Photo by UIDAI
Over last few years there set of terms are being widely used to simplify Indian government’s service delivery the citizens. It started with One Rank, One Pension, then came One Nation, One Tax (GST) and the latest buzz One Nation, One Election. The argument provided by the Government of India (GoI) is that simplification, cost savings and fair competition it provides to both citizen and industry is the reason to adopt such single window policy.
I agree with the pension and tax system, but not with the election part. In this article I will briefly talk about the intention and impact of Aadhaar and my take on what should be done to fix it.
Intention
The birth of these terminologies in India can be traced back to Aadhaar, world’s largest ID database that provides unique identity to all Indian citizens and residents. Here the GoI’s goal was to create a database, which I will call One Nation, One Identity (ONOI), to provide better services by means of using digital technologies. In short, individual links everything to his/her Aadhaar and gets easy eKYC and benefits on top of it. As of today, it’s being said that all Indians have Aadhaar i.e. wopping ~1.3 billion people.
Aadhaar is just not a 12 digit number. It allows authorized entities to have both demographic and bio-metric data of any individual having Aadhaar. With such massive details of each and every citizen of an emerging market, the amount of wrong doing that can be done is massive.
Impact
As it’s true with any new technology (or framework in this case), similarly questions are raised on Aadhaar as to what will be the impact of such unique database. I am pretty confident even GoI didn’t knew that a framework designed to provide direct to home services (by both public and private), the usage will raise questions about privacy and large scale surveillance.
I do support Aadhaar but it certainly raises questions about privacy. In short, the intention is great but the impact it’s having is not. Also there has been conflicting statement from the Aadhaar regulatory body UIDAI about whether or not Aadhaar numbers can be made public or not. In a country of ~1.3 billion people it’s difficult to make every tech-savvy and there are always companies that are willing to take advantage of it. Please note I am not getting into the argument whether or not Aadhaar number can be used against people, I am just asking whether or not it should be public. I also know that in India nobody cares about such details as everyone wants faster solution to services.
In short, the framework is helping unintentionally raise the big question about data privacy laws that aren’t in citizens favor as of today.
My Take
Supreme Court of India has reserved verdict on whether Aadhaar should be ONOI. Depending on what the outcome of this case is, personally I believe in following that needs to be done for Aadhaar:
- There should be a full Aadhaar technology framework audit by a third party.
- All the loopholes as much possible should be fixed.
- Strict action against those found to be leaking Aadhaar and bluffing people.
- Framework should have bug bounty program.
- UIDAI should join hands with search engines and other possible valid organization to curb popping up of Aadhaar leaked numbers online.
- It shouldn’t be mandatory (this will be decided by Supreme Court of India).
