You are here: Home / Vol. LV No. 43 / Aadhaar is Making India Niradhaar
HIGHLIGHTS
Aadhaar Serves No Purpose
- UIDAI assigns you a number, as is the case with all your other IDs, because your biometrics are not unique
- Unlike your other IDs, the UIDAI does not certify the Aadhaar as proof of your identity, age, address, resident status or even existence
- UIDAI has never audited its database which has in excess of 45% ghosts who can siphon subsidies as the AirTel scam demonstrated
- UIDAI doesn’t identify anyone, it merely authenticates biometrics. If those biometrics fail, as they do more than 45% of the time, you are denied services
- UIDAI is not legally responsible for any reasons that you are denied any rights or services or your Aadhaar fails
- UIDAI costs the taxpayer a lot of money at the same time the CAG has established that it has not resulted in any savings
- UIDAI has no role to play in inclusion, it actually excludes you from school admissions, appearing for exams, even owning a cell phone, operating your own bank account, and even getting a dignified cremation
- CAG has established that there were no benefits from Aadhaar, UIDAI is a cost
- There is no benefit that Aadhaar claims to provide that can’t be done more easily without it
Anupam Saraph proves how vulnerable Aadhaar is, how Aadhaar makes the country as well as the citizens vulnerable, and how it has failed the country and suggests why the Government should shut down the Aadhaar scheme following the steps of other countries like the United Kingdom and Australia that abandoned their national ID schemes after huge expenditure.
The Tribune newspaper exposed that it was possible to obtain administrative access to the entire Aadhaar database for a mere 500 Rs. The Centre for Internet and Society had exposed government and private websites displaying Aadhaar numbers and demographic information of more than 13 crore persons last year.
A few months ago, data of 10.8 crore customers of Jio with their Aadhaar numbers was leaked. Last December AirTel Payments Bank was found to have opened over 37 lakh bank accounts using just Aadhaar numbers with demographic data. These accounts could be opened without the biometrics, the presence of the person, or amazingly without the authorisation by the person whose Aadhaar it may have been. Almost 200 crores of LPG subsidies were transferred to these bank accounts.
The recently released study by the RBI research wing has warned that the entire banking system and economy can be destroyed by a single point attack on the Aadhaar database. The UIDAI announcement of use of virtual IDs in place of the Aadhaar is an admission that it is unsafe to allow any transacting party store your Aadhaar number.
Their move, however, fails to protect anyone. Despite the Aadhaar Act prohibiting the storage of the Aadhaar number, it has been stored widely. Banks, telecom agencies, educational institutions and various government departments have already collected and stored millions of Aadhaar numbers. The UIDAI has failed to enforce their own Act.
Since there is no way to recall the stored Aadhaar numbers, for any virtual ID to work all Aadhaar numbers will have to be cancelled and new ones will need to be issued. Furthermore the use of the Aadhaar number by anyone will have to be completely disabled.
Aadhaar makes the country vulnerable
Aadhaar enrolment was completely outsourced to private parties with the sole aim of building the world’s largest biometric database. More than 85 crore Aadhaar numbers were allotted to enrolment data submitted by just 50 agencies. The core business of these enrolment agencies was IT, software and finance. They have offices in urban metros. It is inconceivable how they can have reached 6 lakh villages across 707 districts and 500 towns and cities of India when district collectors struggle to do so for 70 years. According to the IT Minister, R.S. Prasad, 49,000 enrolment operators of these companies were suspended for creating ghosts. This data has never been verified or audited.
The huge number of Aadhaar ghosts makes it possible to create crores of benami bank accounts that can siphon subsidies from the Consolidated Fund of India. Crores of such bank accounts become indistinguishable from those of real persons and ghosts, citizens and non-citizens or taxpayers and tax-evaders. It increases corruption and black money to a scale ever seen before in the entire history of India.
Such a database full of ghosts then used for creating electoral rolls and national population registers, destroys the very databases that protect India’s sovereign, democratic republic.
Aadhaar makes you vulnerable
The Airtel Payment Bank scam further exemplifies that anyone, including your bank or its employees, in possession of your Aadhaar and demographic data, can open bank accounts in your name. These bank accounts can receive bribes, park black money or even siphon money meant for you. This is because instead of leaving bank regulation to the RBI, UIDAI is attempting to regulate banking, telecom, PDS, pensions, registration of births and deaths among hundreds of other things.
Aadhaar allows transactions in your name, with your authorisation or identification by confusing identification and authorisation with authentication of a biometric or One Time Password (OTP) on a mobile phone. Aadhaar does not distinguish that the biometrics or OTP can be provided or even avoided by a service provider in your absence.
Worse, unlike any other ID, Aadhaar makes your existence, citizenship, access to fundamental rights, and access to services subject to Aadhaar. This fundamentally gives the service providers unprecedented power to deny you your right to life, livelihood and enjoy benefits.
UIDAI has failed the country
The UIDAI violates its own Aadhaar Act by promoting and providing Aadhaar information for purposes that do not have anything to do to the Consolidated Fund of India. It overreaches its mandate by attempting to do something in every department and ministry by ignoring the Acts and Rules that dictate the functioning of these departments. The UIDAI unleashes monstrosities like denying food rations, denying pensions, denying school admissions, causing people to run from pillar to post to get their Aadhaar to work to access their bank accounts or mobile phones and even causing them to fail to give their departed dear ones a dignified burial or cremation.
The UIDAI is run through an “ecosystem” of private interests. These very interests have been sitting on committees of every government department that mandates the use of Aadhaar or restricts access of its services because of Aadhaar failures. The private interests have colonised governance and are destroying the promises of the Preamble to our Constitution. The government is no longer able to ensure the rule of law or protection of the citizens.
The UIDAI has resulted in complete disrespect to the rule of law by notifying penalties that don’t exist in the law. For example, the freezing of bank accounts if Aadhaar is not provided. It has also shown complete contempt to the orders of the Supreme Court of India that had restricted the use of Aadhaar voluntarily to PDS, LPG, NREGA, EPFO, Pensions and Jan Dhan.
What a responsible government should do
The UIDAI has clearly failed to show responsibility to the people of India and protect the country. A responsible government would dissolve the UIDAI. It would shut down the Aadhaar scheme following the steps of other countries like the United Kingdom and Australia that abandoned their national ID schemes after huge expenditure.
A responsible government will ensure the Enforcement Directorate investigate money transfers that have been happening with the Aadhaar Payment System. It will call the CBI to investigate how the Consolidated Fund of India was proposed to be managed using such a leaky and untraceable system in place of the RBI’s NEFT or RTGS. It will call the CVC to take cognisance of the overzealousness of the Ministry of Finance in coercing the use of Aadhaar in banking and the linkage of every bank account with Aadhaar to expose it to such siphoning of money from bank accounts. It will ensure that the NSA investigate the UIDAI for causing a national emergency by delusional coercion of Aadhaar everywhere. It will ensure that the PMO itself place under suspension key bureaucrats that have misadvised and misguided the Prime Minister resulting in such a massive failure of governance.
[Dr. Anupam Saraph is a renowned expert in governance of complex systems and advises governments and businesses across the world. He can be reached @anupamsaraph. Translation by Subhash Devare.]