UIDAI – The Identity Risk

Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), now known as Aadhar is quite an ambitious project by the Govt.  of India, with special backing by Dr. Manmohan Singh. It has been created as an attached office under Planning Commission, with its Chairman (now Mr. Nandan M Nilekani) having Cabinet rank. Of an estimated Rs. 150,000 crore, 1,900 crore has been allocated by Mr. Pranab Mukherjee in 2010-11 budget.

While there are some useful things about having an Unique Identity Card for every citizen, the problems surrounding the project outweighs it.

Nandan Nilekani, Chairman of UIDAI, with the newly launched logo of the UIDAI at Vigyan Bhavan in New Delhi on Monday. Photo Courtesy: The Hindu

The UID Project seems to be against a number of rights given by the Constitution of India, to its citizens. An individual’s right to privacy, Article 21 of the Constitution of India, also mentioned in International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), seems to be questioned here by the very presence of a Biometric data card, which stores all of an individual’s personal information in one database. The possibility of corruption and exploitation of data is far greater.

Interestingly, neither the UID project nor the UID Authority of India (UIDAI) has any legal sanction and provision for judicial review.  It is a purely private project where MNCs are expecting some big returns at the cost of ultimate failure of the project.

The seemingly huge budget allocated for the project, without much public discussion around it, in a country where more than 42% of its population are still below international poverty line, can be termed only using one word – ridiculous.

In a country like India with a population of 1.2 billion, the possibility of simple clerical errors during data entry itself can make this costly project a big failure. We have seen this in Voters ID allocation. Apart from the errors in collecting data, and recording of incorrect data, there also exists the possibilities of Corruption of data, and unauthorized access and disclosure of personal information. Since the plan is to link the card with one’s personal information, financial data, property information and civilian data, possibilities of large scale ID Trade cannot be ruled out. Social discrimination based on the caste/religion/region will be much easier with this central database. The lack of established data protection laws such as the U.S. Federal Privacy Statute or the European Directive on Data Protection, just helps to make things worse.

The lack of a wide public discussion on the feasibility or desirability of the project, including the Parliament, is purely undemocratic. While the project as such might not be scrapped, clarification on the privacy protection and possibly a federal law supporting and ensuring it, and more transparency in the UIDAI’s operations are definitely desirable.

Read a more aggressive attack against UID at The Fish Pond, and endorse, if you like.