IDENTITY CRISIS FOR INDIANS
Flagship Aadhaar programme has already reached 900 million people, but move to link public services is facing opposition
Court rules against compulsory ID but government offices don’t seem to have listened,
When Ravi Mundoli went to renew his driving licence in Chennai, an official notice informed him that he could not do so without an Aadhaar card.
More than 900 million people have been enrolled in the Indian government’s Aadhaar programme, a biometric system with a unique 12-digit number, designed to make it easier for Indians to prove their identity and register for services. The Aadhaar ( Foundation) system captures fingerprints and iris scans, and is already the world’s largest biometric database. Any resident of India, regardless of nationality, can apply for an Aadhaar card free of charge.
But in October 2015, India’s supreme court instructed the government not to make Aadhaar a compulsory pre-requisite to access any state services.
Which is why the traffic bureau notice surprised Mr Mundoli, a software entrepreneur. As it turned out, the notice was either poorly phrased or poorly implemented. Mr Mundoli managed to renew his licence in the end, but he had to queue up at eight counters, whereas with an Aadhaar card, he would have needed to visit only four.
“It feels like it is not so slowly creeping into every facet of life, mostly in a way that respects the letter of the supreme court judgment but not the spirit,” Mr Mundoli said. “The machinery is now increasingly designed to be slow as molasses if you don’t have one.” The government has not said that every resident of India must have an Aadhaar card. But in breach of the court order, various ministries have either made Aadhaar compulsory for particular services or, as at the traffic bureau, made it difficult to access these services without Aadhaar.
The list of such instances is long and growing.
As of last Thursday, anyone booking train tickets online cannot do so without an Aadhaar number.
But yesterday, facing heavy criticism, the government rescinded this particular order.
However, the education ministry is insisting children who receive free school meals must also enrol in Aadhaar.
Children aged 6 to 14 who receive free textbooks and uniforms under India’s Right to Education Act will need to apply for their Aadhaar documentation by the end of June, while a nationwide pension scheme now requires its 25 million members to submit their Aadhaar details.
At least a dozen other social welfare, health and education schemes have also made it compulsory for applicants to produce their Aadhaar details.
Civil rights groups are concerned about the linking of Aadhaar to public services.
“It’s designed to cause civil death – the loss of all or almost all civil rights of a person,” said Gopal Krishna of the Citizens Forum for Civil Liberties, who has long advocated against Aadhaar.
He argued that its extensive database could assist in the breach of a citizen’s right to privacy. Other civil rights groups have petitioned the supreme court, arguing that Aadhaar and its implementation are unconstitutional. In October 2015, the court decided that it needed a fivejudge bench to hear and rule on these petitions. But due to the supreme court’s work backlog, there has been a delay in forming the bench, Dr Krishna said.
Consequently, no body currently exists to acknowledge breaches of the court order, which ruled that Aadhaar should not become mandatory. The Aadhaar programme collects sensitive personal information such as biometrics, contact details and date of birth, prompting fears of data privacy and security.
But Rahul Matthan, partner at a law firm called Trilegal in the southern city of Bangalore, who has consulted with government agencies, said Aadhaar’s data security was very robust.
Mr Matthan said millions of people in India lacked a reliable form of identification and that Aadhaar was a well- designed solution to this problem.
“Aadhaar itself in my view is not dangerous,” he said.
“But to avoid bringing in identity theft and other problems, it’s important for us to have a really solid privacy law also.”
The government permits private firms – telephone companies or insurance providers, for instance – to use Aadhaar to verify identity.
“So it’s possible for someone in the telecom company to know that this guy, with this Aadhaar number, is speaking on the phone for this many minutes,” Mr Matthan said.
“And that kind of information about you will exist in other databases of private companies also. Theoretically, it’s possible to build quite a large profile of a person with access to these databases. That’s the real risk. That’s what a privacy law should target.”
As he had not seen the text of the orders that made Aadhaar compulsory for railway ticket bookings or other services, Mr Matthan said he was unwilling to comment on their legality.
“But in general, the supreme court order is there – you can’t make it mandatory,” he said.
“Any requirement to make it mandatory will, at some point, be set aside by virtue of that order.”
Aadhaar is not dangerous. But to avoid bringing in identity theft and other problems, it’s important for us to have a really solid privacy law also Rahul Matthan partner at a Bangalore law firm