http://kafila.org/2013/04/15/do-you-know-why-aadhaar-is-not-compulsory-ram-krishnaswamy/#comments
APRIL 15, 2013
tags: Aadhar, Nandan Nilekani, UID, UIDAI
This is a guest post by Ram Krishnaswamy
For the last three years activists opposing Aadhaar/UID have argued that it can lead to communal targeting, can aid illegal migrants, can invade privacy, is unconstitutional, does not have parliamentary approval, is illegal, etc. Yet all such objections and more have been successfully stonewalled by UIDAI and UPA leaders.
Further, Aadhaar is not compulsory and so such allegations are considered invalid. The middle and upper class Indians have remained silent about the UID debate, as it does not affect them in the least. The long lines of persons stretching before UID enrollment centers must be proof, then, of the popularity of this concept.
Nandan Nilekani and UIDAI Director General R.S Sharma have repeatedly told the nation that UID, now called Aadhaar, is not mandatory. Yet, over a period of time, they say, it could become ubiquitous, if service providers insist upon it compulsorily, in order to receive their services. To quote UIDAI Chairman, Nandan Nilekani, “Yes, it is voluntary. But the service providers might make it mandatory. In the long run I wouldn’t call it compulsory. I’d rather say it will be come ubiquitous.”
From the time GOI toyed with the idea of a Unique Identity number for the poor and the marginalized Indian population, the nation has been told Aadhaar is not compulsory.
Ever wondered why?
One question activists have never asked is, “Why is Aadhaar not compulsory?”
The reason is so obvious, and staring us in the face all along, yet no one seems to have picked it up. This question throws more light on what is going on and why.
On the very face of it, both these schemes “UID/NPR and Cash Transfers” echo Mohammad Bin Tughlaq – the wisest fool in India’s history so far. Schemes like these are not the way to build a great nation; indeed they may be exactly the way to create a generation of paupers. Poverty was “good” until the time the poor had the dignity to fight it out and move up the ladder. Pauperization however, would kill the very consciousness and self-dignity critical for a nation of 1 billion plus to survive and march forward.
The history of the human race suggests that master position-holders always wanted some form of identification of their slaves. The slave’s name and family links were not adequate. Galley slaves had the letters GAL burnt into their arms. In imperial Russia the Katorshniki (public slaves) were branded in a grisly manner – the letters KAT being punctured on their cheeks and forehead; and gunpowder rubbed into their wounds. In several countries, slaves had their heads shorn, except for a pigtail from the crown. The shorn head was symbolic of castration, loss of manliness, power and freedom. Slavery is one of the most extreme forms of the relation of domination approaching the limits of total power from the view point of the master and the total powerlessness from the view point of the slave. All power strives for authority.
In the current context in India, the “Master” is the State, which suggests that the poor need just Rs 32 a day to survive, while the bourgeois masters can afford to spend Rs 500 for a meal. The “slaves” are the Indian population living below poverty levels, who are told that, unless you have a number linked to finger prints, you will not be allowed to avail subsidised grain at Rupees 3 a kilo. A slave in India today is a socially dead person who can be identified only by a number issued by the master, and not his/her paternity, or maternity, or other social links to the world.
The question that many activists have often been asked is, “Why should you worry about privacy, if you do not have anything to hide?” The corollary to this question just hit me today, “People who have something to hide certainly do not want a Unique Identity number which is linked to their biometrics, meaning their fingerprints and iris scan.”
Recent sting operations suggest that many banks in India facilitate money laundering allowing corrupt individuals with black money to convert them into white money without the person’s identity being questioned. It is amazing how easily the bankers assist in converting unaccounted black money to white. Now imagine how the corrupt in India would react to Aadhaar being compulsory. The Aadhaar number and associated biometrics can be used by law enforcement agencies to link and expose all hidden stashes, not only in India but even in Swiss banks and Singapore banks, now that Singapore is the haven for parking illegal funds.
If Aadhaar is made compulsory over time, the associated biometrics could be used to expose all corrupt bureaucrats, politicians and businessmen, making them all vulnerable. Surely the government does not want to facilitate such a monster. That is why Aadhaar is not compulsory. It is time for all activists to challenge UIDAI Chairman and UPA II government to make Aadhaar compulsory, and help flush out the cancer that is eating the nation from within.
Mr Nilekani, once you asked the question, “What am I? A virus?”
Prove to us you are not a virus, by making Aadhaar compulsory for all Indians, rich and poor, and show us that your ‘Imagining India’ was a genuine attempt to serve the nation.
Surely you do not want to facilitate a system where all people are equal, except some people are more equal than others, and have the right to decline an Aadhaar. But rest assured, the day UIDAI and GOI make Aadhaar compulsory, the nation, meaning the rich and powerful, will show you their true colours regarding UID.
As a Nation we should join hands and ask UPA II the question:
“Why is Aadhaar not compulsory ?”
Why does Aadhaar discriminate the haves and have-nots creating a new caste system that will further divide an all ready fragmented country?
Aadhaar is not compulsory so that low life criminal elements like murderers, rapists, embezzlers, tax avoiders, income tax fraudsters, corrupt bureaucrats and politicians and even potential terrorists can continue fearlessly, without Aadhaar & biometrics to elude law enforcement.
Here are a few notable quotes from people opposing Aadhaar:
- “NPR & UID aiding Aliens” – Narendra Modi
- “UID may aid Communal Targetting” – Aruna Roy & Nikhil Dey, NAC Members
- “Unique Identity Scheme will take away the Privacy of Indian Citizens” – Mathew Thomas
- “UID Project Will Make Constitution Of India A Dead Document” – S.G.Vombatkere
- “Aadhaar will institutionalise Poverty” – Ram Krishnaswamy
- “UID project is full of ambiguity, confusions and suspicions, but no answers” – Usha Ramanathan
- “Aadhaar is UIDAI’s unsolicited Testimonials to the Biometric Industry” – David Moss, UK
- “It is a Bad Idea to Marry UID with NREGA” – Reetika Khera
- “Nilekani’s reporting structure is unprecedented in history; he reports directly to the Prime Minister, thus bypassing all checks and balances in government” – Home Minister Chidambaram
- “Aadhaar is not compulsory — it is just a voluntary “facility.” UIDAI’s concept note stresses that “enrolment will not be mandated.” But there is a catch: “… benefits and services that are linked to the UID will ensure demand for the number.” This is like selling bottled water in a village after poisoning the well, and claiming that people are buying water voluntarily. The next sentence is also ominous: “This will not, however, preclude governments or registrars from mandating enrollment.” – Jean Dreze, Visiting Prof of Economics, Uni of Allahabad, Ex-NAC Member
- “Aadhaar was meant to deduplicate peoples ID’s and Aadhaar itself is a Duplicate of NPR and needs deduplication” – Expenditure Finance Committee (EFC) headed by Secretary Sumit Bose.
- “Nilekani’s technocratic obsession with gathering data is consistent with that of Bill Gates as though lack of information is what is causing world hunger” – Arundhati Roy
- “Which is the bigger crime, a poor family double dipping on PDS to stay alive, or Govt wasting mega bucks on a white elephant called Aadhaar?” – Ram Krishnaswamy
- “In Reality, Aadhaar intrudes into peoples privacy that is hidden under the guise of reaching out” – Srijit Misra
- “Privacy is not something that people feel, except in its absence. Remove it and you destroy something at the heart of being human” – Phil Booth, No2ID
- “The UID is a corporate scam which funnels billions of dollars into the IT sector” – Arundhati Roy
- “Aadhaar is Built on a Platform of Myths” – R. RamaKumar
- “If our Government is selling the Country, then we should know at least who they are selling it to” – Veeresh Malik
- “UID is a ‘Unique Indian Donkey’ that will collapse under the load” – Ram Krishnaswamy
- The strongest voice opposing finger printing was raised by none other than Mahatma Gandhi, the father of the nation who said, “Let us begin by being clear… about General Smuts’ new law. All Indians must now be fingerprinted… like criminals. Men and women. No marriage other than a Christian marriage is considered valid. Under this act our wives and mothers are whores. And every man here is a bastard.”
But then, who in UPA II even remembers Mahatma Gandhi today, leave alone what he said in South Africa?
Ram Krishnaswamy is an IIT Madras alumnus living in Sydney who has opposed UID/Aadhaar since 2009 and hosts Aadhaar Articles Blog Spot (http://aadhararticles.blogspot.com.au/)
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Comments in Kafila:
trojanwalls PERMALINK
April 15, 2013 9:54 AM
This is a helluva confused article. I like some of the points made here – the fact that for the poor adhaar IS becoming mandatory simply because they need the benefits attached while for the middle and upper classes it’s okay to give it a miss if you have something to hide.
But Nilekani isn’t an idiot. If he’d insisted on making it compulsory from the get go then the voices of dissent would have been much louder and stronger with the support of those who don’t want a light shown on their private dealings.
Now if over time something that started out as voluntary gains momentum and popularity through the masses (because dear poster the poor do make up the majority of the state’s population) then the middle classes would get involved too (really, who doesn’t want LPG subsidies transferred to their savings account?) and as more organizations see the benefits of UID, someday – maybe seven, ten years from now – you’ll have the rich fingerprinted alongside the poor.
Come one, guys. It’s a good idea but it wont be hurried. Give it time.
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April 17, 2013 1:22 AM
I like your optimism. If the rich and the corrupt want to hide, even in the long run I doubt corporations providing services will make this mandatory. Just like how they control state policies now. Thus, It has to come from the state – to show that there are no double standards.
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April 15, 2013 12:54 PM
Interesting questions raised. However, this is the probably the exact trap which is laid to trap activists and concerned people about the issues of Aadhar. If we realise the problems with it, it needs to be taken back and not implemented universally. Although I understand what exactly is the author trying to say – and I take these arguments well.
The problem to ending chaos cannot be more chaos. The project is a result of maligned intentions of corporations and its ugly collusion with the state. After this realisation, making it universal formally will only justify the claims of the state to push similar things in the future. And the civil society would have then lost all legitimacy to do anything about it.
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April 16, 2013 3:37 AM
The author opposes UID because it is not compulsory and lets the crooks get away without the need for registering for it? Or that he likes the privileges that these crooks and himself are enjoying currently?
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Comments in other Discussion Groups: ( Names with held )
Ram, I like your swashbuckling style - giving it to them straight on the chin - bravo! But I'm rather scared that our thickheaded rulers might decide to follow your suggestions literally - in an election year, the usual weightage for "pros" and "cons" can get drastically revised.
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Ram,
1. I am already getting SMS from Public Sector Bank to link my account to Aadhaar. There is a fair interest now in middle class, as it may get linked to LPG service. So it may cover more people in course of time, not just those who have a ration card.
2. I agree with you that people should question why Government is hesitating from making Aadhaar mandatory if they believe it is the right thing to do, why have multiple forms of identification ? Whom are they protecting ? Already lot of people escape paying income tax. Even convicts finger-prints and DNA samples are not taken in all jails. (Refer to "Bitti Mohanty" case, which hit the press recently, where a rape convict jumped parole and remained untraceable for 7+ years. It seems his finger prints were not taken.).
3. I am also interested to know what is your counter to the famous statement that "Every Rupee Government spends only 15 paise reaches targeted benficiaries".and related claim that Aadhaar will help this by de-duplication.and using schemes that connect Government to Citizen directly.
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good one rambo
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Ram,
What exactly means 'make it compulsory'?
Would a person be put behind bars if he does not get his UID?
It would seem that the govt would make it 'obligatory' without making it compulsory - the word used by NN was 'obiquitous'. PAN, KYC etc are other such things - if u want a bank a/c or any investment in property, shares, car, jewelery etc - if u dont want any financial dealings, u dont need these. The UID is presently being thought of only as an instrument for availing of govt subsidies but i guess, gradually it would replace all other cards, IDs etc & would become 'compulsary' for all financial transactions.
I wonder if 'compulsory' would mean crooks & politicians would need UID for a swiss a/c???
Let us focus on "how" to make it compulsory - what does it really mean - we need to be specific on these steps to make it an ACTION deal. We can also discuss in this forum the technology, the entire process of making & use of these cards & improvements that can be made.
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Though the authorities are calling it voluntary, it is being forced upon all through various tactics.
So far as the LPG subsidy is concerned, even the rich enjoy it. So they are also being pressurised.
But far more importantly, the Aadhaar number is an essential component of the NPR (National Population Register) details and the NPR is mandatory for all. So, by implication, the Aadhaar is also mandatory for all.
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You will need for virtually anything, including sending a courier by DHL!
Check it out. It's beyond reason !!
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Dear Ramji,
I fully agree with you that calling Aadhaar voluntary is a dirty trick
on the part of the authorities.
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FYI - NN has categorically declared that everyone in his family has Aadhar Card.
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Ram - you really do go to any length to prove a point, right?
"Any one wondered why NN himself did not apply for an Aadhaar Card ?"
NN has an Aadhaar which he uses regularly for marking his attendance in the Aadhaar-based-biometric-attendance-system deployed at all floors of UIDAI office in New Delhi.
While it is okay to argue strongly in favor or against something based on beliefs, by making such loose statements in your emails and blogs, you hide the truth, mislead people, and lose credibility. UIDAI can do many things better which they are not doing currently, but not enrolling rich and influential is not one of them.
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Rambo,
AADHAR is here & here to stay. I feel it is like 'body search' required for entry to any airport, railway station, hotel, office or wherever - it is not mandatory/compulsory - it is voluntary, you may refuse to enter the premises - u may decide not to visit all such places but if u do, it becomes obligatory. The rich & the powerful do manage to avoid it even at present times, yet, they do enter these places without a 'body search', as it is seen degrading..
Aadhar would soon become 'ubiquitous' in these times of security concern & fake IDs - may soon replace PIN, passwords, Driving License, Credit cards, even ATM cards etc with its unique Biometrics (finger print etc) identification. I was amazed to see finger print id gadgets being used in SBI already by their cashiers, instead of logging in very time with their passwords & they were very happy.
Now, instaed of opposing it, Let us actually demand that UID be used by ALL - CROOKS & POLICIANS - INCLUDING RICH & FAMOUS - make it compulsory for all bank a/cs, property deals, high-value purchases, cars, political donations, foreign-exchange deals & for all security-related matters. There will be no shame in using it for subsidized rations, gas, birth, death, marriage, travel & yes, a public convenience(if for security matters) or whatever else.
We will have to delineate actual steps & ACTIONS required to make it compulsory - short of putting people behind bars for no UID.
Of course, there is a valid concern of misuse of the data by the "State" for total control, suppression & oppression of the public & "LOSS OF PRIVACY". I would say that is unavoidable & perhaps a small price to pay for the benefits it offers. We can also demand certain safeguards, checks & balances to control that but of course, the risk of a brazen misuse by the state would always be there - as it is, even without Aadhar, police & the Govt machinery have enough data in your PAN, PP, MOBILE BILLS ETC FOR ALL SURVEILLANCE THEY WANT.
The idea of individual freedom & privacy is just that - an idea - nothing more - when GOOD GOVERNANCE is lacking. NPR is only duplication of the effort & the expenses - really a turf war between two GoI deptts - we need to point out the futility of it & misuse of funds - again a governace issue.
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One may assume whatever suitable one has in one's mind.
Likewise, a driving license is NOT a must [unless one wishes to drive a vehicle]
Passport is NOT a must [unless one wishes to visit other countries]
Aadhaar is also NOT a must ... unless what?
In India, LPG cylinders have a limited and restricted subsidy for every LPG user. This subsidy shall get refunded directly to the bank accounts linked with Aadhaar cards.
Definitely this is NOT a must for NRIs, but shall be a MUST for every middle class family of resident Indians, who would like to get that subsidy credited to their Bank accounts.
Without Aadhaar card, the subsidy is lost.
And yet, Aadhaar card is NOT a must and one can forget the subsidy amount.
Even subsidy is not a MUST... why the hell that is being given?
Government is crazy to give subsidy to the resident Indians.
Now RAM is happy and satisfied. He does not carry a Passport and a Driving Licence because both are NOT a MUST.
:)
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What Aadhaar Can Do For You
By Ram Krishnaswamy
30 September, 2011, Countercurrents.org
Which is the bigger crime a poor family double dipping on PDS to stay alive or Govt wasting mega bucks on a white elephant called Aadhaar ?
1. Aadhaar Hand Book for Registrars - Version 1.2 – September 2010 Page 4
Aadhaar's Hand Book for Registrars says :
Aadhaar, which means ‘foundation' in many Indian languages, has the following Features and Benefits :
Comment : Al Queda also means base or Foundation. If Al Queda is a Terrorist Organisation then Aadhaar has to be State Sponsored Terrorism on its own people – all Indians
1. One Aadhaar = 1 beneficiary: Aadhaar is a unique number, and no resident can have a duplicate number since it is linked to their individual biometrics; thereby identifying fake and ghost identities which result in leakages today. Savings from eliminating duplicates and fakes through Aadhaar-based identification will further enable governments to expand benefits to other eligible residents
Comment : It is an out landish statement to say that fake and ghost identities result in leakages today considering only about 15 % of Govt Subsidies reach the deserving poor. Of these even if 10% are fake and ghost identities it would amount to 1.5% of a PDS that is worth Rs 50,000 crores which will amount to about Rs 750 crores. It does not make sense spending Rs 45000 to Rs 150000 crores to save a paltry sum.
Main corruption is upstream in the distribution chain and here we are victimizing the victims all over.
Which is the bigger crime a poor family double dipping on PDS to stay alive or Govt wasting mega bucks on a white elephant called Aadhaar ?. Further Aadhaar is optional and cannot be forced and can never cover the entire population nor does Aadhaar help identify the deserving poor BPL population.
It is possible to double dip on PDS even with Aadhaar which is not compulsory. For example any one with two Ration Cards for example can use aadhaar for one and claim not to have an Aadhaar while using the other. It does not take an IT Whiz or Consultants like Ernst & Young or Accenture to figure this out.
2. Portability: Aadhaar is a universal number, and agencies and services can contact the central Unique Identification database from anywhere in the country to confirm a beneficiary's identity
Comment: This seems to be a great sales pitch, that Aadhaar is portable and can be used anywhere in India to avail Govt subsidies. It is a pity that none of the proponents of Aadhaar can foresee the dangers ahead. Extremely poor Rural population can and will move enmasse into already over crowded cities armed by the fact that their Aadhaar card will get them their rations any where in India. Are we happy to have more slums in our cities ? This influx in population will also lead to increase in crime and prostitution as a means of survival in Metros.
3. Inclusion of those without any existing identity documents : A problem in reaching benefits to poor and marginalized residents is that they often lack the identification documents they need to receive State benefits; the ‘Introducer' system which has been approved for data verification for the UIDAI will enable such residents to establish an identity
Comment : This is perhaps the biggest flaw in Aadhaar. It creates a new Introducer system that is prone to be vandalized by opportunists keen on making a quick buck. UIDAI does not have the man power to supervise and audit this aspect and consequently we as a nation can embrace ourselves as crores of aliens from border states will ease into the nation and Aadhaar will legitamise them as residents of India . West Bengal beware.
Outside UIDAI offices are touts who will act as “Introducers” for a fee. You could be any body, choose any name or any address and any date of birth as you wish, as all you will require is an Introducer
4. Electronic benefit transfers: the UID-enabled-Bank-Account network will offer a secure and low cost platform to directly remit benefits to residents without the heavy costs associated today with benefit distribution; the leakages in the current system will also be stemmed as a result
Comment: PDS Leakages will not be stemmed but ghosts with Aadhaar will receive payments in perpetuity in lieu of PDS grains or receive NREGA payments without doing a days work. The concept of authentication of NREGA labourers on work sites is a myth that will never be achieved.
Miss Piggy said “ By the time I am Thin, FAT will be in” By the time UIDAI dishes out these Unique numbers, PDS, NREGA and even UPA II may not exist.
5. Aadhaar-based authentication to confirm entitlement delivered to the beneficiary : the UIDAI will offer online authentication services for agencies who wish to validate a resident's identity; this service will enable confirmation of the entitlement actually reaching the intended beneficiary
Comment : Key words here are “agencies who wish to validate a residents identity” Ration shop owners and NREGA contractors will be the last to use authentication services to validate a residents identity. It is not in their interest plus it is a time consuming process with no additional financial returns. So who will use this authentication service ?
Further even major cities are facing power cuts on a daily basis. A few days ago a friend in Mumbai wrote he could not use his computer all day as there was no power. “On line Authentication” of people all over the country, with no electricity and no internet connectivity, sounds like a drunkard's fantsy.
6. Improved services through increased transparency: Clear accountability and transparent monitoring would significantly improve access and quality of entitlements to beneficiaries and the agency alike
Comment: How does transparency result in improved quality of entitlements?. 35 Kilos quota will remain the same in PDS, how will this improve ? Will Aadhaar enable the poor to get better quality grains ?
Sounds more mumbo jumbo sales pitch
7. Self-service puts residents in control: Using Aadhaar as an authentication mechanism, residents should be able to access up-to-date information about their entitlements, demand services and redress their grievances directly from their mobile phone, kiosks or other means. In the case of self-service on the resident's mobile, security is assured using two-factor authentication (i.e. by proving possession of the resident's registered Mobile Number and knowledge of the resident's Aadhaar PIN). These standards are compliant with the Reserve Bank of India's approved standards for Mobile Banking and Payments. (Please see Annexure for how mobile phone can be used for Aadhaar enabled applications)
Comment: This is exactly what one can expect from Corporate Consultants in pin striped suits. We are talking about a target population in need for government subsidies who are predominantly uneducated & living in rural India. Even if they are using mobile phones, though it seems unlikely, it is only to communicate with loved ones. Will some one educate UIDAI's Chief and consultants that the target population is uneducated ( meaning cannot read and write) rural poor and incapable of determining their entitlements using mobile phones.
Will some one send Nandan Nilekani and his UIDAI experts to remote villages without power, banks and kirana shops and ask them to explain how efficient Aadhaar will be ?
Remember what happened to Internet Kiosks ? It failed despite being a great concept only because poor who earn less than Rs 50 a day cannot tell the difference between a TV and a Computer Monitor used in Internet Kiosks.
Concept of Micro ATMs in Kirana shops to service the rural population.
Comments: Chaps who run Kirana shops are there to make money out of the poor. In the Long run each Kirana shop owner will become a Micro Lender if we are to be polite and a Pawn Broker who will lend money at high interest to poor who pledge their Aadhaar and Ration Cards. This means the poor cannot avail monthly quota without begging and pleasing the Kirana shop owner. Has the nation forgotten the scenes from Mother India and how a poor widow was exploited by a Kirana shop owner. ( Watch you tube clips to jog your memory)
Cash Transfers in lieu of PDS
Comment : Does Nandan Nilekani a Billionaire living in his Gated Mansion know more about the poor & poverty in India than Jean Dreze & Aruna Roy the brains behind NREGA?.
Aruna Roy says “ Aadhaar is Bound to Fail”
Jean Dreze in his article “ The Cash Mantra” says “For poor people, food entitlements have several advantages over cash transfers; they are inflation-proof, unlike cash transfers that can be eroded by local price increases, even if they are indexed to the general price level…..
Privacy, Legality, and Constitution;
Comment: Is Uidai Chief also an expert on Sociology, a Lawyer and an expert on Constitutional Matters ? If he is he would have come out of hiding and debated legal eagles like Usha Ramanathan a Human Rights Lawyer and Somnath Bharti and IIT Alumnus as well as a Supreme Court Lawyer.
Biometrics
Comment: There is zero expertise in UIDAI on Biometrics besides vendors keen on signing mega contracts. One has to read an article “India's ID card scheme – drowning in a sea of false positives by David Moss . Read all about how two key players L1 Identity and Morpho have now merged into Safran to get a strangle hold on UIDAIs Aadhaar. Safran completes acquisition of L1 Identity solutions to become worlds leader in Biometric Solutions
Have Indians forgotten how East India Company traded mainly in cotton, silk, indigo dye , saltpetre , tea, and opium. The Company also came to rule large areas of India, exercising military power and assuming administrative functions, to the exclusion, gradually, of its commercial pursuits; it effectively functioned as a megacorporation . Is history repeating itself here ?
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Ram Krishnaswamy is the Founder and Managing Director (Retd) of Noise Control Australia. He compiled and published in 2008 “Reflections by IITians” , a book showcasing the paths traversed by a diverse range of IITians.
He is the owner/ moderator of IIT Global Yahoo Groups and Jago India Yahoo group and is the publisher of the blog on “All Aadhaar Related Articles” .
He actively supports “Jeevodaya” a Hospice for terminally ill Cancer Patients in Chennai, Tamilnadu.
He is currently co-authoring a series of articles on Aadhaar in Money life. “ Privacy Numbers Game ” by Ram Krishnaswamy & Vickram Crishna Part 1 “ Privacy Numbers Game ” Moneylife
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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.
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At Infosys, the World was his Oyster
By Ram Krishnaswamy & Vickram Crishna
Nandan Nilekani at Infosys
The Accidental Entrepreneur
Nandan Nilekani claims he is an accidental entrepreneur, in his book “Imagining India”, published by Penguin, which is full of ideas for the new century. I suppose, by accidental, he means it was all about being there, at the right place, at the right time.
Accidental or not, he has enjoyed great success. Infosys, the startup he co-founded, today boasts a five billion dollar empire, with over 100,000 employees the world over. He also co-founded NASSCOM (India's premier software industry association), TiE Bangalore (The Indus Entrepreneurs, a global Asian IT industry club), and has collected more awards than possibly he can remember, from Corporate Citizen of the Year (2004), the Joseph Schumpeter Prize (2005), to a Padma Bhushan (2006), Businessman of the year - Forbes Asia (2006), 100 Most Influential People in the World - Time Magazine (2006 & 2009).
Along the way, he also became an accidental billionaire, a status that none of the other co-founders of Infosys enjoy.
When one attains such status, and the world is in awe of you, one would believe there are no more wants and not much more to achieve in life. Most Westerners would buy an expensive yacht and sail away with a leading lady to Key Largo (Bertie Higgins).
An accidental question, such as, “If you can have such good roads on the Infosys Campus, why are the roads outside so terrible?” was answered by Nandan, with one word: “Politics”. It was countered by another question, “Why don’t people like you get into politics?”
This not only got Nandan thinking, but kindled an inner desire to get into politics for all the right reasons, “The upliftment of India”. His collection of thoughts and ideas form the backbone of Imagining India, published in 2008. Nandan dedicates the book to Nihar, Janhavi and Rohini Nilekani, for keeping him grounded.
In February 2009, Nandan Nilekani gave a most impressive and inspiring TED talk on “Nandan Nilekani's ideas for India's future”. He is passionate in sharing his thoughts on evolution of ideas; he believes ideas, when they take root, lead to ideologies, which become policies, that lead to action. He says there are four kinds of ideas that can impact India, ideas that have arrived, ideas in progress, ideas in conflict, and ideas in anticipation.
He says that in the 60’s and 70’s, we thought of people as a burden and people as a liability. Today, we talk of people as an asset, and as human capital. This choice of phrasing paints the ideologies of Nandan Nilekani, admired by the nation.
With this speech Nandan accidentally made clear his vision, and his mission, to enter Indian politics and contribute to society.
The Accidental Social Networker
After launching Imagining India in Dec 2008, Nandan took to Facebook, like a fish to water, to share his ideas as Facebook Pages, almost one article a day. His posts can be read “Nandan Nilekani: Imagining India”, a Facebook page. Nandan's prayers were answered. He had marketed his ideas so successfully through his book Imagining India and his TED speech, that the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh invited Nandan Nilekani with an offer he could not refuse; an appointment as the Chairman of UIDAI, with a Cabinet Minister's rank.
Nandan wrote, on 23rd July 2009, in his last post for the Imagining India Facebook Page, “As you may have heard, I’ve been appointed as the Chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India. I’m grateful for all your congratulations and best wishes.
“In my new role, I can no longer comment on government policy. So this means the end of this blog. The blogging format was new to me, and I greatly enjoyed writing here and listening to your thoughts these past few months.
“Many people have asked me why I accepted this appointment. I have long been a champion of a reform approach that is inclusive of the poor, and in my book, I described unique identity as one of the key steps for achieving this goal. Giving every individual in India a unique identification number can go a long way in enabling direct benefits, and fixing weak public delivery systems, giving the poor access to better healthcare, education, and welfare safety nets. When Prime Minister Manmohan Singh offered me the opportunity to head the UIDAI, I saw it as a chance to help enable ideas I have supported for a long time.
“Since the UIDAI aims to enable a people-centric approach to governance, I will approach the rollout of the initiative in the same way. I’ve been overwhelmed in the last few weeks by offers of assistance and help from Indians around the world. The UIDAI will be setting up a website soon, which will chart out ways for people to volunteer and engage with the project. I hope that together, we will be able to make this initiative an enormous success.”
Teaching through Fables
A favourite teacher at school imparted knowledge in a unique manner. She made us remember what she taught us by linking it to a fable, or a Tolstoy, or a Shakespeare story or even verses from William Wordsworth.
There are two fables that seem pertinent in this context, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's needs and Nandan Nilekani's prayers.
UPA II had promised the poor in India financial inclusion, and is struggling to fix the leaky PDS and NREGA public welfare schemes. Added to this were the corruption charges against UPA II coalition ministers, who oversaw the 2G and CWG scandals, vast scams that tainted the coalition, whose origins lie in the structure of the UPA approach to politics, which is disgracefully similar to that of its major opponents (consequently, the latter are floundering). PM Manmohan Singh was looking for a fabric that would cover all the flaws of UPA II, like the emperor's new clothes.
A fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen about an emperor who pays a lot of money for some new magic clothes, which can only be seen by wise people. The clothes do not really exist, yet the emperor does not admit he cannot see them, because he does not want to seem stupid. Everyone else pretends to see the clothes too, until a child shouts, "The Emperor has no clothes on!"
The title is often used to describe a situation in which people are afraid to criticize something, because everyone else seems to think it is good, or important.
The Unique Identity Number, proposed by Nandan Nilekani, was indeed the special fabric that Indias PM was looking for. In our modern fairy tale, the PM makes Nandan Nilekani (tailor) a Cabinet Minister, and gives him a lot of taxpayer's money (gold), to weave Aadhaar (magic clothes), that can be only be seen by the UPA II sycophants (wise people) in India. The purported benefits of UID do not exist, yet every one pretends to see them, as in the fable. This magic fabric got rebranded as Aadhaar, meaning foundation, to drive home the importance of the idea of benefits that will flow to the common man in India. Given his special status, it now seems that every word he says shines like gold, and everything that he touches turns to gold.
A fable (story with a moral) from ancient Greece, it is about a rich king who is not satisfied with his wealth, and always wishes for more. His wish is granted, and everything he touches turns into gold. However, he can't even hug his beloved child, who is turned into a gold statue upon his touch, and he can't eat food, as it turns immediately into gold. The story is usually related with a tragic end, but sometimes, in the telling, the king begs for forgiveness and removal of the curse of having his prayers granted.
Digitally tagging people individually is the 'gold' that some persons think is the panacea for all of India's troubles. Unfortunately, imposing such tags implies that, without them, people have no identity. It also opens a backdoor, in the digital age, to personal and private information that can be used against them in the future, just as Adolf Hitler's tagging scheme, launched in Nationalist Germany in the 1930s, led to the filtering out of persons of certain origins, politics and even states of health. Initially sent to labor camps, which proved to be sub-optimally efficient, eventually, within the space of a year or two, such persons were systematically killed, a total of a staggering six million, by the time Nazi Germany was defeated in war and the killing could be stopped.
In India, we are very familiar with the dangers of systematic identification. Ordinary civil administration lists, maintained on paper, have been used since the time the country won its independence, to cull out and kill people, a twist to the tryst with destiny celebrated today. It has been used again and again, to disastrous effect, in different states across the country, the only weapon against it being the inefficiency of maintaining records, or on occasion, the strength of will of individuals in some departments of the Centre or of the States that prevented the lists from being illegally leaked.
Now, in 2011, we are faced with a global situation in which skilled computer experts combine their forces to attack so-called secure computer networks. They do this for fun and profit, and sometimes as a statement of political will. The networks of the Indian government have been systematically attacked for the last five years, apparently undetected by the administrators. No concerted responses have even been formulated.
It is in such an environment that a technocrat chooses to place the entire digital assets of the country's people online, in one place. Unfortunately, unlike some versions of King Midas' tale, no benevolent god will be able to retrieve these assets, once leaked, and restore the security of the country's people.
The End of Innocence
23rd July 2009 marked the end of Nandan Nilekani as we all knew him, a pleasant and happy man, opening his mind and heart out to strangers on Facebook. He will never be the same man again. We will never see the same smile again.
What has happened to Nandan Nilekani, since he took over as Chairman of UIDAI, is that he has been surrounded by wise men (Cabinet Ministers and Bureaucrats), who keep praising him for his wonderful ideas. He himself never seems to realize he has bitten off more than he can chew.
I sifted through the 30 odd responses to Nandan's final post, and found my (Ram) own comment, dated 14th August 2009. I wrote “Nandan, UID is a disaster in the making. Please think this through carefully. Citizens of USA, UK and Australia have blocked similar attempts for decades, as it invades peoples privacy. How a UID database is going to benefit the really needy... population of India is still an unanswered question. It is not your credibility or your capabilities but the very need for this UID, is a big question mark?
Don't the citizens of India have a say in this matter? Were the people of India ever asked before elections? Why is this being rushed through without any public debate, is the question?
Please take care
Ram, IIT Madras Alumnus
August 14, 2009 at 6:14pm
A Sad and Forlorn UID Chairman
This picture tells it all. Today, in August 2011, Nandan finds himself alone, and even looks highly stressed and forlorn. What has gone wrong is anybody’s guess.
It is commonly seen that when a young man from an average family becomes successful and rich, he loses most of his genuine friends and gets surrounded by new found friends, birds of the same feather, shall we say. People who hang around you, and wine and dine you when you have made it rich, are seldom long-lasting friends, or friends who will correct you when you are wrong.
It is all about society bashes, lavish dinner parties with caviar and champagne and throwing names to boast who knows who in the upper echelons of the business world and to see how best they can make use of your friendship.
Now that Nandan holds the rank of a cabinet minister, and has control of Rs 45,000 crores (an estimate: it may be three times higher, and there are documented reasons, chiefly the report of the UK's London School of Economics and Political Science on the UK identity cards scheme, that was promoted by UK's former Labour government, officially burning through Sterling 850 million pounds - the actual cost is bound to be higher - before being scrapped, to believe that even this ballpark figure is a vast underestimation) of taxpayer's funds to spend on the UID project, he is surrounded, and may even be hounded, by people who want to win a share of the UID budget.
It is unlike a cheerful, happy and positive Nandan Nilekani, not to meet with Mrs Sonia Gandhi and her National Advisory Committee, on 30th August 2010 as scheduled; because he is not the disrespectful kind.
Many IITians wanted a Q & A Session on UID at the PanIIT Conclave held at NOIDA between the 29th and 30th October 2010. Again, Nandan was not game to be questioned in Public on UID/Aadhaar, even by his own community of alumni.
On Friday the 7th January 2011, a group of students and activists staged a silent protest opposing the 12-digit Aadhaar number, as the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) chairman, Nandan Nilekani, delivered a lecture on Aadhaar’s role in the transformation of public service delivery
Students from the Indian Institute of Science, and activists, held placards and banners saying ‘Beware, Big Brother is watching you’ and ‘Secure electronic archive is a myth’ at the JRD Tata Auditorium of the National Institute of Advanced Studies. When questions got hot, apparently Nandan got flustered and had to be escorted out through the back door. Can this be the same Nandan Nilekani, who would have argued that politicians have a duty to answer questions from the concerned public?
Long after the launch of Aadhaar, the unique identity number, Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) chief Nandan Nilekani continues to face political questioning and apprehension about the scheme.
Nilekani, together with Planning Commission secretary Sudha Pillai, appeared before the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance, headed by senior BJP leader Yashwant Sinha, where many members expressed their reservations.
While some members questioned even the need for such a programme, others asked Nilekani why the scheme was not made mandatory for all residents. Nilekani has promised to give a detailed power-point presentation of Aadhaar in his next appearance before the panel.
Here is the IT Czar of India and the proponent of the UID, unable to answer basic questions on UID raised by the Standing Committee members.
This is not the CEO of Infosys, as we knew Nandan.
This is a Nandan Nilekani who seems to be lost, lonely and forlorn, with no one to turn to for support, besides ‘Yes sir’ men, from the bureaucracy he has created.
Is the face an Index of the Mind ?
If this was not bad enough, we had multinational corporations, HP and IBM, claim that the UIDAI tender processes were unfair. It is interesting that UIDAI Chairman, Nandan Nilekani, did not attend this meeting either. To make things worse, an UIDAI official said, "We had meetings with both companies especially with HP, at least twice, to understand what went wrong. We don't undermine the repute of these large tech majors, but we award tenders on what is presented to us on the table," the official said. He added that the selection is done by an inter-ministerial group, and is not the prerogative of the authority alone.
It appears that as UIDAI Chairman, Nandan Nilekani may not even have the authority to award UIDAI contracts, and is to take instructions from an Inter Ministerial Group. Is this not precisely the defence strategy of A Raja in the 2G Scam and Suresh Kalmadi in the CWG Scam?
Is Nandan Nilekani in charge of UIDAI, or is he the show pony used for marketing and advertising by UPA II?
Has Nandan bitten off more than he can chew?
Is he stuck in quicksand with no bail-out options?
Is Nandan happy, now that his prayers to become a powerful politician have come true?
If he is unhappy, has he prayed for something without understanding the implications? Have Nandan's prayers turn out to be Midas’ Golden Touch?
"If I could have but one wish," said the King, "I would ask that everything I touch should turn to beautiful yellow gold".
"Your wish shall be granted," said the fairy. "At sunrise to-morrow morning your slightest touch will turn everything into gold. But I warn you that your gift will not make you happy."
"I will take the risk," said the King.
"Your wish shall be granted," said the fairy. "At sunrise to-morrow morning your slightest touch will turn everything into gold. But I warn you that your gift will not make you happy."
"I will take the risk," said the King.
Nandan did not crave for more Gold, but wished for “Power”, and that is precisely what he has been blessed with, by UPA II.
Nilekani has been provided with the following multiple identities:
- He is head of Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI)
- Head of Technology Advisory Group on Unique Projects (TAGUP)
- Head of Committee on Electronic Toll Collection (ETC)
- Head of an inter-ministerial task force to streamline PDS
- Head of government of India's IT Task Force for Power Sector.
- Member of National Knowledge Commission.
- Member of Review Committee of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission.
- Member of National Advisory Group on e-Governance.
- Member of Subcommittee of the Securities and Exchange Board of India
- Member of Reserve Bank of India's Advisory Group on Corporate Governance.
- Member of Prime Minister's National Council on Skill Development.
What if Nandan Nilekani now realises that his idea of Unique Identity is, in fact, an Idea in Conflict, that he so eloquently describes in his TED lecture, is unconstitutional and illegal, and has no parliamentary approval, violates human privacy, promises to be the magic bullet it is not in reality, and above all, will institutionalise poverty?
Nandan's golden touch (UIDAI Chairmanship) has burdened him with the responsibility of fixing anything he touches, or even thinks of, from the PDS, to NREGA, to Microfinance, to Cash Transfers, to Bank accounts, to Micro ATMS, to kirana shops, to school children, to health care…. Yes, the list is endless.
Let's end this with another reference to what Nandan Nilekani stated, in an article in Outlook titled “We have your Number” : "Opponents of the Aadhaar number have included advocates of privacy rights. The number however, is linked to limited personal information, with no profiling data included. Submitting a father’s name for example, is not required, allowing residents to adopt any name of their choosing and free themselves from caste identification."
Free themselves from caste identification?
Oh yes, we’d welcome that any day, if we could officially shed our caste and free ourselves from this burden of centuries. But this is definitely wishful thinking on Nandan’s part, and not the official UPA II policy.
Announcing the Cabinet decision, Union Information and Broadcasting Minister Ambika Soni told journalists, “This completely fulfils the assurance given by the government in Parliament to the Opposition parties to have a caste-based census along with the socio-economic profiling.” This was published in The Hindu, an article titled “Poverty, caste and religion to be simultaneously mapped”.
While the BPL data for urban and rural poor would be utilised for the 12th Plan, the targeted subsidy schemes as well as the Unique Identification programme (UID), the data on caste and religion would remain confidential, according to an article in Hindu Business line in an article titled “Cabinet approves caste and BPL census”.
Hello, how do people free themselves from caste identification ?
Had Nandan done his homework on ID Cards and had made the time to listen to his genuine friends and to honest people he now calls activists, he may not have published Imagining India, or ever entered politics.
Imagining India was published in Dec 2008, and it must have been a work in progress since 2006. The Real ID Act was enacted in 2005 in USA; the British ID Card Project gained ground in 2005; and so Nandan too believed it was also the best option for India.
There is nothing unique about UID - Nandan Nilekani was just piggybacking on developments in USA and UK. Unfortunately both countries have since abandoned their ID Card projects, yet UPA II is forcing his version on a population that lacks awareness and understanding of issues related to people's privacy.
And what of his new-found friends? Nothing is forever, as discovered in recent years by fervent proponents of intrusive government, the leaders of this movement in the West. Consider George Bush, the President of the United States of America, his party swept out in the polls by unlikely opponent Barack Obama. Consider Tony Blair, the Prime Minister of UK, his party swept out in the polls by the unlikely coalition of conservative and social democrat movements. Consider what unlikely happenstances may yet transform India's wrecked democracy. Could Anna Hazare become the next Prime Minister of India?
People of India are slow to react to UID, but when they do it could be the last nail in UPA II’s coffin, and Nandan Nilekani might seek asylum in a country with no identity cards, like the USA or UK.
Having realised that there was nothing unique about UID, considering many have used it since Hitler's Nazi Germany, Nandan quickly renamed UID as Aadhaar, which means Foundation. Had he done his homework properly, Nandan Nilekani would know that Al Qaeda also means Base i.e. Foundation.
God Save India!
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Whose Child is it any way?
By Ram Krishnaswamy & Vickram Crishna
The opinion that Aadhaar, India’s Unique Identity Number that will eventually reside on every Identity Card or Identity Proof in India, is illegitimate, has been voiced by several legal experts right from the beginning. Most crucially, Mother India has been violated, because Aadhaar was conceived, and is being imposed, without the consent of Parliament.
According to lawyer Praveen Dalal, even the constitution of India has been totally neglected by Congress government in its zest to impose unconstitutional projects like Aadhar. Praveen Dalal further maintains that the UPA II Congress Coalition government is taking anti-national steps, and neither the Judiciary nor the Parliament is challenging it.
Even within the sanctity of a legal marriage, sex without consent is rape. Can India’s judiciary charge the UPA II coalition Government of violating the rights of an entire nation of 1.2 billion people, if the matter is taken to the courts?
This unholy creation called UID and later christened as Aadhaar, would not have been born, had an IUD been in place – i.e. contraceptive or preventative measures such as Public & Parliamentary debate and consent.
That Aadhaar is not an immaculate conception, but a Frankenstein, is opined by many God-fearing people, as also legal experts such as Usha Ramanathan. Ms Ramanathan says, “The project pegs its legitimacy on what it will do for the poor. It promises that it will give the poor an identity, with which they may become visible to the state.”
Unfortunately this legitimacy is, at best, a myth.
That Aadhaar is a threat to the privacy of Mother India’s entire population was first raised by Tehelka, that asserts, “We raised the issue of privacy long before any one else.”
“Privacy is not something that people feel, except in its absence. Remove it and you destroy something at the heart of being human,” writes Phil Booth, national co-ordinator of the UK-based campaign No2ID.
Whodunnit?
Whilst the legitimacy of what Aadhaar may, or may not, do for the poor is better left undebated and even less relevant, what is pertinent here is “Whodunnit?”
A whodunnit ( for "Who['s] done it?") is a complex, plot-driven variety of the detective story, in which the puzzle is the main feature of interest. The reader is provided with clues, from which the identity of the perpetrator of the crime may be deduced, before the solution is revealed in the final pages of the book.
Let us investigate who fathered Aadhaar from the following clues.
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Suspect No.1. L.K.Advani, BJP Leader
Citing security concerns, senior BJP leader L K Advani said that if voted to power, the NDA will enact a law to make multi-purpose national identity cards mandatory for citizens of the country.
Security is the main concern for making national identity cards mandatory, he said in 2010, as he unveiled the IT Vision Document of the party for the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections. Advani pointed out the increasing infiltration of Bangladeshi nationals into the country, particularly in the northeast. There are an estimated two crore Bangladeshi immigrants staying illegally in the country, he said, and stressed on the necessity of having national identity cards for citizens. National identity card is the key promise of the IT Vision Document, Advani said.
Did Advani father this child called Aadhaar? That is highly unlikely, considering the nation divorced him in 2004, despite the India Shining claims by NDA. At best, it could be wishful thinking on Advani’s part, building on the failed attempt to impose identity cards on all border residents in 1999, following the Kargil war. The reader must concede that Advani is honest and speaks his mind, although his vision may not always be one befitting a free and egalitarian democracy.
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Suspect No.2: P. Chidambaram, Home Minister
“The National Intelligence Grid (NatGrid), which has just been set up by Home Minister P Chidambaram, will turn India into an Orwellian police state. It has been opposed by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, who argued that it infringes the privacy of citizens, and may be unconstitutional,” says Ravi Visvesvaraya Sharada Prasad, an IIT Kanpur Alumnus in his article “Will new Intelligence Grid make India a Police State”.
Ravi Prasad explains, “Under NatGrid, security agencies will be able to access sensitive personal information of all individuals, such as bank accounts, insurance policies held, property owned or rented, railway and airline tickets booked, income tax returns, driving records, automobiles owned or leased, credit card transactions, stock market transactions, educational background, phone calls, emails and SMSs, websites visited, etc.
“Under NatGrid, eleven agencies of the government (including Research and Analysis Wing, Intelligence Bureau, Revenue Intelligence, Enforcement Directorate, Military Intelligence, etc.) will be permitted to easily access computer databases of organizations in the private and public sectors as well as of central and state government agencies, such as banks, insurance companies, stock exchanges, land records, airlines, railways, telecom service providers, educational institutions, credit card issuers, chemical vendors, etc.”
Was UIDAI conceived by Chidambaram to act as the main hub of Natgrid to connect seamlessly to multiple Govt and Private databases to identify and track Indians in general ?
Quoting Ranjit Devaraj in IPS news, “Chidambaram said NATGRID would tap into 21 sets of databases that will be networked to achieve quick, seamless and secure access to desired information for intelligence and enforcement agencies.” He added that “NATGRID will identify those who must be watched, investigated, disabled and neutralized.”
It has been reported in the media that Chidambaram is not content with just finger prints and iris scans, and wants a DNA Databank.
“Chidambaram himself underscored the UID's security rationale by announcing the UIDAI's establishment in January 2009, as a timely response to the November 2008 Mumbai terror attacks,” says Praful Bidwai in his article 'Questionable Link'.
Murali Krishnaswamy, in an article in The Hindu titled 'It is Time to be Counted' points out that in his message, the Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram said, “I wish to point out that the National Population register is an important event. Never before have we tried an exercise of that scale. In fact, nowhere in the world has a Government tried to count, identify and issue identity cards to more than a billion people. This is the biggest exercise, I believe, since humankind came into existence.” His idea is that people will get unique ID numbers and also National Identity Cards. The slogan for Census 2011 is “Our Census, Our Future”, and the National Population Register exercise has been foisted on the Census, altering its character irrevocably for the first time since 1931, when a forward thinking policy decision removed the stigma of caste and creed from formal estimates of the country's makeup.
Is Aadhaar Chidambaram’s brainchild, hastily cobbled together from previous abortive attempts, after the Mumbai attack on 26/11, when he replaced a Home Minister who was held to have failed the nation?
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Suspect No 3: Prime Minister: Manmohan Singh
It is common knowledge now that India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress President Sonia Gandhi officially christened Aadhaar on 29th September in tribal dominated village Tembhali in Nandurbar district in Maharashtra.
It reminded the author of the money wasted - and sponged up by a well-placed few - in brightening up Mandabam Village, for the inauguration of Pamban Bridge
connecting Rameswaram Island with the mainland, by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in the 70’s. It just shows that our leaders are still ashamed of the truth, and do not want to see the Real India.
The UIDAI was established by an executive order of the Union government, with its chairman Nandan Nilekani handpicked for the Cabinet minister-ranked job, by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh constituted a council under his chairmanship to advice the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) and ensure better coordination between ministries, stakeholders and partners. “The council is expected to advice the UIDAI on the programme, methodology and implementation to ensure coordination between ministries, departments, stakeholders and partners,” said a release from the Prime Minister's Office. It will also identify specific milestones for early completion of the project.
“Nandan Nilekani, the 54-year-old co-founder of Infosys Technologies, took charge as the chairman of the UIDAI last month and started work on the government's ambitious project to provide a single identity number and card to each of the country's 1.17 billion people.”
“The main task of the authority would be to create a database that will help in issuing unique identity cards”.
We cannot tell if the idea of Unique Identity is, in fact, what the head of state wants for the nation, or a decision of the Home Minister he was forced to endorse. But he is a firm supporter of his colleague, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, about whom more later.
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Suspect No 4 – Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Planning Commission Deputy Chairman
In political circles it is strongly believed that the man driving India’s PM is Montek Singh Ahluwalia, and not the Congress President Sonia Gandhi, as is believed by the masses, the opposition and the media.
Are our policies being dictated by the foreign privatisation lobby, asks Lola Nayar in her article “The Agenda Agents” in Outlook India?
Lola Nayar asks, “Then why are we surprised by the charge that India’s policymakers are 'toeing the line' dictated by the World Bank, IMF, ADB and so on? With many of our bureaucrats, technocrats and economists, including the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia having served in some of these institutions, which profess pro-liberalisation and pro-globalisation ideologies, such a view has gained ground”.
Is Aadhaar a part of Montek Singh's privatisation plans to sell India’s vast asset, its population?
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Suspect No 5: Jairam Ramesh, Union Minister for Environment & Forests
Jairam Ramesh is the first IIT Bombay alumnus to become a Cabinet Minister in the UPA II Coalition Government. Nandan Nilekani is the second IIT Bombay alumnus to be given a Cabinet Rank by appointment by the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to head UIDAI as Chairman. Jairam Ramesh and Nandan Nilekani, were quizzing partners at IIT Bombay. Like a few others listed here, Jairam Ramesh was with the World Bank on a short assignment in 1978.
Jairam Ramesh, Nandan Nilekani and Sam Pitroda are great believers of leveraging the Bottom of the Pyramid, a marketing concept propounded by the late Prof C.K. Prahalad. The latter gained much support in India, although in fact he lived mostly in the USA, and his working experience in India was exceedingly limited. This does not stand in the way of the staunch support afforded by his professed acolytes.
Did Jairam Ramesh pave the way for his friend Nandan’s meteoric rise to the Cabinet Rank, sans elections, by convincing the Cabinet that he is the man for the job – and, as critically, the man the nation will not question, because of his achievements as CEO of Infosys? The power of the tradional media to influence and occasionally to mislead, is undoubted.
Is Jairam Ramesh the real culprit?
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Suspect No 6: USA & Barack Obama
Why would American President Barack Obama, making a short three day visit to India, take the risk of visiting the Taj Hotel in Mumbai which was one of the main targets in Mumbai attacks. He followed this up by an unscheduled visit to an Aadhaar enrolment station.
“The answer my friend is blowing in the wind, the answer is blowing in the wind” Bob Dylan
Alex Newman writes in the New American, “A bipartisan group of U.S. Senators is teaming up with the Obama administration to legalize illegal immigrants and require biometric national ID cards for every American worker, prompting a swift and bipartisan backlash across the nation.
The proposal would unilaterally and unconstitutionally force nearly all Americans to obtain new “tamper-proof” Social Security cards, while purporting to require that all employers purchase new $800 ID scanners. It would also provide a “path to citizenship” for the estimated 12 million to 20 million illegal immigrants currently living in America.”
India’s Aadhaar seems to bear an uncanny resemblance to Obama’s plan for USA, which has been blocked. The excuse of 20 million illegal migrants in USA, and 20 million illegal Bangladeshis in India, resonates - Vote Bank politics in both countries.
“Our plan has four pillars: requiring biometric Social Security cards to ensure that illegal workers cannot get jobs; fulfilling and strengthening our commitments on border security and interior enforcement; creating a process for admitting temporary workers; and implementing a tough but fair path to legalization for those already here,” wrote Graham and Schumer. “We would require all U.S. citizens and legal immigrants who want jobs to obtain a high-tech, fraud-proof Social Security card.”
This is where it gets confusing. Biometric Social Security cards in USA will ensure illegal migrants cannot get jobs; Aadhaar on the other hand is all about embracing illegal migrants in India with financial inclusion. At least that is the official line we are fed. Does this make sense, or is this marketing spin, choosing any line that will hold, echoing the famous globalisation slogan, 'Think Global, Act Local'?
President Obama promptly signalled his approval and pledged to “act at the earliest possible opportunity.” The White House released a statement noting that the President would do everything in his power to push the issue, and Obama called the Schumer-Graham proposal “a promising, bipartisan framework which can and should be the basis for moving forward." Read more on the US proposal
Gautam Patel writes “In The Dark Side, a riveting account of ‘how the war on terror turned into a war on American ideals’, Jane Mayer shows how the Bush Administration’s extralegal counter-terrorism programme presented the most dramatic, sustained, and radical challenge to the rule of law in American history”. It has reached a new high, in the redefining of 'illegal' search and seizure, by authorising any police officer to justify an intrusive search on exigency.
“Terrorists pander to totalitarian regimes. The road to perdition is always paved with claims of necessity. India’s latest contribution to this is the NATGRID, a nation-wide intelligence network that our Home Minister plans to link to Mr Nandan Nilekani’s Unique Identity (UID) project, a DNA data bank and nearly 21 other database sets, all to be placed in the hands of intelligence agencies”
“This Big Brother scenario operates on a single, fatally flawed and thoroughly reprehensible presumption: every one of us is a potential ‘terrorist’, a threat to the nation. This is a governance of suspicion, a rule of fear. Forget privacy, and forget that it is a fundamental right. Its invasion is a necessity.”
“The error lies in the assumption that individual freedom is the enemy of collective safety. But liberty is not merely personal, though it is primarily that. It describes the state of an entire nation. Our freedoms were not easily gained.” Give me liberty or give me death is not a populist rant by some long-dead nonentity. “It means this: give me liberty, for without it I might as well not live.” writes Gautam Patel (a must read article). Our own Tilak echoed that tune with his eloquent “Swaraj is my birthright,” although its 'swar' has been muted by the claims of modern economists, to whom the nation has been entrusted.
“With Obama’s coming to power, the police order in America is getting tighter and tighter in two directions – strengthening internal security and militarization of civilian institutions. Tellingly, having condemned the infringements on individual freedoms done by the Bush administration, Obama has put his own staff under total control, by making them fill out a 63-question form that touches upon the most intricate details of their private lives. In January, the US President signed bills that enable the continuation of the illegal practice of abducting people, keeping them secretly in prisons, and moving them to countries where tortures are used.
“He also proposed a bill called National Emergency” (from Crisis as a way to build a totalitarian state).
It is not at all surprising that UID was included in the White House's Fact Sheet: The National Export Initiative: U.S. - India Transactions, which says "The Unique Identification Project: L-1 Identity Solutions, headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, and another U.S.-headquartered company, lead two of the three vendor consortia, which have been pre-qualified by the Unique Identity Authority of India, for the first phase of an effort to register Indian residents with a 12-digit unique number using biometric identifiers. Unprecedented in scale, seeking to register 1.2 billion Indian residents, the Unique Identification program aims to enhance delivery of government services in India."
The sheet carries no mention of some, what the naïve might think would be relevant, facts: that L-1 has been blacklisted by several State Administrations for its poor quality of design and delivery, that it is was investigated by the SEC for suspicions of insider trading (and that the matter was settled out of court), and that the company is overwhelmingly staffed at the top by former US retired spy chiefs.
Shekhar Gupta’s relevant question to Bill Gates in an interview was : “Let’s go back to Capitalism 2.0 and America. America is now more polarised than it has been in a very long time. The debate again seems black and white. One side is saying what Obama is doing is almost anti-capitalist, is socialistic and driven by Nancy Pelosi. The other side says we are a capitalist country with flaws that need fixing. Where do you stand in this debate?” (Read full interview)
Is UID backed by US administration?
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Suspect No 7: World Bank, CIA, FBI, L1 Identity
The theme of this year's World Economic Forum is “Implementing India”.
Hello! - is India the next target for USA now that it has played enough games in South America? Is India, the world's third largest economy, now the sought after 'greener pasture' for capitalists and corporations?
Is the world taking note of India’s phenomenal economic growth, and the fact that it is infested with corruption? Only the naïve will believe Jonathan Favreau's, oops President Obama's, eloquent, "India is not emerging, India has emerged".
At the top of the Aadhaar chain are multinational corporations like L-1 Identity Solutions – a company that has President Barrack Obama’s full backing.
The author’s concerns are echoed by Dr.Samir Kelekar, another IIT Bombay Alumnus like Nandan Nilekani in his article, “UID another big scam- watch out for FBI and CIA agents involvement”.
That is not all. India’s Finance Minister Pranab Mukerjee also urges US Companies to partner India . “The Government, on Monday, asked US companies to take part in India's financial inclusion programme, in a bid to not only bring more people into the banking network, but also ensure that the fast growth of the economy is inclusive and sustainable.”
A major concern is the involvement of L-1 Identity Solutions in implementing Aadhaar.
L-1 Identity Solutions and the World Bank have reached an agreement to insure all people in the world, including third world countries, are enrolled into a single global system of identification that translates into a single system of control.
With India’s Aadhaar already in the bag, one sixth of the global population will be accounted for.
Why is L-1 significant? L-1 is the largest biometric company in the United States, and arguably the world. L-1 provides nearly 95% of all US state driver’s licenses. It is involved in the production of all passports and passport cards. It is a global company that has had, or does have, on its Board of Directors, the former Directors of the CIA, FBI, TSA, and others. L-1 also has an intelligence division with ongoing contracts with nearly every intelligence agency of the federal government. In addition to losing a contract for misleading the client, and being accused by the SEC for insiders selling stock in advance of adverse financial news (settled suit) L-1, under its previous name Viisage Technology, overstated the capability of its biometric technology many documented times. Read the full article.
Will UIDAI’s database eventually merge with USA’s, to be managed by L1 Identity Solutions?
Now the question is, if US President Barack Obama, using India as a testing ground for developing biometric solutions and tools developed by L1 Identity Solutions and Morpho, to weed out problems, before implementing the same in USA?
History reminds us that the atomic bomb was tested on Japanese civilians who were asleep in Hiroshima on 6th August 1945. We have 1.2 billion Indians sleeping when UIDAI is busy manufacturing the time bomb as we speak.
History tells us how powerful the CIA is, and how it has been linked to assassinations of head of states, including President J.F.Kennedy himself.
The U.S. provided material support to the military regime of Augusto Pinochet after the coup (accomplished by assassinating the democratically elected leader, Salvador Allende), although criticizing it in public. A document released by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in 2000, titled "CIA Activities in Chile", revealed that the CIA actively supported the military junta after the overthrow of Allende, and that it made many of Pinochet's officers into paid contacts of the CIA or U.S. military, even though some were known to be involved in human rights abuses.[20]
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Suspect No 8 : Nandan Nilekani, UIDAI Chief
Nandan Nilekani, the co-founder of Infosys, one of India’s biggest IT firms, is a corporate icon in his homeland. But to many readers outside the country he is best known for a stray comment he made to Thomas Friedman of the New York Times in February 2004. His remark (“Tom, the playing field is being levelled”) inspired the title and thesis of Mr Friedman’s “The World is Flat”, a big-think book about off shoring and globalisation, that sold millions of copies.
The publishers of “Imagining India”, Mr Nilekani’s admirable first book, must hope that many of those readers will be eager to hear the Indian side of the story, straight from the source. Not to disappoint them, Mr Nilekani provides a chapter on globalisation and two on information technology.
But “Imagining India” is a very different book from Mr Friedman’s bestseller. Mr Nilekani, an intellectual trapped in an entrepreneur’s body, seeks to understand India through the “ebb and flow of its ideas” and debates. Some of these arguments are now resolved, even forgotten. Others have yet to be joined. A third category of ideas commands assent, but no action. And some arguments still burn white-hot.
New York Times journalist, author and friend Tom Friedman describes Nandan Nilekani as a ‘great explainer’.
“Explain he certainly does, while taking upon himself the onerous task of inquiring into, probing, dissecting, delineating and engaging in profound research into what ticks, and what does not, about the complex entity called India. It is a heart-felt love for bettering the lot of its people that we see in page after page of this book, embedded with cold facts and incisive data. The jocular rhetoric and flamboyant flourishes of Friedman, media cheerleader par excellence of globalisation, is conspicuously absent here”.
Our Questions to Mr Nilekani, “Are you the driver of the bulldozer that will 'level' Mother India?” or should we say flatten?
“Debates”, Mr Nilekani? What debates, when you will not even answer questions at your so-called Public Lectures in controlled environments, where you hide behind the moderator? Forget public lectures, why not be brave enough to face National Advisory Council members, headed by Chairperson Mrs Sonia Gandhi?
Also Mr Nilekani: “Is Unique Identity or Aadhaar 'your idea' for India’s future, that you talked about in your TED speech?”
“Did you sell the Idea of Unique Identity/ Aadhaar to UPA II?”
And “are you the Chairman of UIDAI only because the Prime Minister asked you to?”
Lastly, “can you still assert that Aadhaar is not an Idea in Conflict?”
Curiously, Nandan Nilekani, in “Power of Identity”, talks about Chile and China. “In Chile, for instance, the National Identification Number is called RUN (Rol Único Nacional). It is used as a national identification number, tax payer number, social insurance number, passport number, driver 's licence number, for employment, etc. It is also commonly used as a customer number in banks, retailers, insurance companies, airlines, etc.
Since 2004, every newborn baby has a RUN number; before it was assigned at the moment of applying to get the ID card. Non-Chilean residents also get a RUN and an identification card.”
Since 2004, every newborn baby has a RUN number; before it was assigned at the moment of applying to get the ID card. Non-Chilean residents also get a RUN and an identification card.”
Will India become a modern avatar of Chile, controlled by the CIA? This is a question that Indians have to ask themselves.
Nandan goes on to say, “In China, an ID card is mandatory for all citizens who are over 16 years old. The 18-digit ID card is used for residential registration, army enrolment, registration of marriage/divorce, going abroad, taking part in various national exams, and other social or civil matters.”
Now, when did India begin to endorse China's totalitarian regime, with its inhuman control over its own population? Is this where India under UPA II is heading?
Does Mr. Nilekani deserve full credit for creating Aadhaar?
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Suspect No 9: Congress President Sonia Gandhi:
Is she a willing accomplice in creating Aadhaar, or has she been misled and coerced to participate?
We are aware that Sonia Gandhi backs Aadhaar for reforming PDS. “A senior Congress party official, who did not want to be identified, said that Gandhi had directed the government to initiate discussions with the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) in this context,” writes Liz Mathew.
We are also aware that Mrs Gandhi was concerned about questions raised by National Advisory Committee members like Jean Dreze and Aruna Roy, and requested Nandan Nilekani to address NAC concerns.
To this day Nandan Nilekani has not addressed NAC concerns.
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Suspect No 10: M.Karunanidhi, Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu.
Not to be outdone by Congress, UPA II coalition partner and DMK chief M.Karunanidhi has taken the identity number to the next stage, a Biometric Identity Card for Tamil Nadu.
The Union government has agreed to the State government proposal to implement the biometric 'family cards' project (while noisily rejecting the Gujarat state government's own 'ID Card' project).
The Rs.300-crore TN project envisages taking up biometric capture of data, regarding beneficiaries of the public distribution system (PDS). A few weeks ago, Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram sent a letter to Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi, conveying the Centre's approval.
With Jayalalitha now being re elected as CM of Tamil Nadu, one has to wonder what the future of the ID card in Tamil Nadu will be.
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Suspect No 11 : The Devil Himself
Chapter 13 Verse 17 of the Book of Revelations in the Bible says "... and that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark or the name of the Beast or the number of his name."
Revelation, Chapter 13 speaks of the beast and how to identify his followers. According to verses 16 and 17, they will have the mark or the name or number of the beast on their right hands or foreheads. Verse 18 introduces the number 666 itself: "Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six."
The Beast is not necessarily the Devil -- in fact, it is unlikely that they are one and the same. The Beast has a prescribed role in the final days, described in the Bible, as an evil entity in its own right.
The triplet of '6's is not directly evinced in India's UID project, but 'marking' individuals, the time-honoured imprimatur of the legendary Beast, has had its notable examples from history. Most implacably, the Nazi German government marked individuals for removal from humanity (by permanent exile to or death in 'work camps'), by tattoing identification numbers into their skin.
"Tattooing numbers may not be the favoured approach of the Indian government yet. Without any defensible legal sanction or parliamentary consensus, with Nilekani's help, it has named a less visible substitute. Unfortunately, its confidence - or hubris - is misplaced, for there is no scientific evidence that biometric markers such as fingerprints and irises are sufficiently valid unique identifiers for a population that numbers over a billion people. In fact, to believe in biometrics as identifiers, one only needs blind faith."
It is another matter that its faith is misplaced, for the followers of the Devil, by definition, do not need faith.
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Suspect No.1:
L.K.Advani, BJP Leader: Verdict: Doubtful
Suspect No.2:
Chidambaram, Home Minister: Verdict: Likely
Suspect No 3:
Prime Minister: Manmohan Singh: Verdict: Co-accused, possibly guilty of conspiracy
Suspect No 4:
Montek Singh Ahluwalia: Verdict: Likely
Suspect No 5:
Jairam Ramesh: Verdict: Unlikely, but possibly a co-conspirator
Suspect No 6:
USA & Barack Obama: Verdict: Co-conspirator
Suspect No 7:
World Bank, CIA, FBI, L1 Identity: Verdict: Co-conspirators
Suspect No 8:
Nandan Nilekani, UIDAI Chief: Verdict: Co-conspirator
Suspect No 9:
Congress President Sonia Gandhi: Verdict: Insufficient evidence
Suspect No 10:
M.Karunanidhi, Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu: Verdict: Sentence already executed
Suspect No 11:
The Devil Himself: Verdict: Legendary Executor of Human Evil
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UID – “The Unique Indian Donkey” – By Ram Krishnaswamy
Living in Australia, I have been opposed to the concept of universal ID cards for decades. When I learnt about the UID project in India, I could not believe or accept that India was going down the path abandoned by Australia, Britain and America. Instead of listening to voices of dissent, the government of India has appointed a tech czar who is copying an ID card model from Mexico, of all countries. Why should we emulate a model from a country, which is for all practical purposes is controlled by drug lords?
Like other Australians, my main objection to ID Cards in Australia, and now in India, is about “loss of privacy”.
Privacy is like vision, which we may appreciate only when we go blind. Like freedom, it is not possible to appreciate the value of privacy until you have lost it. Indeed, privacy and freedom are linked, like two sides of a coin.
People who endorse Aadhaar echo the same argument time and time again, “What privacy should the poor worry about, when they don’t have anything to cover their private parts?" This is an argument that cannot be refuted blindly, and yet, it evokes a feeling of nausea from any thinking, caring person. It is better asked thus: “What privacy can the poor worry about, when we ensure them no choice in being able to clothe their bodies?”
The fact is that the poor do have individual identities, they are all some ones daughter, they are all some ones son as sung by Australian singer John Farnham.
This is a song I urge readers to listen to and absorb the lyrics
“You are the Voice try and understand it, make a noise and make it clear, we are not gonna sit in silence, we are not gonna live with fear. This time we know we all can stand together, we have the power to be powerful, believe me we can make it better" should appeal to many readers.
Identity is not a feature that accrues with wealth, but the Government lacks the data and means to identify the poor. This is a different issue altogether that could have been addressed differently had there been public consultations.
Once Privacy is lost Indians will have to resign to the idea of living in fear. All one needs to do is take a quick look at the plight of the poor Indian migrants in Malaysia and how the IC or Identity Card is used to harass these poor souls. (This is material for another article)
The Aadhaar Related Articles Blog
It was on 8th February 2009, that I first asked fellow IITians and 36 co-authors of Reflections by IITians (a book I co-edited, and which was launched at the Pan IIT meet in Dec 2008), what they thought about UID?
The debate was healthy, with a large number supporting UID, primarily because they believed in the Nandan Nilekani, the Tech Czar in charge of UID. To many, Nilekani was a fellow IITian, a good and honest man who would not do anything that was wrong and that he was not doing it for money as he had truck loads of it.
Nandan Nilekani had staked his reputation on Unique Identity, an idea he revealed in his book “Imagining India”. Imagining India was a great marketing feat and proved to be a winner. The idea of the poor lacking identity was accepted and endorsed by the Prime Minister of India, who appointed Nandan Nilekani Chairman of UIDAI. I am however, struggling to complete reading this fat book, is such small print as we see mostly in insurance policies, so customers don’t bother reading them.
Those engaged in heated debates online got sidetracked with other issues. So, I posted another note on 8th Sept 2009 titled “UID Card keeps bugging me”. I seemed to be all alone in the beginning, but eventually I found I was able to convince several others that the UID has its drawbacks, through one-on-one discussions with them. Today there are over 100 IITians opposed to Nandan Nilekani’s UID, which has been rebranded as Aadhaar.
Did UIDAI decide to change the name and rebrand, because of the realisation that there was nothing Unique about this ID programme that India has embarked upon?
After all Adolf Hitler had used IDs, IBM computers and Databases to exterminate Jews, Communists and the disabled, in Nazi Germany. ID Cards that were issued in South Africa sparked Gandhi's non-violence movement against authorities. So what was unique in UID ?
I began researching, and also requested other friends to send me articles and comments on UID. Soon, I was suffering from information overload. I struggled to manage the emails and Aadhaar-related articles. I needed to archive all this. So the idea of a Blog was born on 18th May 2010, exactly a year ago.
Reaching out
The past one year has been an amazing journey trying to stop UID in its tracks, trying to convince a large number of Indians of the ills of an ID card. The odds are stacked against the nay-sayers, with the entire media nationally turning into a UID propaganda machine, lured by the UIDAI advertising dollars. TV stations were clamouring to interview UIDAI Chief to improve their ratings. Media was not interested in publishing articles opposing UID in the newspapers, only because it was not 'news', no one had set himself alight, and even if they did agree, an allowance of max 700 words was the limit. There was one exception to the rule.
The editors of Money Life were open to views that opposed UID. Thanks to Sucheta Dalal, the gutsy founder-editor of Money Life, they took the risk, and allowed IIT Alumni such as Ramdas Keshavmurthy, Samir Kelekar, Vickram Crishna and myself to vent our concerns, backed by well researched articles by the Money Life Digital Team.
The ‘Aadhaar Related Articles’ Blog is a small success in itself, with over 1316 articles that have been captured, receiving over 66,015 hits this very minute, making it to the top on Google searches for “Aadhaar”. This is a worry as 666 is the Number of the Devil himself, who is behind numbering 1.2 billion mindless people. I must publish this article before the number reaches 66600.
Facing the Tsunami
It is unnerving how anyone who opposes the majority, speaks his mind and relays what his inner voice tells him, is automatically branded an “activist”. At times it appears that the few of us - in a population of a billion - opposing UID in India are like frogs in the well, hearing echoes of our own voices. Nevertheless, a committed few have marched on, regardless of the hopelessness of the situation, armed with the fact that Mahatma Gandhi objected to ID cards in South Africa and the finger printing of all coloured people.
Mahatma Gandhi wrote, “Let us begin by being clear... about General Smuts' new law. All Indians must now be fingerprinted... like criminals. Men and women. No marriage other than a Christian marriage is considered valid. Under this Act our wives and mothers are whores. And every man here is a bastard.”
Gandhi organised the Natal Indian Congress in South Africa in 1894. 115 years later, in 2009, its offshoot, the Congress Party of India (UPA II alliance), embarked on this mindless project. Its distinguishing features? Taking prints of all ten fingers, plus iris scans, and if (when) those fail, digital photographs, a process that is reserved for convicted criminals in most parts of the world. Does India have 1.2 billion criminals without identity?
Taking on this behemoth is like facing up to a chameleon, or, as in the popular film/comic book series, a Transformer. Each feature that is logically and rationally criticised results in a crafty shifting of the goalposts.
Initially, UIDAI announced that UID was compulsory for all people residing in India including illegal settlers then overnight sensing trouble it was made optional, and was aimed at the poor, who lacked the proof of identity needed to avail government subsidies. This sure did the trick. Instant silence was bought from educated Indians, as UID would not touch them, making them indifferent to the project. “Let it go, why should we object to something that does not affect us?”, “Why should we stop the government from doing something good for the poor?”, were the kind of responses I began to see.
I argued this was not correct, for if it was issued only to poor people in India, “UID would Institutionalise Poverty”. We have a nation fragmented by religion, caste system, even untouchability, that raises its ugly head even in this century. UID would now create a clear demarcation between people with and without Aadhaar, between the haves and the have-nots, institutionalising poverty. Once a UID number was allocated, it would be impossible to jump the barrier to the other side, as UID was for life, and will live on even after death.
One can take some comfort, remembering, “It is easy to laugh at people who fire arrows at helicopter gunships, but on the other hand it is not so easy to defeat people who are willing to fire arrows at helicopter gunships”. This is not from the movie Avatar, but “Vietnam: A War Lost And Won” authored by Nigel Cawthorne.
Truth and Consequences
A few die-hard Indians like us still believe in Mahatma Gandhi’s philosophies and adhere to his preachings.
These quotes of Mahatma give us hope:
- “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
- "Whenever I despair, I remember that the way of truth and love has always won. There may be tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they may seem invincible, but in the end, they always fail. Think of it: always. "
- "The function of a civil resistance is to provoke response and we will continue to provoke until they respond or change the law. They are not in control; we are."
- “In matters of Conscience the Law of Majority has no place.”
It is our genuine hope that Truth will prevail, eventually.
“Protest is not something you delegate, politics is not something you outsource. It is what you stand for, literally,” says Shiv Visvanathan, Indian Express. So true, and this inspires few of us to march on regardless.
Shifting Sands – The Foundation
Today, on 18th May 2011, the first anniversary of the Aadhaar Articles Blog, we find that the ground rules keep changing. UID (now known as Aadhaar, mocking the very foundation of life in India), and UIDAI (now known as NIAI – shaming our heritage of Truth same as Satyam ) are like a crafty boxer in the ring, constantly weaving and ducking, lacking the punch to deliver the TRUTH.
Initially UID was optional, meaning, not compulsory. Today UID is optional only as far as the UIDAI (NIAI) is concerned. It is slated to become 'ubiquitous', according to UIDAI chairman Nandan Nilekani.
Ubiquitous means 'present', 'appearing' or 'found everywhere', like corruption, against which activists recently fasted at Jantar Mantar.
UIDAI's concept note stresses that “enrolment will not be mandated.” But there is a catch: “... benefits and services that are linked to the UID will ensure demand for the number. “This is like selling bottled water in a village after poisoning the well, and claiming that people are buying water voluntarily”. The next sentence is also ominous: “This will not, however, preclude governments or registrars from mandating enrolment.” Writes Jean Dreze the brain that created NREGA
We can now see how an honest technologist like Nandan Nilekani, plays with words like “ubiquitous”, once he became a politician.
In an interview, Nandan Nilekani took objection to the comment that UID is the “Whitest of all White Elephants”. The fact is, it could cost taxpayers as much as Rs1.5 lakh crores by the time the project sees completion. This may include, over and above actual costs incurred by UIDAI, additional expenses borne by third party agencies, many of whom are state-run undertakings and corporations.
One lakh has five zeros - 1,00,000 ,
One crore is 100 lakhs and has seven zeros – 100,00,000
One lakh crores has 12 zeros – 1000,00,00,00,000
That is one hell of a lot of zeros, by any standards.
The Unique Indian Donkey
Many people in the Indian government, enthused by Nilekani's tireless evangelising, believe that Aadhaar is a magic bullet - they keep loading more and more on UID. To the naysayers, Aadhaar is now like a “Unique Indian Donkey” that will collapse under its own weight.
It is not practical to discuss everything the Magic Bullet can do, so, I shall limit it to just listing the relevant tags that one can use to search the Aadhaar Related Articles Blog to familiarise oneself.
TECHNOLOGY: IDENTITY, PHOTO, BIOMETRICS, IRIS SCAN, FINGER PRINTS, SCANNERS, PORTABILITY, MEXICAN ID CARD
PROMOTERS : PRIME MINISTER, UNION CABINET, STANDING COMMITTEE, WHITE HOUSE, NIAI BILL, NAC, 1000 MOUs, LIC, NATIONAL BANKS, STATE GOVTs, SEBI , NGOs
AUTHORITY: BILLIONAIRE CEO,WORLD IS FLAT, IMAGINING INDIA, TED – IDEAS IN CONFLICT, CABINET RANK, POWER OF IDENTITY, AADHAAR NOT COMPULSORY, UBIQUITOUS, INFOSYS SHARES
WORK LOAD: AUTHENTICATION, NATIONAL SECURITY, COUNTER TERRORISM, ILLEGAL MIGRANTS, CORRUPTION, NPR, IB, RAW, NSC, RTI, POVERTY, GOVT SUBSIDIES, PDS, NREGA, CASH TRANSFERS, MICROFINANCE, MICRO ATM’S, KIRANA SHOPS , NATGRID, CENSUS, BPL, APL, BPL CARD, RATION CARD, STUDENT ID CARD, DRIVERS LICENCE, KISAN CARD, PAN CARD
GRAVY TRAIN : ACCENTURE, ERNST & YOUNG, MICROSOFT, CHLOROPHYLL, L-1 IDENTITY SOLUTIONS, MIND TREE, WIPRO, MORPHO, BIMA, JAYALAXMI FINANCE, VISA CARD, MASTERCARD, IMF. WORLD BANK, e BAY, REGISTRARS, INTRODUCERS
DISSENT: UNCONSTITUTIONAL, PRIVACY, WIKILEAKS, DATABASE, HACKERS, ORWELLIAN, PROFILING , CONNECTING SILOS, TRACKING, INSTITUTIONALISING POVERTY.
It is relevant to share at this point a small story on Common Sense, in the form of an obituary: Common Sense was preceded in death, by his parents - Truth and Trust, by his wife - Discretion, by his daughter – Responsibility, and by his son - Reason.
Today, it comes as no surprise to read the news that Aadhaar is compulsory to get government benefits. If you are reading this article, you may let it pass as another rant from a naysayer - “It is compulsory for poor people who need government subsidies, and does not affect me” will be your retort.
It won't be long before you will require an Aadhaar to apply or renew your passport, bank accounts, credit card accounts, mobile phone accounts, and eventually you will need an Aadhaar number to breathe, an Aadhaar number to breathe your last - and you may have to present your Aadhaar Number at the Pearly Gates of Heaven.
Will Aadhaar be the Magic Bullet that people believe it to be, or will it be the Silver Bullet (suppository) that will make India go weak at the knees?
Amen
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1277 - Toutsourcing-The Flat World Way- By Ram Krishnaswamy (alumnus–IIT Madras) & Vickram Crishna (alumnus-IIT Delhi)
Toutsourcing -The Flat World Way
By Ram Krishnaswamy (alumnus–IIT Madras) & Vickram Crishna (alumnus-IIT Delhi)
MGNREGA, or the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, is the empowering legislation for an Indian job guarantee scheme - ‘NREGS’, envisioned as the world’s most ambitious social security programme. Legislated in 2005, it guarantees a minimum of a hundred days of manual work per annum, for a wage of Rs100 per day, for every adult living in rural communities willing to do manual work, irrespective of financial or any other status. The central government’s outlay for this scheme is Rs 40,000 crores this year, or about US$ 9 Billion.
It is the brain child of Dr Jean Dreze, a Belgian born economist, now teaching at Allahabad University, also a member of the country's top-level National Advisory Council. State Governments implement the scheme on a cost sharing basis, between the centre and each state.
The magic about NREGS is that every adult willing to do physical work is guaranteed a minimum of 100 days work at Rs100 a day. This is a fair guarantee of an income of Rs10,000 per annum per household. At first glance, it is definitely a laudable scheme, with work provided right in the same villages, at the doorstep of the targeted rural population, with the hope that this will reduce the near perennial migration of the rural population to cities, seeking work in lean periods.
It is akin to the “work for the dole” scheme created by the John Howard Liberal government of Australia. In Australia, the government and public were not happy seeing taxpayers’ money going as unemployment benefits to Australians who often do not want to work in the first place, and guaranteed work for pay is expectedly a far more amenable solution, for those who lack the heart to see the world as it is.
Pitfalls: It is likely that the scope of schemes under the NREGA could expand to cost the centre as much as 5% of the GDP annually, which is a lot more than initial predictions, but even so will hardly be the biggest chunk of the budget. Unfortunately, it does not matter how good and noble a scheme,the government designs to lift the population from its condition of chronic povertyfor one way or another, loopholes get exploited. Indeed, sometimes loopholes are crafted precisely for the purpose and money meant to reach the poor and needy gets diverted by administrators down the line.
Some of the pitfalls observed in NREGS are, as per the quoted Wikipage:
· Projects are standardised, and not suited to the local community needs
· In some regions, some sections of the community are kept out of projects
· Excess job cards are issued to claim bogus payments for work not done
· People are forced to pay bribes of up to Rs 50 to get job cards
· NREGS job cards have been issued to people already employed otherwise, in order to make bogus claims.
· In every state there is a scam of a different kind, showing the ingenuity of the corrupt babus
The issues in implementing NREGA are to be expected, when we also accept that the Indian public distribution system - PDS - fails to deliver even a small percentage of the total budget to the deserving. If 25% of designated food grains reach the poor we are lucky. PDS grains are sold interstate, exported, get sold to people with bogus ration cards, and quotas not availed by the poor - who cannot afford a full month’s rations - get sold in the open market at a higher price.
Some consolation here is at least someone gets to eat these grains and someone’s belly gets filled, but the effect on free market operations need hardly be guessed. The real impact is seen in the inability to control runaway prices. What is most disheartening with food management under the PDS is that grains are stored in the open, under tarpaulins, and inevitably the losses due to rotting are unconscionably high.
Memories of Things to Come: My memory flits back to 1974, when a spiteful PA (personal assistant) to a Chief Engineer, who disliked me, transferred me to the Rameswaram Pamban Bridge construction site as a punishment. My experience at Rameswaram as a Junior Engineer reminds me of the current stew in NREGS.
When I arrived at Rameswaram, and even before I joined duty officially, the Assistant Engineer I was to report to asked me to sign off a bill for Rs 87,000. This bill was supposedly the cost of demolishing a house that was plumb on the proposed approach roads to the Pamban Bridge. Fortune favoured me, and I was pretty alert and astute. I said I was not going to sign and approve any bill for work that I had not executed, and told the AE to do it himself.
So my troubles started even before I joined work.
A week into the job, familiarising myself with the work site as well as the locals in the fishing village, I figured out that no house had been demolished. Clearly, the bill was a fake, set up to trap me. Had I been trusting, and put my signature on the document, my Divisional and Assistant Engineers would have bullied me, blackmailed me and forced me to go on endorsing their corrupt practices. Similarly, fake bills of works are presented to the center via the states implementing NREGS, and the moneys are pocketed.
Later on, at the job site, I needed to hire workers to build the approach roads, and to bring sand from the dunes by tipper trucks. Local subcontractors arranged for the labourers. They submitted bills of quantity for the labour supplied to get the job done, and payment made.
As I was on site from 6.00am to 3.30pm every day, I had no problem verifying the head count to approve these bills for good honest work under the sun. As an engineer my interest was in getting the work done. But then, for the payments, these bills had to be countersigned by my AE and my DE, and then it was up to the Divisional Accountant to present the bill to the treasury, collect the amounts and pay the subcontractors. This web of associates deliberately delayed the process, expecting the subcontractors would pay to speed it up. The subcontractors were straightforward people, wanting payment for work done, refused to pay any bribes, and came daily to meet the AE and DE.
One day, on my way back from work, I was stopped by two local thugs who put a knife to my throat. They threatened me that if I did not cooperate, they would kill me and throw my body to the sharks. It was clear that these thugs had been hired by my own senior engineers to soften me up.
I chose not to be a martyr (unlike Satyendra Dubey, who was murdered by corrupt engineers and contractors of the National Highways Authority, after he blew the whistle in a letter to the Prime Minister). I reported the matter to the Chief Engineer, not that he could or would do anything. I then packed my bags and ran back to Madras, and kept running until I landed in Sydney. I had to live, to fight another day. - Ram Krishnaswamy
Toutsourcing: NREGS has such a huge budget - Rs 40,000 crores - that thousands of crooks rub their hands at this golden opportunity to swindle public money, without any qualms.
Now let us put ourselves into the shoes of a labour subcontractor working for NREGS on a project, for which (as an example) 500 labourers are required to work for 30 days, five days a week. When the word gets around, there are around 5,000 villagers who want the work. With such a huge demand, his power and authority grows.
He sends the word around that any one who wants to work for a full week (5 working days) will have to pay a commission of 20% (of Rs 100 per day) of the weekly wage, and which, from 500 labourers, totals Rs 50,000 per week, or 2,00,000 per month. But that isn’t all.
Those keen on signing up for a full month's work, 20 working days, have to pay him a commission of 25%. If he signs up all 500 labourers for the full month’s work, he gets to skim Rs 2,50,000. Doing less work actually earns him more!
Then we have the materials cost for the project, and it is so easy to fudge and create receipts for materials that never got supplied; it is also easy to supply the same materials over and over again, when the supervisors are sharing the loot.
NREGS thus encountered massive problems when cash money was being handled. Many labourers are being short-changed, especially women, who often get paid (quite illegally) only 50% of the men’s wages.
It was decided to make payments only to bank accounts of individual labourers, from 2008.When this change came about, it made it easier to claim and have payments made to ‘family and friends’ who never worked a day on the field, for the simple reason that most poverty-stricken persons (both urban and rural) in India do not actually have bank accounts, hence must make alternate arrangements. Even if payments go to the people who actually worked, they will be forced to hand over the 25% commissioning amount every week, before they can set foot on the work site the following week.
Thus, conditions have been created within which touts find gainful employment, intervening in the delivery of public money, in cash or kind, to both those living in abject poverty, as well as those able and willing to do an honest day's work.
The modern corporate sector has a striking similarity, but with one big difference. Many large corporations, and quasi-corporatised government bodies in the western world, are not keen on engaging too many full time employees. They employ contractors to minimise overheads, and to avoid the complications and additional expenses of holiday pay, maternity leave, superannuation etc.
Assume the client is willing to pay an hourly rate of $150 for example, and contracts with a recruitment agency to provide the necessary workforce. The recruitment consultants interview many candidates and shortlists about 5, and allows the client to choose their final candidate. The agency then negotiates hard with the candidates, selecting one who is desperate to get the job in these trying circumstances, and agrees to accept a $50 hourly rate.
At 40 hours a week, and 50 weeks a year, the employee works 2,000 hours, and gets paid $100,000 for the year (before tax). The recruitment consultant clears $200,000 for ‘helping out’!
Far from getting labeled as ‘crooks’, ‘touts’ or ‘middlemen’, such body shopping businesses are so successful, they become MNCs in their own right, with thousands of employees executing back-office work in a third world country such as India. Renowned names, like Infosys (Mphasis), TCS, Wipro, Satyam and HCL, etc., are little different from touts who find labour for NREGS projects, although the term does not find mention in mainstream media reports.
No Aadhaar, no UID, no mandating direct payments via banks etc., can solve the systemic problems in implementing the MGNREGA. When an institution has a systemic problem, it should seek remedies from those who will be responsible to carry them out, the people who are involved hands-on. Instead, the modern day management ‘solution’ is to appoint external consultants, who ‘design’ high tech interventions that enable flawed systems to limp on for years.
We live in a world of double standards. It is always one rule for the rich and another for the poor, and the rule for the poor is made by the rich.
Brand (and other) Names: Having written this, a strange thought comes to my mind. A labour contractor to NREGA who demands a commission from the labourers is no less or more a tout than an expensively branded 'consultant' who extracts undue value by intervening in the value chain between well-paid intellectual workers and end-users of their intellectual outputs.
When NIKE makes cheap shoes in Thailand for $10 a pair, and sells the same shoes for $150 a pair, the world screams foul, and condemns such businesses as sweatshops. Is India’s IT Industry any different, selling out intellectual growth in the haste to exploit cheap labour?
If this is not so, then why have the majority of UIDAI’s IT contracts been awarded to US companies?
The creation of UIDAI, to issue identification numbers to 600 million people, at a cost that may climb to Rs 1.5 lakh crores by 2015, is an eerily precise parallel to the rot in NREGA and the exploitative runaway phenomenon called outsourcing. It boggles the mind to believe that the nation needs consultants (in case after case, foreign brand name consultants, like Ernst ‘Derivatives’ & Young and ‘Enron’ Accenture) to kill this cancer called corruption. It is a very piquant twist to the global culture of homogenisation implicit in the 'Flat World' hypothesis.
They say Nandan Nilekani is a good, honest and honourable man. Indeed, he was complimented in a recent interview by Flat World guru Thomas Friedman.
The question is, if the main reason for UIDAI and Aadhaar is to fix the corruption in PDS and NREGA, why doesn't he ask Prof Jean Dreze, Reetika Khera, Aruna Roy - or even meet, for that matter, concerned IIT alumni or with the National Advisory Council ? It is, after all, the nation’s premier and overarching sounding board, headed by Mrs.Sonia Gandhi, meant to be above party politics. But if they, too, have doubts about the way UID is being steamrollered, perhaps they are now reduced to being ‘activists’, unworthy of the attention of good, honest and honourable men.
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Notes:
Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act: The MGNREGA is an Indian job guarantee scheme, enacted by legislation on August 25, 2005. The scheme provides a legal guarantee for one hundred days of employment in every financial year to adult members of any rural household willing to do public work - related unskilled manual work at the statutory minimum wage of 100 (US$ 2.27) per day. The Central government outlay for scheme is Rs 40,000 crore (US$ 9.08 billion) in FY 2010-11. [1]
This Act was introduced with an aim of improving the purchasing power of the rural people, primarily semi- or unskilled work to people living in rural India, whether or not they are below the poverty line. Around one-third of the stipulated work force is women. The government is planning to open a call center, which upon becoming operational can be approached on the toll-free number, 1800-345-22-44.[2] It was initially called the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) but was renamed on 2 October 2009.[3]
The Act was brought about by the UPA coalition government, supported by the left parties. The promise of this project is considered by many to be one of the major reasons for the re-election of the UPA in the Indian general election, 2009. Dr. Jean Drèze, a Belgian born economist, at the Delhi School of Economics, has been a major influence on this project.[4]
The Act directs state governments to implement MGNREGA "schemes". Under the MGNREGA, the Central Government meets the cost towards the payment of wage, 3/4 of material cost and some percentage of the administrative cost. State Governments meet the cost of unemployment allowance, 1/4 of material cost and the administrative cost of the State council. Since the State Governments bear the cost of the unemployment allowance, they are heavily incentivized to offer employment t workers.
However, it is up to the State Government to decide the amount of unemployment allowance, subject to the stipulation that it not be less than 1/4th the minimum wage for the first 30 days, and not less than 1/2 the minimum wage thereafter. 100 days of employment (or unemployment allowance) per household must be provided to able and willing workers every financial year.
Criticisms
Many criticisms have been levelled at the programme, which has been argued to be no more effective than other poverty reduction programmes in India, with key exceptions such as Rajasthan [7].
The first criticism is financial. The MGNREGA is one of the largest initiatives of its kind in the world[7]. The National Budget for the financial year 2006-2007 was Rs 113 billion (about US$2.5bn and almost 0.3% of GDP) and now fully operational, it costs Rs. 391 billion in financial year 2009-2010[7]. Funding was argued, by Jean Dreze and others, to be possible through improved tax administration and reforms, yet the tax-GDP ratio has actually been falling[7]. There are fears the programme will end up costing 5% of GDP[7].
Another important criticism is that the public works schemes' completed product (e.g. water conservation, land development, afforestation, provision of irrigation systems, construction of roads, or flood control) is vulnerable to being taken by over wealthier sections of society[7]. A monitoring study of NREGS in Madhya Pradesh showed the types of activities undertaken were more or less standardised across villages, suggesting little local consultation[7].
Further concerns include the fact that local government corruption leads to the exclusion of specific sections of society[7]. Local governments have also been found to claim more people have received job cards than people who actual work in order to generate more funds than needed, to be then embezzled by local officials[7]. Bribes as high as Rs 50 are paid in order to receive the job cards[7].
A multi-crore fraud has also been suspected where many people have been issued the NREGA card who are either employed with another Government organisation, or who are not even aware that they have a Job Card. In Gujarat, a scam of Rs 10 million has taken place[8].
Budgeted expenses: The Budget for the current period is here (pdf), and it shows that expenditure planned for defense (Rs 175kCr) exceeds 15 % of the total (Center items only: States may vary expenses under these heads differently, or not be obliged to spend on certain items at all) of just over Rs 1,000kCr. In comparison, direct expenditures in staving off malnutrition and its long term impact on human potential for the country are far lesser, never mind increasing the country's potential growth through education, and creating opportunities for gainful employment through industry and infrastructure. This is despite the fact that even at a appallingly low cut off point used as a definition of the 'poverty line', well over two thirds of the country's people are feared to be caught in a state of chronic poverty.
CLICK ON TITLE TO SEE ORIGINAL ARTICLE - Posted by Ram Krishnaswamy
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Labels: Aruna Roy, Jean Dreze, Ram Krishnaswamy, Reetika Khera, Vickram Crishna
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Inconvenient Truths
Vickram Crishna, IIT Delhi Alumnus
Ram Krishnaswamy, IIT Madras Alumnus
mendacious: (m’eh’n-d’ay’sh’uh’s) adj. Lying; untruthful: False; untrue.
ingenuous: (‘i’n-j’eh’ny-’uh’s) adj. Lacking in cunning, guile, or worldliness; artless: Openly straightforward or frank; candid
Some time ago, Mr Nilekani was quoted by an Indian newspaper, describing his work at UIDAI . Some highlights of this interview, in the light of the very recent incident in Delhi, on Feb 11, when he, together with Mr Pronob Sen of the Planning Commission, met the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance, make for an absorbing read (if you like cliffhangers).
The Committee is reported to have been puzzled by the UIDAI approach. In its haste to have the Aadhaar established as the most superior verification solution, it has been fencing around alternatives. It now seeks to discourage work-seekers who are not registered with Aadhaar.
Members of Parliament asked Mr Nilekani at the Standing Committee meeting to explain why mandatory links were being forged between Aadhaar and social benefit schemes (his earlier boast was that such links would be ubiquitous, not mandatory, wordplay that evidently did not impress the Committee). He could not answer this (it has been asked before by members of the public, but he refused to answer in such fora also). Instead, he is said to have promised to return with a PowerPoint presentation that would allay their doubts! An extraordinary response, and an extraordinarily weak promise. A Minister who failed to deliver an answer to such a question in a House of Parliament could lead to loss of confidence in the Government, if our Parliament functioned as planned.
He told the newspaper, “Our focus is on people who are marginalised and vulnerable, the migrants and the homeless. They are the ones who need Aadhaar the most.” Unfortunately, the UIDAI has not substantiated this reasoning with any published research. How large is this segment, and to what extent do they deserve specialised treatment that will not be available to some other segment of the people who are disempowered in other ways? The UID is only useful to such people when it will be usable universally, meaning the entire country is blanketed with identification nodes connected as needed to the UID database, which in turn must be linked 24/7 with all other databases that might be needed to affirm the claimed aspect of the identity (be it BPL or a credit card).
When will this day come? Till it happens, we will see one segment of the people favoured over others, simply because their peculiar circumstances might be well served for using UID, whereas some others may be left out for years to come. Most likely, the charmed segment lives in those parts of those cities that are also perceived to be ‘better’, given the endless migration of people from rural to urban conglomerations. However, registering for Aadhaar is meant to be voluntary, and denial of benefits should not be a stick used to browbeat citizens. No wonder the Parliamentarians perhaps felt that Aadhaar had not been fully thought through.
- Has there been any study of the alternative paths possible to supporting the ambitions of people to enter the mainstream (assuming that awareness about what the implications of being mainstreamed is becoming widespread)?
- What costs did they envisage?
- What were the pitfalls in them, and how do they compare to the possible pitfalls that await an implementation like Aadhaar?
- Who will bear the cost for the service delivery agencies to use Aadhaar in whatever form is needed to carry out their work, on demand, as, when and where needed?
- Has it been factored into the budgets of these agencies (such as those engaged with NREGS)?
Actually, it hasn’t, and this should be a very disturbing wake-up call. This is why there are no documents on the UIDAI website that relate to comparative studies - including both costs and benefits - of possible solutions to India’s vexing problems of chronic poverty.
What is almost certain is that credit companies and retailers will find it very profitable to put in all kinds of supporting infrastructure for their purposes. Unfortunately, the desperately poor are not really valuable clientele for such services at present, so this benefit will be readily felt by those ready to go on paying for it, and who will find it worth paying for the convenience of Aadhaar.
If public money is expected to be spent on maintaining Aadhaar for all into the future, this roadmap needs to be clearly spelt out.
All this assumes that the enrollment process dictated by UIDAI is foolproof, and that it will invariably bind a person’s true biometrics (such as a fingerprint) to the Aadhaar. However, the reality of enrollment is far from the ideal painted on the UIDAI website. Reports from different cities, published in the mainstream media, show that the process itself, based on biometric registration that fails frequently, is being subverted by forcing ‘acceptance’ (after four failed tries) of the biometric scans. This is useless, as the registrant will find the identification proof, ie, a subsequent scan, fails to find a correct match from the database.
UIDAI is silent about the rates of false acceptance and false rejection inherent in such processes, even though its own Study Group report on biometrics spelled out the issues. Actually, as figures, the rates are fairly low, but this is deceptive. These are not absolute numbers, but ratios, and very low ratios turn out to be enormously large numbers when applied across a gigantic population - failures of identifying tens and hundreds of thousands of people, on a nauseatingly frequent basis, each failure necessitating an expensive and risk-fraught procedure to re-establish broken links in the UIDAI-defined identity chain.
These are real people, people who have perfectly good identities on their own, people known to their families and their friends, but not known to the State. Does UIDAI seek to ‘help’ people, by giving them an identity? Or is it helping to disempower people by denying them the identities they inherently possess?
This is the falsity built into the core of every centralised scheme of identity resolution, that a failure of the State is the fault of its people. Proponents of centralised systems do not seem to be able to recognise this flaw, a kind of social dyslexia. Unfortunately we do not have social dyslexia as a recognised ailment to be documented by state-run hospitals, the way our education ministry seeks to empower children with dyslexia by making it possible for them to experience the mainstream school system (that doesn’t work well in practice either, a sad commentary on how diligently we pursue our ideals of inclusiveness).
The centralised linking of discrete silos of personal information carries with it palpable risks of data leaks and consequent misuse. Nobody can know whether these will overcome the attraction of convenient identification when interacting with these systems (retail, banking, security cordons - things that form a part of daily life in the modern economy). Certainly, these dangers are not palpably felt in urban circles as much as they already are in the rural areas, where security forces, be they police or paramilitary, have earned a reputation for frequent infringements of civil rights. In urban areas, people tend to worry as much about white-collar crime, especially the kind that hits individuals. The misuse of a central information system is not a question of whether, it is only when. The rich possibilities for misuse will itself create the environment for it, just as it has in the USA, with the social security numbering system.
One of the biggest fears expressed worldwide about centralised identification systems, one that is at the heart of disquiet about the growing misuse of the USA’s social security system number, the SSN, is that subsequent generations of administrators and lawmakers treat the database as being endowed with more capability than intended. The USA’s SSN was actually conceived of a number that was illegal to be used for anything other than a convenience towards delivery of state-administered social benefits, yet today it is used to certify all manner of extraneous conveniences in a very complex web of demands and need fulfilments. The result is that the incentive to create fake identities, to game the system, is very high, and that is very obvious in the USA, where the estimated number of false SSN-backed identities is allegedly around 12 million, near about 5% of the country’s population.
In India, doubtless spurred on by our regular high rate of GDP growth, quoted by people - who do not understand real economics - as reflecting an improvement of lifestyle capabilities in India, we (well, to be precise, the service providers - companies and organisations that give the impression of scrambling to board the UID bandwagon) are not waiting for Aadhaar to become a reality before adding to the basket of features. Starting with bank accounts, supposedly one of its greatest benefits, we now have the Prime Minister (at a function commemorating 5 years of MGNREGA, the world’s biggest work-for-pay guarantee scheme) endorsing a biometric-based worker identity scheme, whereby exclusion from registration will bar people from qualifying for the guaranteed benefits. Forget the country’s minuscule organised sector worker base, even the vast majority of India’s people, who survive y-o-y on temping, will find Aadhaar a new hurdle.
In this case, the PM cannot be easily accused on not understanding economics, but the pronouncement does indicate some lack of familiarity with the weakness of a biometric identity system applied across a very large population (it works reasonably well for tightly monitored situations where it supports a mix of identity markers, such as entry into secure facilities that are actively guarded, where failure of the biometric identifier can be worked around fairly quickly, with documented alternative processes replete with checks and balances.
This is typical of IT workplaces, with which Mr Nilekani is familiar, but not of ration shops and manual labour workplaces in remote and far-flung parts of the country, with which he is not (he chattily refers to his superior knowledge of ground realities in New York).
One of the worst potential abuses of the concept of automated identity verification systems is the premise that personal information is in any case available from a number of sources, and experts already know how to access such information, so linking those diverse bits of information using an Aadhaar does not add to the risks in any way. Mr Nilekani puts it this way, “Even today, without the UID, your credit card details could be accessed by someone who may manipulate it and your privacy may be breached.” In the IT sector, discrete databases are called silos, mirroring commodity storage systems used in agriculture and industry, and Aadhaar will provide a link to such databases, maintained by different agencies, such as NREGS, PDS, banks, insurance companies, and so on. The UIDAI database itself will not store all this information.
Mr Nilekani, just like other businessmen, critics of State-guaranteed personal privacy protection, is being a trifle ingenuous when he talks about identity theft. It would be unfair to call it mendacious, as he is possibly not well informed, although his former employer, Infosys, is a big player in the banking IT sector.
In the credit card industry, identity frauds (nearly all arising from identity theft) are a well-accepted part of doing business, averaging around 6% a year globally, and this number has not significantly changed over the years, although improvements in the physical card systems are regularly being suggested. These new cards are a lot more expensive than the ubiquitous magnetic-stripe cards, which are prey to misuse. It is not surprising that they not been substituted. The industry prefers to bite the bullet and absorb the losses, which are built into their costs (the credit card sector is enormously profitable), rather than introduce too many complexities to their customers. Solving the identity fraud problem is secondary.
Aadhaar, on the other hand, does not have a card, and there is no budget to pay for such a card. Instead, the person must make a claim for being a specific Aadhaar holder (it is a 12 digit number, and will almost certainly have to be written down for the user to be able to convey it - think of the usage of multiple languages, scripts and almost universal illiteracy as typical obstacles to memory), and then present some sort of biometric - at the moment, this would be a single fingerprint - for verification. A dispassionate observer might hazard a guess that the failure rates in practice will be in excess of the credit card sector’s 6%, even if some Herculean effort puts the infrastructure in place by 2015, when 600 mn Aadhaar’s are targeted to deliver social benefits, if not milk and honey, across the country.
The Herculean effort in this case is being masterminded by Mr Satyen (Sam) Pitroda, who promises to deliver broadband connectivity to government offices by then. How this translates into verification points at places where people actually live and work is something that does not find mention in UIDAI’s breezy press releases.
It may be quite pertinent to recall that Mr Pitroda’s previous attempt to bring about a game-changing technology intervention, the landmark modular telephone switch, was wrecked by a change of government, and the powerful international telecom industry ensured that the modular switches were never installed in numbers that would justify the effort.
This kind of disruption in idealistic plans is an obvious risk, especially given that the next General Elections will be in 2014, and that the size of India’s own IT industry remains, despite the obvious growth, a minnow by global standards.
Already, much of the technological base for Aadhaar is being entrusted to foreign companies. This has other problems, of security and national integrity, but that is another discussion by itself.
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9th December 2010
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
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By: Ram Krishnaswamy, Vickram Crishna
Vol XLV No.40 October 02, 2010
LE
R S Sharma’s “Identity and the UIDAI: A Response” (EPW, 28 August 2010) argues, in response to Usha Ramanathan’s “A Unique Identity Bill” (EPW, 24 July 2010), that “The UIDAI has stated its role and objectives in various public documents, and also outlined these in its draft bill”, but she has “fundamental misunderstandings” on the UIDAI, that her “suggestion of links to the NATGRID/DNA data banks is pure conjecture” and that her article misrepresents the UIDAI’s stated objectives.
Sharma has obviously chosen to ignore the increasing number of articles in the media questioning Aadhaar, written by lawyers, economists, technologists, security professionals, sociologists, civil society supporters, scholars, academics and biometric experts, and the list goes on.
Does he really imply that everyone who questions Aadhaar is misinformed? The very foundation of “Aadhaar” that assumes “the absence of an identification infrastructure, under which every Indian has a unique identification number, has been one of the biggest barriers for the poor in accessing welfare and social services effectively”, is a sweeping generalisation, unfounded by facts from the field.
It is not the needy who possess bogus entitlement cards, but the very public servants in charge, together with other stakeholders and vested interests. Stocks are written off as being issued to all these bogus cards and the foodgrains are sold in the black market, while the remainder unsaleable stocks rot in unprotected warehouses. It is interesting that the whole nation understands this, except, apparently, the people in UIDAI.
If there is silence from some sections of the people regarding the UIDAI, it is because of the deliberate misinformation that Aadhaar is aimed at the poor. So the educated and not so poor are under the false belief that it does not affect them.
A simple and direct question to Sharma is: will he be the first to accept an Aadhaar, and share the Aadhaar number with his bank, insurance company, passport office, regional transport authority, mobile phone service provider, electricity distributor, ration card issuing authority, Income Tax authority and property registrars?
Sharma writes, “When it comes to sharing of data, the UIDAI is of the view that the individual is an active, not a passive participant, and does not need self-appointed spokespeople to debate on their behalf”.
The individual that Sharma refers to here represents millions of the poor and illiterate queuing up for subsidised rations. Sharma apparently needs reminding that it was self-appointed spokespeople who stood up to win this nation its independence, finally wrested within three years of the most brutal, callous, deliberate and avoidable choking off of food supplies that left millions dead in Bengal.
Ram Krishnaswamy, Vickram Crishna
Mumbai
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August 25, 2010 04:00 PM
Ram Krishnaswamy and Vickram Crishna
Ram Krishnaswamy and Vickram Crishna ask whether the government is justified in allocating such a huge investment on Aadhaar, while there are more important issues to be addressed. This is the third part in a series published only in Moneylife
Why shouldn’t Indians, too, have a single-point identity reference, available on demand? After all, we don’t need to look too far for a model ID card.
Just across the bay, in fact. All Singaporeans over the age of 15 compulsorily have an IC card. It is coloured pink for citizens and blue for permanent residents. It is not compulsory to carry the IC card at all times, and there is no compulsion to produce it on demand. On the other hand, ‘suspicious’ individuals can be detained by police until the IC is produced. In Singapore, the good of society is considered more important than the rights and liberties of individuals.
The front side of the IC card displays the holder’s name, race, date of birth, sex, country of birth and a colour photograph. On the reverse are the National Registration Identity Card (NRIC) number and its bar code, a fingerprint, issue date and the holder’s current residential address and nationality, in case of a permanent resident.
Singapore is a society in which bubblegum is a banned substance; reading materials considered indecent are banned; a citizen can be thrown into jail for littering and it is a crime to neglect to flush a public toilet. It has been described as “a nation of people which is clean, green, safe, rich and ruled by fear.” Break the law in Singapore? Be prepared to experience six lashes on bare buttocks with a rattan cane. Singapore is a semi-Police State run by benevolent dictators, where law & order prevails 24/7; police are well-paid; and corruption is almost non-existent. India is a far cry from Singapore. But right next to that island nation is Malaysia, and a quick look at the Malaysian IC card, also known as ‘MyKad’, issued to 28 million Malaysians, will illustrate what the Indian Aadhaar card will become in years to come.
MyKad incorporates both photo identification and fingerprint biometric technology, and is designed with six main functions: identification, driver’s licence, passport information (although a passport is still needed for overseas travel), health information (blood type, allergies, chronic diseases, etc), and an e-cash function. The card can also function as an ATM card. Malaysia plans to add digital signatures for e-commerce transactions.
It is common knowledge that corrupt Malaysian police harass minority Indians by illegally detaining and confiscating their MyKads, without which they simply cease to have any proof of identity. It is also widely known that anyone with a card reader can access all the information contained in the card.
While the USA does not have an official ID card, Americans have their Social Security Number (SSN). It is so widely used that it has become a de facto ID card, although there may be up to 12 million false SSNs in use today. The USA Patriot Act, enacted by the US Congress to vastly increase powers of surveillance and implement a biometric identification system, faced enormous opposition and has, since, been scaled back.
UK Labour Party’s ID card scheme, now permanently abandoned, was aimed at tackling fraud, illegal immigration and identity theft—but it was too expensive and an infringement of civil liberties. The cards were designed to hold personal biometric data on an encrypted chip, including name, photograph and fingerprints. The supporting National Identity Register was designed to hold up to 50 pieces of information.
Appalling losses of personal information from other government and private depositories helped fuel a public outcry that finally propelled political action in the UK this May. Some Indians, who are regularly bombarded with intrusive and unsolicited phone calls and texts, know data leakages are uncomfortable—and commonplace. It remains to be seen whether India will follow the example of privacy and human rights-conscious nations, with its people standing up to say ‘No’ to spending unconscionable amounts of money on half-solutions to ill-defined problems.
(Ram Krishnaswamy is an IIT Madras alumnus and Vickram Crishna is an IIT Delhi alumnus).
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UID Issue: Numbers Game -1
July 29, 2010 03:21 PM |
Ram Krishnaswamy & Vickram Crishna
Unique Identity Authority of India (UIDAI) will assign unique numbers to all people in India (‘Aadhaar’ is the brand name chosen by the for its flagship scheme), to serve as a single reference point to help establish identity. We found over 200 articles extolling the merits of the project and gathered them on the blog aadhararticles.blogspot.com. Rather than reassure, however, they raise several questions about the worth of the project. Ram Krishnaswamy & Vickram Crishna address three key questions in this article—the first in a series that will be published only in Moneylife
The Aadhaar scheme proposes to assign each Indian resident a unique 12-digit number, thus enumerating a Unique IDentity for all. India’s current population stands at around 1.2 billion. In addition, millions of foreigners are temporarily based here. UIDAI has set an initial target of issuing 600 million unique numbers within five years (by 2015) (read more at Making Uinque Impressions )
This seems an ambitious target, considering the scale and cost (Rs45,000 crore) of the project. Through this series of articles, we will provide the information needed to understand this massive project and its potential consequences for us as Indians and as global citizens.
Q1. Will the intended beneficiaries truly be people who live below the poverty line?
The primary purpose of Aadhaar is avowedly social welfare: dividing wealth equitably. Of course, ‘wealth’ is not really in the picture; India is trying to guarantee everyone the bare minimum needed to live healthily. Benefits in cash or kind are distributed under various schemes, such as the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan, National Rural Health Mission and Bharat Nirman.
One of the problems with such schemes is the difficulty of ensuring that their benefits accrue only to the targeted population—typically, persons living below the poverty line. Such people are easily disenfranchised by an endless cycle of verification of records, ruining the efforts made to ensure fair distribution and causing real delivery rates to falter between 6% and 15%, as estimated by the late prime minister Rajiv Gandhi and others.
With Aadhaar, this problem is expected to be resolved. Aadhaar is a one-time verification system to which all records will be inextricably linked (read more at Unique Identification number project ) With UID, beneficiaries of any scheme can be verified by just checking a few critical details—for instance, name, fingerprints and, now, perhaps, iris scans—in order to quickly confirm their identity. However, largely due to the additional requirement of iris scans to reduce error rates, the per-user cost estimate has shot up from Rs31 to Rs450.
Now, here’s an interesting statement: “The UID will become the single source of identity verification” (read more at Unique identification project Law )
It means that once residents are enrolled, they can use the number in many places—they will be spared the hassle of repeatedly providing supporting identity documents for each service they wish to access.
However, it is pertinent to note that the services that will actually be simplified in the near term by the Aadhaar numbers include: opening a bank account, obtaining a passport, driving licence, etc. The public distribution system (PDS), NREGS and other such public-benefit services have neither budgets nor plans to integrate their systems with Aadhaar referrals.
It seems clear that, after spending a huge amount of money and putting in all this effort, the UID will, in the initial few years, primarily benefit people who access relatively sophisticated and upmarket services.
Q2. Will UID meet the needs of the poor ?
If a poor person gets money that is due to him directly in his bank account, he will have no reason to plead with tyrannical local officials or grovel before his elected representatives (read more at
Sadly, banking in India barely scratches the surface: the total number of bank branches as of March 2002, the latest figures we could find on the Reserve Bank of India’s website, was just over 66,000, and less than half of these were in rural areas which account for around 70% of the population.
A back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that each rural branch would need to service over 22,700 account-holders—clearly beyond their reach in a land where urban customers struggle to get decent and timely banking services from branches which need to cater to only around 9,000 customers each. If money is to be mandatorily disbursed directly into bank accounts of the recipients under various schemes (the process to be simplified using UID), it definitely won’t target the poorest of the poor.
One emerging solution is micro-banking, but micro-banking organisations will need to upgrade their technology considerably to deliver services, if UID referrals are to be included. Micro-banks are also not included within the broad banking framework, meaning that existing security measures ensure that they cannot access clearing-house operations and other such enablers of modern banking.
The upgrade cost is not factored into UID budgets, nor is UIDAI mandated to drive the changes that are needed in the banking system without which the UID referral is irrelevant.
Q3. How will UID contribute to the country’s economy?
This is a big-vision project (read more at Unique ids for Indians-Boon or Bane ) through which government services can be provided, tracked and accounted for, together with enabling a multitude of private-sector products and services that rely on accurate identification of consumers. Various departments, based on their needs, will refer to the UID number. This will help remove duplicate names from their service lists. While this would help clean up lists for NREGS, senior citizen pension schemes, PDS, etc, it may also help clean up benami bank accounts, etc. Informally, the Income Tax Department is known to have projected an additional tax collection of about Rs40,000 crore annually!
These claims may hold, if the scheme were intended to act against the continuing use of unaccounted money for trading. In that case, the target community would only be the economic arrivistes—people who already have enough money to regularly feel the need to spend or acquire it by underhand means. This would include all government officers, their extended families, politicians, businesspeople, agriculturists controlling upwards of 25-50 hectares of land, and so on.
In fact, the projected gains, in terms of enhanced income-tax collection, simplifying transactions with government agencies for cash-related activities and so on, are primarily beneficial to this economically stable or upwardly mobile class.
However, the scheme is sought to be justified on the basis of deliverables to the downtrodden. It is doubtful whether Aadhaar will boost the country’s economy directly or help reduce the outgo on avoidable subsidies; or whether it will provide a combination of these benefits; or whether the true objective depends on who asks the question.
It seems far more likely that the unstated purpose of the scheme is to target the upwardly mobile class, but to do that, all Indian residents will have to be induced, by one means or another, to register themselves ‘voluntarily’.
A closer look at what appeared to be basic questions raises some worries. Next fortnight, we will look at the uncomfortable questions that arise as a result of the technology itself being insufficiently explained, at least in the media.
Number Games-II
August 11, 2010 01:47 PM
In our previous issue, we looked at three questions about the scheme to enumerate every Indian citizen. In this article, the second in a series published only in Moneylife, Ram Krishnaswamy and Vickram Crishna look at three more questions, focused on the technologies and how they are already being deployed
This is the second article in a series where we examine the government’s ambitious ‘Aadhaar’ scheme, under which the Unique Identity Authority of India (UIDAI) plans to assign each Indian resident a unique 12-digit number.
Q1: Is enumeration via a single reference archive the best way to reduce inefficiencies and prevent money leakages in subsidy programmes? Most articles on Aadhaar harp on the superior quality of technology to be used and that this will significantly cut the cost, time and hardship of necessary verifications.
The reality is somewhat different; to suggest that the UID assignation process will be robust enough to eliminate duplicate and fake identities and can be verified and authenticated in an easy, cost-effective way, is somewhat premature, if not simply hype.
Some of the potential flaws in the process are listed briefly.
(a) Digitally-stored fingerprints are not image scans of real fingerprints, they are digital maps, reduced to a finite number of ‘points’. This computerised system was designed decades ago to cut down the time and effort needed to manually match thousands of prints of previously convicted criminals with a criminal suspect, not to provide perfect identifiers;
(b) Digital representations of biometrics invariably allow for both false positives and negatives, as the original purpose is either to facilitate security pass-through for a relatively small number of people (convenience), or to rapidly filter through large numbers of images by pre-matching each image to a reduced set of digital markers;
(c) The value-addition of iris scanning is unknown for testing on such a scale. The immediate cost is stupendous: per-identity costs go up from about Rs31 to about Rs450, but the results are not known, since such testing has never been done. This is quite different from scaling up a relatively reliable known procedure; iris scanning may well be quick and reliable (even after optimising it with a digital shortcut and securing it from man-in-the-middle attacks during data transfers), but this is currently untested.
Again, it must be emphasised that the purpose is mission-critical; every single genuine person must be allowed to move ahead with whatever activity is being filtered, without fail, else the expenditure on UID is wasted. Similarly, every single fraudulent attempt must be detected and stopped, without fail. Neither achievement is even claimed.
By the time the database is created and verification scanners become commonplace, we could end up with a database of a population that exceeds the census figures, and UIDAI will have to spend again for de-duplication, which would involve knocking on the doors of suspected fraudsters (and genuine applicants who may have failed one of the tests or another, for a host of reasons) for identification. This is the present problem, that databases of applicants cannot be absolutely verified.
And it is not even as though the government is blind to the problem. Recently, the rural development ministry launched its own revamped enumeration exercise to identify the poorest of the poor (who qualify for the designation ‘below the poverty line’ or BPL). This exercise is carried out every five years and the current process is being designed to eliminate the failures of previous surveys.
Q2: How effective are the pilot studies being carried out?
Reports indicate that the rural studies being undertaken in several states fall short of standards of both accuracy and confidence. The national census exercise, which has been merged this time with the National Population Register at the urging of the UIDAI, is also contentious.
It is crucial for a participatory democracy that those surveyed be honestly and fully informed about the purpose of collecting personal information on such an intrusive and massive scale. Unfortunately, this appears not to be the case, as respondents claimed later that they were told that they would get free photographs and eye tests, or that this survey would assure them subsidies or the supply of free essentials. Similarly, respondents of the census have been surprised to find that they are expected to reveal details of religion and caste, an enumeration that is against the letter and spirit of the Constitution of India. This has been sidestepped by replacing the census exercise with the creation of the National Population Register, a crucial component of the proposed UID database.
While doing this is evidently legal, it goes beyond the ambit of the census. As such, it compromises the integrity of an institution that has had an honourable and long history (the current census is the fifteenth).
Q3: Will adequate precautions be taken to safeguard the database?
No system is completely immune to attack or, for that matter, internal leakages, other than one completely sealed off from outside links. Since a centralised digital identity store can only work when incoming data can be matched to the information in the database, one must take for granted that it will be prey to such attacks. This is the bane of all e-governance scheme designs
Legally, there is no effective deterrent for such attacks. Worse, insiders (i.e., government personnel) are specifically protected by their sovereign work contracts from legal action, except with the specific permission of their superior officers. The existing laws on cybercrimes have not been tested against leakages in government systems, because their draconian provisions (search and seizure without warrant, massive penalties) do not apply to government servants.
There are three kinds of database faults: creational (deliberate or accidental falsification of identity, resulting in diversion of benefits from those entitled to them); design-based (incorrect verification due to compromise of the verification process, including man-in-the-middle attacks on data transfers); and procedural (for instance, when telecommunication faults or natural disasters create a need for rapid re-routing of verifications to alternate, or manual, methods). In the absence of an effective legal redressal framework, the process needs review and should not proceed beyond the research stage.
Even at the research stage, the lack of judicial protection for the Constitutional right to personal privacy deserves highlighting. The conduct of research and live pilot studies inevitably places citizens and residents of India at risk of loss of privacy, particularly with regard to sensitive personal information, including biometrics. Much of this information is needed to safeguard property, ownership, fixed and moveable assets, especially money itself, and the addition of UID must be wholly positive, or it can even put your property at risk.
UIDAI officials have repeatedly stated that such protection must be created but its lack does not daunt them in practice. The consequences of wrongful identity matching, once UID becomes the standard reference point, are really harsh on the individual and the current legal environment (civil cases take years and decades to resolve) is not up to the task of providing remediation.
For this reason alone, without completely foolproof systems in several areas of technology as well as law (idealistic at best, if not far-fetched), going ahead with the UID is a deplorable waste of money.
To summarise, we have asked six simple questions here, to clear doubts about the deliverable merits of the Aadhaar scheme. We find it is not likely to provide benefits to the poorest of the poor in India; secondly, is not even designed to do so, definitely not in its first phase. on the contrary, it is likely to benefit the upwardly mobile part of the population. As far as solving the terrible problems that plague the delivery of benefits to the poor is concerned, a single reference point for verifications is neither the best-known solution, nor is the exceeding difficulty of building and operating a centralised database achievable at a reasonable cost and effort. There is no clarity, therefore, on whether making the effort is sensible at all.
Also, there is no clarity on whether it will be possible to adequately safeguard the database, from its creation to its subsequent use as the ultimate reference. We found serious concerns with the methods being used to gather data in the pilot studies that point to the possibility of future abuse as well as manipulation of ill-informed people to make them cooperate.
(Ram Krishnaswamy is an IIT Madras alumnus and Vickram Crishna is an IIT Delhi alumnus)
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348 - Privacy: Numbers Game by Ram Krishnaswamy & Vickram Crishna 29th-Money Life Article- July 2010
July 29, 2010 03:21 PM |
Ram Krishnaswamy & Vickram Crishna
Money Life Article
Unique Identity Authority of India (UIDAI) will assign unique numbers to all people in India (‘Aadhaar’ is the brand name chosen by the for its flagship scheme), to serve as a single reference point to help establish identity. We found over 200 articles extolling the merits of the project and gathered them on the blog aadhararticles.blogspot.com. Rather than reassure, however, they raise several questions about the worth of the project. Ram Krishnaswamy & Vickram Crishna address three key questions in this article—the first in a series that will be published only in Moneylife
The Aadhaar scheme proposes to assign each Indian resident a unique 12-digit number, thus enumerating a Unique IDentity for all. India’s current population stands at around 1.2 billion. In addition, millions of foreigners are temporarily based here. UIDAI has set an initial target of issuing 600 million unique numbers within five years (by 2015) (read more at Aadhaar Articles
This seems an ambitious target, considering the scale and cost (Rs45,000 crore) of the project. Through this series of articles, we will provide the information needed to understand this massive project and its potential consequences for us as Indians and as global citizens.
Q1. Will the intended beneficiaries truly be people who live below the poverty line?
The primary purpose of Aadhaar is avowedly social welfare: dividing wealth equitably. Of course, ‘wealth’ is not really in the picture; India is trying to guarantee everyone the bare minimum needed to live healthily. Benefits in cash or kind are distributed under various schemes, such as the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan, National Rural Health Mission and Bharat Nirman.
One of the problems with such schemes is the difficulty of ensuring that their benefits accrue only to the targeted population—typically, persons living below the poverty line. Such people are easily disenfranchised by an endless cycle of verification of records, ruining the efforts made to ensure fair distribution and causing real delivery rates to falter between 6% and 15%, as estimated by the late prime minister Rajiv Gandhi and others.
With Aadhaar, this problem is expected to be resolved. Aadhaar is a one-time verification system to which all records will be inextricably linked (read more at aadhararticles). With UID, beneficiaries of any scheme can be verified by just checking a few critical details—for instance, name, fingerprints and, now, perhaps, iris scans—in order to quickly confirm their identity. However, largely due to the additional requirement of iris scans to reduce error rates, the per-user cost estimate has shot up from Rs31 to Rs450.
Now, here’s an interesting statement: “The UID will become the single source of identity verification” ( read more at aadhararticles). It means that once residents are enrolled, they can use the number in many places—they will be spared the hassle of repeatedly providing supporting identity documents for each service they wish to access.
However, it is pertinent to note that the services that will actually be simplified in the near term by the Aadhaar numbers include: opening a bank account, obtaining a passport, driving licence, etc. The public distribution system (PDS), NREGS and other such public-benefit services have neither budgets nor plans to integrate their systems with Aadhaar referrals.
It seems clear that, after spending a huge amount of money and putting in all this effort, the UID will, in the initial few years, primarily benefit people who access relatively sophisticated and upmarket services.
Q2. Will UID meet the needs of the poor?
If a poor person gets money that is due to him directly in his bank account, he will have no reason to plead with tyrannical local officials or grovel before his elected representatives ( read more at aadhararticles).
Sadly, banking in India barely scratches the surface: the total number of bank branches as of March 2002, the latest figures we could find on the Reserve Bank of India’s website, was just over 66,000, and less than half of these were in rural areas which account for around 70% of the population.
A back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that each rural branch would need to service over 22,700 account-holders—clearly beyond their reach in a land where urban customers struggle to get decent and timely banking services from branches which need to cater to only around 9,000 customers each. If money is to be mandatorily disbursed directly into bank accounts of the recipients under various schemes (the process to be simplified using UID), it definitely won’t target the poorest of the poor.
One emerging solution is micro-banking, but micro-banking organisations will need to upgrade their technology considerably to deliver services, if UID referrals are to be included. Micro-banks are also not included within the broad banking framework, meaning that existing security measures ensure that they cannot access clearing-house operations and other such enablers of modern banking.
The upgrade cost is not factored into UID budgets, nor is UIDAI mandated to drive the changes that are needed in the banking system without which the UID referral is irrelevant.
Q3. How will UID contribute to the country’s economy?
This is a big-vision project ( read more at aadhar articles) through which government services can be provided, tracked and accounted for, together with enabling a multitude of private-sector products and services that rely on accurate identification of consumers. Various departments, based on their needs, will refer to the UID number. This will help remove duplicate names from their service lists. While this would help clean up lists for NREGS, senior citizen pension schemes, PDS, etc, it may also help clean up benami bank accounts, etc. Informally, the Income Tax Department is known to have projected an additional tax collection of about Rs40,000 crore annually!
These claims may hold, if the scheme were intended to act against the continuing use of unaccounted money for trading. In that case, the target community would only be the economic arrivistes—people who already have enough money to regularly feel the need to spend or acquire it by underhand means. This would include all government officers, their extended families, politicians, businesspeople, agriculturists controlling upwards of 25-50 hectares of land, and so on.
In fact, the projected gains, in terms of enhanced income-tax collection, simplifying transactions with government agencies for cash-related activities and so on, are primarily beneficial to this economically stable or upwardly mobile class.
However, the scheme is sought to be justified on the basis of deliverables to the downtrodden. It is doubtful whether Aadhaar will boost the country’s economy directly or help reduce the outgo on avoidable subsidies; or whether it will provide a combination of these benefits; or whether the true objective depends on who asks the question.
It seems far more likely that the unstated purpose of the scheme is to target the upwardly mobile class, but to do that, all Indian residents will have to be induced, by one means or another, to register themselves ‘voluntarily’.
A closer look at what appeared to be basic questions raises some worries. Next fortnight, we will look at the uncomfortable questions that arise as a result of the technology itself being insufficiently explained, at least in the media.
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Fish Pond
Endorse this citizen statement on UID by commenting here or sending a mail to anivar at movingrepublic.org
We, representatives of people’ movements, mass organizations, institutions and concerned individuals including all the undersigned strongly oppose the potential tracking and profiling based techno-governance tools such as the Unique Identification number (UID) by the Government of India and the manner in which legitimate democratic processes have been undermined through this.
The proposed UID project seems to be perched on an anti-people perspective and violates a number of basic rights guaranteed under Part III of the Constitution of India including Articles 14, 15, 17, 19 and 21 viz., the Rights to equality, dignity, privacy, expression and the right not to be discriminated against, The project seems to be aimed at profiling people by pooling in biometric and retinal data pertaining to an individual and could be potentially discriminatory in a country where caste identity is the most predominant socio-political marker. Further, it is a travesty on the dignity and privacy of individuals. At another level, given the fact that more than one third of our population live below the substantial level called “poverty line” and without literacy & numeracy, a large section of our population would find itself unable to handle this number in a meaningful way and thus face the danger of virtually stripped of their citizenship and thereby the very legitimacy of their existence on the land of this country.
This project which has been launched at a budgeted cost of INR 1900 Crores for the year 2010-2011 in a country where the Government has officially declared that 400 million of its citizens are living below poverty line is , thus an insult to the dignity of the Peoples of India. The project headed by a person of the rank of the Union Cabinet Minister, whose appointment was not transparent and a staff overhead of more than 100 is also working under the most non-transparent processes and we fear that the decisions are made and influenced by vested private and corporate interests who have had a record of anti-people and anti-democratic activities. There is no wide public discussion on the feasibility or desirability of the project.
It is in this context that we have serious objections to the way the decadal census process is being used to pitch the UID process and no discussion on this has happened in any of the democratic forums including the Parliament, which also transgresses n the right to dignity and privacy of individuals and their choice to opt out of the UID process. If the UID continues to be tagged with the Census process – we would also consider boycotting the same. It is a matter of great concern that the powers that be have deliberately kept silent on the inter linkage between the UID and current mode of census
In this situation it is not clear which decisions are being made by the private sector or by the elected representatives. There are proposals within this project that will result in changes to the PDS, food subsidy, MGNREGS etc are being put forward by the Planning commission and UIDAI. They suggest that instead of food grains, cash subsidies must be given to beneficiaries which can be encashed at public or private sector shops.
In the past the changes in policy were achieved through influence and lobbying, but now entrepreneurs have been appointed as non-politicians with cabinet rank. While the project was hailed as a “gamechanger” and a welfare measure, the public at large have expressed growing concerns about the UID and its implications for ordinary citizens. Many questions are being raised about the nature, status and aims of the scheme. Countries such as the UK, Australia and the USA have found similar measures unworkable due to the serious probability of abuse and the strong opposition of the public. There is a huge expenditure proposed for the UID. The UID would affect every citizen. We as groups and individuals feel the need to engage the larger public in an open discussion about the UID and its proposed scope, implementation, benefits and risks. We are also mobilising public opinion on issues and concerns about the UID.
We the undersigned demand that
the UID project be scrapped with immediate effect
all the transactions undertaken by the UIDAI project be scrutinized by an accountable public body from the democratic governance structure in a transparent manner taking into consideration the concerns of the all the peoples before venturing into the implementation stage
the financial and technological implications and the costs incurred so far, including details of contracts entered into with respect to the UID project be made transparent
the Census and UID project be forthwith de-linked
Endorsed by
Moving Republic, Bangalore
Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore
Citizens Action Forum, Bangalore
PUCL, Karnataka.
Slum Janandolana
Alternative Law Forum, Bangalore
Indian Social Action Forum (INSAF)
PEACE, New Delhi
Manthan Adhyayan Kendra, Badvani(MP)
South Indian Cell for Human Rights Education & Monitoring (SICHREM), bangalore
Posco Prathirodh Sangram Samithi, Orissa
Adivasi Mulvasi Astitva Raksha Manch, Jharkhand
Himalaya Niti Abhiyan, Himachal Pradesh
National Hawkers Federation
Kerala Swathanthra Matsya Thozhilali Federation (KSMTF)
Nagpur Municipal Corporation Employees Union
Nadi Ghati Morcha, Chhattisgarh
Peoples’ Solidarity Concerns- Bangalore
People’s Watch
ANHAD
Sudhanthra ( A Rehabilitation Centre for Victims of Domestic Violence and Torture’).
Janvikas, Orissa
Other Media Communications, Bangalore
Visual search, Bangalore
Theeradesa MahilaVedi, Kerala
National Coastal Women’s Movement, Chennai
Alliance of women’s right in Disaster(ANWORD), Chennai
Kerala Tourism watch
Dalit Women’s Forum, Andhra Pradesh
Centre for Education and Documentation, Mumbai
IPTA (Bihar)
EKTA (commitee for communal amity), Mumbai
EQATIONS, Bangalore
Openspace, Bangalore
Rajadhari Basti Uriyan Parishad, Orissa
Chhattisgarh Kisan Mazdoor Vikas Kendra
Asangatit karmakar Shramik Union, UP
Munsikhan Mawat vikas Community Foundation, Alwar, Rajasthan
Pondichery Slum Dwellers Federation
Himpravesh, solar, Himachal Pradesh
Chhattisgarh Action Reserch Team (CART), Raipur
ViBGYOR Film Collective, Kerala
Adivasi, Sarumgi Vikas Sangh, Gujarat
Samata, Orissa
Society for Culture & Development, Kerala
Youth Initiative for Leadership Training, Kerala
Patabhedam Magazine, Calicut, Kerala
Global Alternate Information Applications(GAIA), Thrissur, Kerala
Kabani – The Other Direction, Kerala
Pedestrian Pictures, Bangalore
Just Peace Foundation, Manipur
Concern, IISc, Bangalore
New Socialist Alternative, Karnataka
Infochange India
Privacy Network in Asia
Countercurrents.org
Deccan Development Society
Jananeethi, Thrissur
ANEEK monthly journal, West Bengal
Urban Research Centre, Bangalore.
MEDIA ACTION GROUP.
Individuals
Anivar Aravind
Vinay Byndoor,
Vinay Srinivasa
Bobby Kunju
Chittaranjan Singh (PUCL-UP)
Hiren Gandhi , Darsan, Ahamedabad
shabnam hasmi
Dr SINILAM , KSS, INSOCO, Kerala
Sakthiman Ghosh, Kolkotta
Raajen singh ,Social Activist, Mumbai
Sarasila Pradhan, Orissa
Animanand Ekka, Chhattisgarh
Surekha Kanwar, Chhattisgarh
Kumud Nandgave, Raipur, Chattisgarh
Sanjay Sachan, Laxmi Grameena Vikas Samsthan, UP
Azma Azis, UP
Jannu Anand , nagpur
Deen Dayal Vyas, Chethana Sansthan, Alwar, Rajasthan
Dharmapat Ranjit, Kandhamal, Orissa
Rajan, Indo Global Social Service Society, bangalore’
Subaih Dehariya, Villege Andol, Madhya Pradesh
Bhuvanlal Dehariya,Villege Andol,Madhya Pradesh
Ramsumes Pal, Madhya Pradesh
M. Latha Mageswari, Mahila Milan, Pondicheri
P. Satyakama , WORD, Puduchery
J.S Dhukhia, Solar, Himachal Prasesh
Bibin K R Rai , Officer, Urban Poverty IGSSS, New Delhi
Dr Mohan Sigh Panwar, Daliyon ka Daghiya , Uttarkhat
RP Sahi, Participatory Action Group, Lucknow
waheeda Rehman, Jan Swaraj Trust, Ahmedabad
Qureshi Mohd. Arif, Jan Swaraj Trust, Ahmedabad
Asha Makade, Chhattisgarh Action Reserch Team (CART), Raipur
Vijayakumar H Kulkarni, Karnataka
Deliakar, CNDP, New Delhi
Alok Mohanti , Orissa
Imran khan, Journalist, Indian Express
Indu Praksh Singh
Ruchi Gupta
Dr. T T Sreekumar, National University of Singapore
Anil Tharayath Varghese, Delhi
Sebin Abraham Jacob
Pushpa Achanta, Bangalore
Anand Bala, Banagalore
Mahtab Alam, Civil Rights’ Activist and Journalist
P K Sundaram, Ph.D. Researcher, JNU
Sravanthi Kollu, Bangalore.
Praveen Arimbrathodiyil, REDHAT, Pune
Javed Iqbal, Mumbai
Ashik S, Software Engineer, Thiruvananthapuram
John Samuel, Infochange News and Features
Anusha Hariharan,JNU, New Delhi
K. Rahul Sharma, TERI University, New Delhi
Smitha.Nair, JNU, Delhi
Anu Fern
Sadik P K
Jenny Rowena, Miranda House, Univ of Delhi
Gopal Krishna, ToxicsWatch Alliance, New Delhi
Nidhi Agarwal, Environment Research and Action Collective, Himachal Pradesh.
Deepa Vasudevan, Kerala
Neelan, chief executive Editor, amrita News , amrita T.V , Trivandrum, Kerala
R. Ramakumar, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai
Sukla Sen, Mumbai
Malish C M, IIT Delhi, New Delhi
J. T. D’souza , Mumbai
Vickram Crishna , Mumbai
Shazia Nigar, student, Delhi University.
S. Sanjeev, Thiruvananthapuram
Asit , New delhi
Uditi Sen, kolkata & London
Seema Duhan
Dhanraj Keezhara, bangalore
Ishteyaque
George Perin
Asoke P. Chattopadhyay
Gitanjali Priti Bhatia
Prayag Mehta
Jean Fouere, Ireland
jacob Lazer
S V RAJADURAI,Writer
Jenna Gunnell
Binu Karunakaran
Jinesh K J
Amjad Khan
K. Satchidanandan, poet, New Delhi
Riyaz Usman
Mirza A. Beg, Jaunpur India and Tuscaloosa, USA
Divya Sharma
Ravi Shukla
Vivek sundara
P Radhakrishnan
Mohamed Thalib H
Gulam Mitha
Aporup Acharya
Regina Lambert
Ahmed Sohaib
Abdul Basit
D.Leena, New Delhi
Rana Bose
P K Vijayan
Paco Rodriguez
Hassan Koya
Saswati Swetlena
Amitadyuti Kumar, President, Association for Protection of Democratic Rights (APDR) Hooghly District Committee
Harish Singh, Bangalore
Harjinder Singh (Laltu)
George Pulikuthiyil, Thrissur
Dr. B.C.Mehta
Syed Ali Mujtaba
Vilas Sukhadeve, Nagpur
Rahul Menon
Mushtaq Mohammed Khan
shaheen khan
Manoj Puravankara, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, USA
Sandeep Singh, All india students Association (AISA)
Tanushree Gangopadhyay
Bhagwad Jal Park
Dilip Mandal
Karthik Ramanathan, University of Massachusetts Lowell
Ravi, Software Developer, New Delhi
Arunkumar K
Anil Ennakkad
Rita Manchanda, Safhr ( India)
KS Subramanian.
Joseph Chenakala, Social Activist, Belgaum
C.Raja
Chitra, PhD Scholar, TISS, Mumbai
Uma V Chandru, Bangalore
Vibha Iyer, Progressive Students’ Union
Prabhat Sharan
Renu Ramanath
B.R.P.Bhaskar
Dipankar Chakrabarti (Editor, ANEEK)
Debarshi Ray, Free Software Developer
Lalit Batra, City University of New York
Kalyani Menon-Sen, Gurgaon
Abhijit Menon Sen
Sushovan Dhar
Shalila Raj
Jamlan, Tamil Nadu
Janet Surman
Kumarathasan
K. Nagarajan
Arun M, Thiruvananthapuram
faisal khan, NAPM,Asha parivar
Dr. Manas Sardar, Materials Physics Division, Indira Gandhi Center for Atomic Reseach, Kalpakkam 603102
Kavita Krishnnan, AIPWA
Mohammad Askari
Aditya Sarkar
Suman Chakma
Jaspal Singh Sidhu
P K Vijayan
Arasu Balraj, Chennai.
Rohan DSouza
April 28th, 2010 | Category: governmentality, movements | (10 votes, average: 4.80 out of 5)
147 comments to Kindly Endorse: Citizens against UID / Aadhaar
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