The recent interim order of the Supreme Court which stated that the Aadhaar number cannot be not made mandatory for people to seek any government services and that no one is to be deprived of any such facilities in the absence of such a card once again questions the validity of all efforts being directed towards portraying the Aadhaar exercise as a legitimate process. Launched in a small village in Maharashtra in 2010, the Aadhaar program under the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) is pegged as the largest biometric data collection program in the world though critics point out that there are no guarantees for a data protection law or a data protection authority to provide any privacy safeguards once a person furnishes information. Under the Aadhaar card system, a 12 digit ‘unique number’ is issued after getting the basic demographics and bio-metric information including photograph, ten fingerprints and the iris of each individual. Rolled out all across the country on the platform that the unique identity is a necessity for each and every individual, the buzz on the card has been such that most Government employees believe that they would not be able to draw their salaries. This misinformation was aided by Government agencies and representatives, who have been pointing out time and again, that the Aadhaar card is to be the backbone of Government related welfare schemes.
In January 2012, the Government of India reiterated the goal of the UID project, as being aimed at ensuring inclusive growth by providing a form of identity and UID numbers to the marginalized sections of society. But not many are aware that that the UIDAI has been operating through an executive order for the past four years after the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance had termed the executive decision as “unethical and violative of Parliament prerogatives” in December 2011. The Ministry of Planning has also pointed out that no committee had been constituted to study the financial implications of the Unique Identification Authority(UID) scheme and it was given a go-ahead without a detailed project report. Yet, in the intervening years since the Aadhaar program has been rolled out across the country along with the involvement of a lot of workforce and government agencies, not to mention the time and energy spent on the exercise, the current status quo over the validity and usage of the card is not a great confidence booster for the lay person, many of whom will still be pestered to show the said card to avail of any services.
The UID project when it was rolled out did have its share of critics who pointed out that it would enable Government agencies to profile every person and track their movements and various other transactions and that it raises issues of breaching personal privacy. Simply put, it means that agencies linked to the Aadhaar card will be able to access financial, medical and telephone records, shopping lists et el which effectively puts surveillance on its head. The premise of the project being used to ensure that citizens with such a card will not be left out of getting welfare services or that what is meant for them is not diverted somewhere else gets the thumbs down from the likes of eminent economist and food rights activist Jean Dreze. Civil liberty activists have time and again pointed out how an ambiguous project that has sometimes been called mandatory then toned down to a voluntary exercise till the Suprem Court stepped in with its interim order is bent on collecting an endless amount of information which it turns out is to be handled by a non Indian private agency. Dr. Usha Ramanathan, a law researcher and civil rights activist puts it succinctly when she says that those enrolling on the UID database have not been informed that their data is to yield profit for the UIDAI, to the tune of Rs 288.15 crore a year through address and biometric authentication once it reaches steady state, where authentication services for new mobile connections, PAN cards, gas connections, passports, LIC policies, credit cards, bank accounts, airline check-in, would net this profit.
With a final hearing on a batch of petitions before the Supreme Court set for October 22, it will be interesting to see what note the UID project and the Aadhaar card process ends up taking. But more than anything else the fact that an initiative such has this has been in existence all these years is ample proof that Government agencies can steamroll civil liberties and have its way with legalities.