Adhaar

   Aadhaar

Aadhaar is a 12-digit unique identification number that every resident of India (regardless of citizenship) is entitled to get after he/she furnishes his demographic and biometric information. Demographic information includes the name, age, gender and address while biometric information includes some biological characteristics such as fingerprints, eye scan (Iris scan), etc. No information pertaining to race, religion, caste, language, income or health should be collected.

The Aadhaar number will serve as a proof of identity, subject to authentication. However, it should not be construed as a proof of citizenship or domicile. The Aadhaar number is issued after verification of information collected from individuals. Collected information is stored in a database, the Central Identities Data Repository. This repository will later be used to provide authentication services to service providers.

The government set up an office of Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) in 2009 within the Planning Commission. In 2010, the government introduced the National Identification Authority of India Bill in Parliament to give statutory status to this office.

Points in favour of the topic (Pros)

1. The identity of a citizen in the wake of infiltrations from neighbouring countries may be described as the “missing link” in India's efforts to rise as a superpower. Aadhaar may be termed as the technology-linked identity drive in right direction.

2. The UID Aadhaar Project has two different dimensions. The first one is that it is linked to national security, and the other one is developmental concerns. Both the factors are equally important.

3. So far, the recipient of benefits under various government sponsored schemes has to establish his identity and eligibility many times by producing multiple documents for verification. The verification of such documents is done by multiple authorities. An Aadhaar-enabled bank account can be used by the beneficiary to receive multiple welfare payments as opposed to the one scheme, one bank approach.

4. Aadhaar will be able to reduce the involvement of middlemen who siphon off part of the subsidy.In the new system, the cash will be transferred directly to individual bank accounts and the beneficiaries will be identified through Aadhaar. The government has firmly planned to transfer benefits under various schemes directly into the bank accounts of individual beneficiaries. The MNREGS, (JananiSurakshaYojana, Indira AwasYojana and Dhanalaksmi scheme) wages, scholarships, pensions and health benefits in 51 districts were proposed, starting January 1, 2013, and to be later extended to 18 states by April 1, 2013 and the rest by April 1, 2014.There are around 34 schemes that have been identified in 43 districts to implement the DCT (Direct Cash Transfer) programme. However, The Hindu reports (02-01-2013) that the scheme was successfully launched in 20 districts in six states. Nevertheless, it can be termed as a good beginning.

So far the government subsidies contained products like food grains, fertilizers, water, electricity, services education, healthcare, etc by providing them at a lower than market prices to beneficiaries. This has led to operational inefficiencies. An Aadhaar-enabled DCT system will improve the situation and would ensure timely payment directly to intended beneficiaries, reducing transaction costs and leakages. DCTs will provide poor families the choice of using the cash as they wish. Having access to cash will also relieve some of their financial constraints.

5. Aadhaar number shall also help to eliminate the duplicate cards and fake cards for non-existent beneficiaries in the schemes.   

Aadhaar will qualitatively restructure the role of the state in the social sector. The UID project is aimed to expand India's social security system and to ensure targeting with precision. Addressing the National Development Council (NDC) on July 24, 2010, Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh clarified the use of Aadhaar “to reduce our fiscal deficit in the coming years… we must…reduce the scale of untargeted subsidies. The operationalisation of the Unique Identification Number Scheme … provides an opportunity to target subsidies effectively.”

Points against the topic (Cons)

1. The implementation of Aadhar has been a subject of severe criticism from various quarters such as Union ministers, bureaucrats, policy experts, activists, and even a few state governments. Procedures for data collection and potential errors therein, concerns over privacy, etc are being questioned. Besides, the existence of an older exercise, the National Population Register (NPR), led by the home ministry, is also posing a threat to the project. Though every right-thinking person accepts the need for creating a systematic database of our citizenry, the path to be taken for this has created a vertical divide.

2. UIDAI’s process of using multiple registrars and enrolment agencies to collect individual data as well as its system of relying on ‘secondary information’ via existing identification documents has become a core debatable issue. The Registrar General of India (RGI), while compiling the National Population Register, pushed for a method of public scrutiny in which individual data is collected directly and put up before the public to weed out any fraud.The method used in NPR helped villagers in Gujarat’s border areas expose ‘strangers’ (from Pakistan)on the rolls when the data was put up for public scrutiny. This reinforced the belief that the NPR process, despite being long and painstaking, is more foolproof. RGI and census commissioner Dr C Chandramouli found the data collection for Aadhaar faulty. According to him, “Our objection is to the data collection by other registrars who have a different orientation from ours. From a security point of view, they are not acceptable.”It was felt that both programs could pool their data and share information. But the home ministry has refused to use UID data for NPR.

3. The agencies say the Aadhaar numbers will be issued in about 90 days, but in most cases, it takes between four to six months. Many agencies are asking for additional data but they are not communicating to the people that everything is not mandatory and they don’t have to fill up everything in the form.

4. There are many issues with UID’s biometric data collection. Labourers and poor people, the primary targets of the Aadhaar process, often do not have clearly defined fingerprints because of excessive manual labour. Even old people with “dry hands” have faced difficulties. Weak Iris scans of people with cataract have also posed problems. In many cases, agencies have refused to register them, defeating the very aim of inclusion of poor and marginalized people.

5. Activists also question UIDAI’s authority to collect biometric data. Human rights and UID activist Gopal Krishna is critical about Aadhaar -- “There is ambiguity about biometric data. It is not clearly defined in the National Identification Bill. UIDAI also provides for storing biometric data like fingerprints forever while even the Prisoners’ Act provides that this data should be destroyed on acquittal.”

Usha Ramanathan, activist and legal expert, fumes -- “The whole thing is illegal. Every statutory organisation can only act within a given mandate and citizen’s rules do not provide for it. The Citizenship Act has nothing on biometric data.” She further says, “The whole emphasis is on enrolment with no planning on how this is going to be used.” UIDAI’s system of using introducers to identify and provide numbers to homeless and those without documents is another grey area.

6. The public distribution system will be the worst affected.  Going by the system of present fair price shops (FPS), each of them has a specified number of households registered to it. FPS shops store grains only for registered households. The FPS owner would not know how many migrants, and for what periods, would come in and demand their quota. Hence, for lack of stock, he would turn away migrant workers who demand grains. Therefore, the FPS system is incompatible with the UID-linked portability of PDS.

7. Aadhaar, therefore, is engraved with the following risk factors:

 a) the project would necessarily entail the violation of privacy and civil liberties of people;

b) it remains unclear whether biometric technology — the cornerstone of the project – is capable of the gigantic task of de-duplication. UIDAI’s Biometrics Standards Committee has noted that retaining biometric efficiency for a database of more than one billion persons “has not been adequately analysed” and the problem of fingerprint quality in India “has not been studied in depth”;

c) there has been no cost-benefit analysis or feasibility report for the project; and finally, the so called benefits of the project in the social sector, such as in the public distribution system, are not realistic.

The UIDAI claims that UID will help the government shift from a number of indirect benefits into direct benefits. Let us hope that Aadhaar serves its well-intended purposes.