
This is the story of Aadhaar. Nandan's light is so bright, that the entire nation has gone silent, unquestioningly accepting that this project must be right for the country.
There are about 1,75,000 IIT alumni worldwide, all willing to accept Aadhaar without question, bar a handful labelled as activists for simply asking questions; only because Nandan is also an IIT alumnus.
As a comment to an article in Money Life by Dr.Samir Kelekar, an IIT Bombay alumnus, titled “UIDAI chairman leaves simple questions unanswered at lecture for students”, Sudhir Badami, another IIT alumnus, in reply to Vickram’s comment, wrote, “Thanks, Vickram, for an elaborate response. I go with confidence in Nandan's ability in delivering things and shall I say Integrity. Yes, I do need to go into details. Perhaps in a real world outside the commercial arena, he is somewhat naive. Instead of getting him on the defensive, I think he could do well with constructive criticism. I will get back on this later.”
It has been an uphill task to even raise questions of the legality or constitutionality of Aadhaar, and the privacy issues associated with a centralised identity database and its accessibility, only because everyone blindly accepts that Nandan is very capable and knows what he is doing.
We have questioned many family and friends living in India on what they know about Aadhaar, and we are disappointed to hear responses such as, “I think it is some kind of ID card for the poor”, and, “Don’t know much, except that Manmohan Singh has asked Nandan Nilekani to issue 600 million people with a number”; and so on. Mind you, these are highly educated professionals, surgeons, lawyers, bankers, sociologists, businessmen, engineers (including other IITians) etc.
What will Aadhaar be, without Nandan Nilekani as the Head (or should that be headlight?), is the question. Will it be another rattler of an Ambassador car, like many other government-run schemes, like the PDS and NREGS?
And imagine either Raja or Suresh Kalmadi as the UIDAI Chief! Tongues would wag, and the media would be in a frenzy, questioning every single move made.
Now, do we ever say the car has got powerful headlights, so it must be a good car?
In evaluating Aadhaar, the general public and the intelligentsia should detach Nandan Nilekani from Aadhaar. Put some other driver in his seat, and now see how good the car looks.
When the authors published their articles in Money Life, “Numbers Game, Part I & II”, and shared it with Mr Narayana Murthy (another IIT alumnus, and former chairman of Infosys, succeeded by Nandan Nilekani), he replied thus: “Dear Ram, Thanks for your kind mail. You do make some serious points. Let me think about them.”
This is all we ask the nation. Forget for a moment that Nandan Nilekani is the UIDAI Chief, evaluate Aadhaar with an open mind, and see if this is what India needs.
ID Cards have been rejected in UK, USA and Australia, not by the governments, but by the people, who dumped both politicians and the political parties who were pushing Identity Cards, such as the UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
President George W Bush, and the Labour Party British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Where are they now? And what happened to the ID cards they were pushing with such enthusiasm?
To counter this, Nandan talks about Chile and China, in his article, Power of Identity - Inclusion. For people not in the know, Chile and China are both countries that have in the past, and continue till today, to violate human rights.
Even as I pen this article, I see the headlines “Obama to take on China on human rights?” Should India ape China’s human right violation, or should India suppress and torture its population, like Gen Pinochet did in Chile ?
“In a world of global flows of wealth, power, and images, the search for identity - collective or individual, ascribed or constructed - becomes the fundamental source of social meaning,” says Nandan Nilekani, (Power of Identity).
Give us a break, Nandan. The rhetoric sounds brilliant. However, we are concerned that Aadhaar, the identity that you are force-feeding the illiterate masses in India, could become the fundamental source of social stigma and discrimination.
You may find this difficult to understand, considering your wealthy lifestyle in gated communities, and your lengthy stay abroad, in New York. Please redo your homework, and even walk away from this Frankenstein, Aadhaar, as it could destroy all that you have achieved in over three decades.
As with anything, we human beings get conditioned, and people are now capable of seeing, despite the high beam. We notice that the media that blindly echoed the UID/Aadhaar drum beat, orchestrated by UIDAI marketing and UIDAI-fed advertising agencies, are now raising unpalatable and probing questions.
Is UID, or Aadhaar, only a number, Nandan, as you keep repeating?
We do not believe so, as we have held Aadhaar cards – yes, ID Cards! - issued to our friends, in our hands. At least, if they were standard credit card sized plastic cards, designed to fit in wallets, there would have been some excuse for misleading us. The Aadhaar card is in fact a laminated abomination.
However, Nandan, we can appreciate that your original ideas and original dreams for India may have been pushed aside by politicians.
Is UID/Aadhaar truly optional?
Even a blind man can see the game here. Aadhaar is not compulsory as far as UIDAI is concerned, however registrars, the agencies with which UIDAI has signed contracts, who are engaged in registering people, like state governments, banks, insurance companies, etc., etc., can make it compulsory. They can, and are, doing this both directly (by order) or indirectly) by making it difficult to live an orderly life without it.
Is UID/Aadhaar meant for the poor, who, in your estimation, lack identity, Nandan?
Afraid not, as the focus of all your registrars are not urban slums or rural villages, but metros. The people who are registering are those who already have multiple identifications (including, laughably, the very government servants, in state after state, who are issued state security-recognised cards, and for whom verification has never been an issue).
Can you please explain why you avoided the meeting with NAC – the National Advisory Council? Was it cold feet, or the fact you could no longer continue to lie?
And can you explain why you had no answers for the important questions raised by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance, the major hurdle between you and legitimacy for your identity project?
Surely someone like you could have answered these questions in your sleep. Are you playing politics already? It seems so, for you deliberately misled the country when you 'forgot' to mention this fact, in your televised interview with Shekhar Gupta (“Walk the Talk”-This with-us-or-against-us is the kind of line used in the Iraq war). You professed great admiration for Parliamentarians and the Standing Committee, saying, “These people have done their homework. They have asked us tonnes of questions.” No mention of the fact that you did not, or could not, answer the questions.
If you genuinely believe in UID/Aadhaar, Nandan, why are you afraid to debate the topic with fellow IITians? Surely you are not scared of debates, and do not believe that IITians are either with you or against you? You are welcome to invite your quizzing partner Jairam Ramesh, and even your mentor Mr Narayana Murthy, to be part of your debating team, to face a few IITians, whom you call – dismiss as? - activists. Forget a debate, we are happy with a simple public Q & A session, if and when that suits you.
One day soon, you will wake up and realise that the “world is not flat”; that even poor people each already have an identity, and should not be bastardised by a system that refuses to recognise it; and lastly you will regret having put your hands to serve a system designed for corruption, using the self-same tools that will poison the high-flying principles you have espoused.
While the media is fickle, as any marketing person should know, and you are one of the best, your numerous awards confirm, perhaps you need to pay heed when even your 'protective cover', the Planning Commission, shies at the hike in costs you have just announced, from Rs 6,600 cr to Rs 17,900 cr. “A single UID, earlier estimated to cost around Rs 31 per person, may now end up in the Rs 400-500 territory,” reports the Indian Express, and, in a second article, “Concerned over the increase in costs and the duplication of work between the NPR and the UIDAI, the Plan panel proposes to soon write to the Prime Minister seeking his intervention.”
Last, but not least, Nandan, can you touch your heart and tell us that Anna Hazare's Jan Lok Pal Bill movement is wrong, and Anna and his supporters should be arrested and thrown into prisons?
Parliament does not think so, and has agreed to meet the conditions he suggested as the basis for moving to a Constitutional solution to the issue. It seems that activism, and a people's movement – amiably divided on several issues, but united in purpose – does have the potential to arrest corruption in its tracks.
UPA ministers argue that Jan Lok Pal movement is unconstitutional and is an attempt at blackmail. How about Aadhaar? Is it constitutional? Was it debated nationwide, like the Jan Lok Pal Bill? Does it have approval from the Parliament? afraid not.
In your interview with Shekar Gupta, you said the Lok Pal Bill alone will not fix corruption in India and we need ten to fifteen projects (like UID, costing a few hundred billions) to fix all systems.
We learn that most Central Govt employees of India including the PM use free (and very insecure) email accounts, such as 'Yahoo! Mail', 'Gmail', etc., even for official communications. They do this because the National Informatics Center has not made it possible for emails to be sent and read on mobile devices, which is the preferred way in India (as stated by the article we read). This causes security and legal problems for the government.
It is a disgrace that a nation which boasts about its IT might, and boasts of UID becoming the 'World's Largest Database', cannot have secure email even for the PM.
Nandan, it is time to stand up and confess that you made a mistake.
You did not do your homework and were piggy backing on US Real ID Card and UK ID Cards that were eventually dumped, and did not realise that the government will make use of you, and manipulate you, making you look like a show pony, parroting your government approved lines of rhetoric.
In Indian politics, you are like a fish out of water, and do you know why? You can't mince words, and are too used to speaking the truth, and speaking your mind.
Talk to us, Nandan, and we will explain to you why Aadhaar, the White Elephant, is wrong for India.
