by Harish Gupta, National Editor, Lokmat Group
The current brouhaha in the parliament, the media and the court over Aadhar, India’s unique identification card for citizens is typical of a nation witnessing a regime change, and its accompanying about-face on policy. It was the previous Congress-led UPA regime, harassed as it was by mounting subsidies and their rampant misuse through corruption, commissioned the services of IT wizard Nandan Nilekani to set up Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI). Insiders say it was Dr Manmohan Singh who came up with the idea and the government authority was created to administer the nation-wide 12-digit Aadhar card. The number touched 50 crores mark when UPA demitted office and shot up to 1.12 billion already. But always wary of upsetting the UPA vote bank—be they PDS cheats and assorted rent seekers—UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi and the cabal around her put roadblocks on its use in one form or the other. The Aadhar actually remained a number, nothing else. The NDA, on the other hand, is keen to use the Aadhar platform for not only incidental operations like distribution of subsidised LPG cylinders but to replace the entire creaking PDS with a Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) architecture that may include issuing of Food Stamps.
But a countrywide identification system has its downside. If put in the hands of a draconian regime, its most fearsome use may be as an instrument of mass surveillance, much as the Nazis reportedly used an IBM machine way back in the 1933 census to identify the Jews in Germany. But, food and petroleum subsidy alone costing Rs 240,000 crore in 2016-17, and over 40 per cent of grains and sugar distributed across the Fair Price Shops either rotting in transit or getting pilfered, the gain from Aadhar far outweighs its imagined cost and fears. And the ‘cost’ is being cynically exaggerated by a section of leftist intellectuals in the former National Advisory Council (NAC) of UPA; it was popularly known as Sonia Gandhi’s ‘kitchen cabinet’. Jean Drěze, its economist ex-member, is particularly vocal against the NDA government’s plans with Aadhar. He is campaigning that the Aadhar Bill now passed in the Lok Sabha as a Money Bill (so bypassing the Upper House where the BJP is not in majority), is being built “as an infrastructure of social control”.
Last week, after the Lok Sabha cleared the Aadhar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Bill, 2016, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley reminded the House that it was the “culmination of seven years of discussion” over the Bill. It was a confession of sorts of the stiff resistance that the BJP gave to the passage of some features of the law when the latter was in the opposition. But Jaitley was unambiguous in its purpose. He said “it will empower the state to distribute resources to the deserving people and save the resources that undeserving people get”. It is obvious that the economy, plagued by tepid tax revenues and soaring costs of government wages and defence expenditure, is desperate to curb the pressure of subsidies on both economic and social services. Even after setting aside the ‘merit’ subsidies (i.e., the essential subsidies in primary education, health, sanitation and sewage, mid-day meal, etc.), the non-merit (or inessential state spend on the undeserving) subsidy works out to a hefty one-tenth of the GDP. It is anything but sustainable. And the intention to curtail it signifies the political shift from the left to the right that marks the 2014 regime change.
Before the bill’s passage in the Lower House, it went through the Upper House with a slew of amendments, all moved by Congress lawmaker Jairam Ramesh. His amendments sought to prevent disclosure of “biometric or demographic information” in the interest of “national security”. It was proposed that the clause be substituted instead by “public emergency” or “public safety”. There were a few other amendments that were all swept aside in the Lok Sabha, where Jaitley’s ‘money bill’ made short shrift of Ramesh’s suggestions, one of which was against the use of Aadhar number for any purpose not mentioned in the Bill (such as for filing of Income-Tax return).
However, a good question to ask Ramesh could be: why is he nettled by the term “national security”? It is evident that a fear is stalking the opposition benches that the Aadhar Bill, after it becomes a law, may be used by the government to throw open the dossier on every dissenter and everyone who refuses to toe the line, and get its finger on his location, correspondence history, tax details or personal life. In a world which is digitally vibrant, the twelve digits on the Aadhar card are like a screen to the secret police to every secret in one’s life. In South Africa under the apartheid regime, the 1950 population registration data was used to assign in the 13-digit national identification number, the penultimate (12th) digit, telling if its holder is ‘black’ or not. There is no doubt, therefore, that Aadhar can turn out to be a weapon in the hands of the government of the day fighting war on many fronts. Surely, individuals, groups, communities etc indulging in anti-social, anti-national activities may have a reason to be worried too. For students of recent history, the anti-Sikh massacre after the assassination of Indira Gandhi on 31 October 1984 may be a haunting issue in this respect. The Nanavati Commission report cites a glaring succession of the lynch mobs identifying Sikh households in Delhi with unerring precision within 24 hours of the former Prime Minister’s assassination by her Sikh bodyguards. Therefore, when a conspiracy drives mobs, it is not essential for them to act on a public identification network. There was no Aadhar then.
What is more relevant is the fact that the world has changed, and so has technology; and claiming privacy to be a “fundamental right” may be legally debatable but technologically laughable. Assuming that Big Brother is watching one’s movements, it makes sense giving everyone a number rather than making his wheat, or rice, get gobbled up by someone else.
