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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | The Aadhaar of all things -Shriya Mohan

The Aadhaar of all things -Shriya Mohan

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published Published on Apr 1, 2017   modified Modified on Apr 1, 2017
-The Hindu Business Line

From a severely critical stand against Aadhaar in 2014, the Modi-led BJP in power has made a sharp U-turn to bulldoze its way into having every Indian scanned, tagged and labelled. A timeline of the country’s chequered date with the unique identification project

You’ve probably read the WhatsApp joke about a post-Aadhaar scenario in 2020 India. A man orders pizza over phone. He is asked for his Aadhaar number first. He then orders a family-size seafood pizza, only to be reminded by the attendant about his high blood pressure and cholesterol levels (thanks to his Aadhaar history visible to everybody “on the system”) and is advised to order the low-fat Hokkien Mee pizza instead, based on his recent search history on Hokkien cuisine. As if this isn’t creepy enough, the pizza guy refuses a card payment, citing the man’s maxed-out credit cards, advises against ATM withdrawal owing to his massive overdraft and even decides to hold off the free cola offer given his dire health situation. When the man turns livid, he is told to mind his language, given that in 2007 he was already imprisoned for verbally abusing a policeman!

2020 is two and a half years away, and the WhatsApp scenario appears less incredulous by the day.

By the government’s latest estimate, 112,01,12,468 Aadhaar cards have been issued since January 2009, when the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) was set up under the Planning Commission. So if you are an adult Indian resident without an Aadhaar card, you are in a two per cent minority (98 per cent adults are covered).

Last week, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said the 12-digit number would be the single monolith identity for all Indians in the coming years, replacing every other identity card. The government is serious because each week a new scheme is added to the three dozen schemes in which Aadhaar has been made mandatory. All the 84 schemes under the direct subsidy benefit transfer programme are expected to follow suit.

Here are just a few instances in which you should be ready to whip out your Aadhaar card — a free midday meal at a government school, access to Sarv Shiksha Abhiyan, LPG subsidy and foodgrains under the public distribution system, six scholarship schemes for students with disabilities, getting your EPF pensions, booking a train ticket online, getting a backward caste quota or benefit, and, according to the most recent directive in the Finance Bill, filing your tax returns.

Why did a dispensation so critical of Aadhaar in 2014 make a sharp U-turn to bulldoze its way into having every single Indian citizen scanned, tagged and labelled?

The earliest felt need for an identification project can be traced to the Kargil Review Committee, instituted by the Vajpayee Government in 1999, in the wake of the Indo-Pak war. The Krishnaswamy Subrahmanyam-led panel had recommended a citizenship database for the identification of legitimate Indian citizens living in border areas.

As outlined in a Scroll article, this quickly expanded to include all Indians under the Multipurpose National Identity Card project, which was pilot tested in a few villages. The Citizenship Act was also amended to give a legislative backing to the scheme, which built on the Bharatiya Janata Party’s general stance against illegal immigrants.

The search for identity

The Citizenship Act was amended in 2004 by the incumbent Congress government to make way for the National Population Register (NPR), a database of the identities of all Indian residents, maintained by the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India.

Eventually, in 2009, Aadhaar, or UIDAI, surfaced as a 12-digit identification number that served as proof of identity and address — meaning, it applies to all residents whether they are citizens or not, unlike with the NPR. Aadhaar, which means ‘basis’ in Hindi, is intended to be an all-encompassing substratum of identities that can provide “instant access to services like banking, mobile phone connections and other government and non-government services”. The United Progressive Alliance government managed to link it to its Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) system for subsidies provided to targeted groups.

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The Hindu Business Line, 31 March, 2017, http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/blink/cover/the-aadhaar-of-all-things/article9609603.ece


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