No Benefits for Beneficiaries

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/no-benefits-for-beneficiaries/article5753965.ece

The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) is responsible for implementing the Aadhaar scheme. It is a unique identification project. ‘Nandan M Nilekani’ is the chairman of the Unique Identification Database Authority of India under the aegis of the Planning Commission. The first phase of today’s UID was initiated by NDA regime in 1999 after the report of Kargil Review Committee in 2000. It decided to compulsory enroll every citizen of India in ‘National population Register’ (NPR). To implement this, individual privacy in Citizenship Act 1955 was diluted. So the basic groundwork for today’s UID was cleared in 2003.

UID gives a 12-digit National Identification Number, UID Number is designed to enable government agencies to deliver retail public services securely based on biometric data (fingerprint, iris scan and face photo), along with demographic data (name, age, gender, address, parent/ spouse name, mobile phone number) of a person. UID Number also works as a bank account number or one can link UID number to any existing bank account. This is designed to help spread low cost, ubiquitous, branchless banking services in rural areas - called micro-ATM, as part of the Financial Inclusion initiative by GoI. The aim of UID is not only to expand its social security system but to aim and keep benefits restricted to the targeted section, to provide subsidies to people who really require it. It is a larger effect to replace the existing PDS system. Aadhaar has advantage over other biometric solutions as it allows inter-operability among banks and business correspondent. It also allows uniformity of biometric data across country, single biometric service across all govt schemes and eliminates the need of doing separate biometric enrolment for different schemes.

Govt of India have included many benefit system into Aadhaar-enabled payment systems (AEPS) developed by NPCL. The AEPS will now allow customers to avail of banking facilities through banking correspondents (BC) across banks. The objective of AEPS is to empower a bank customer to use Aadhaar to access his/her Aadhaar-enabled bank account and perform basic banking transactions that are intra-bank or interbank in nature through a business correspondent. Presently, there are ten core promoter banks (State Bank of India, Punjab National Bank, Canara Bank, Bank of Baroda, Union bank of India, Bank of India, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, Citibank and HSBC). It would enable banks to route the Aadhaar-initiated interbank transactions through a central switching and clearing agency. It would facilitate disbursements of government entitlements like NREGA, social security pension, handicapped old age pension, etc., of any central or state government bodies, using Aadhaar and authentication there of as supported by UIDAI.

The pilot project was launched in Jharkhand state in association with three banks - Bank of India, Union Bank of India and ICICI Bank. And in the town of kotkasim in Alwar district of Rajasthan there was a saving of 79% in subsidies. These pilot projects faced lots of problems the main reason of this saving was considered to be the collapse of kerosene distribution system. It is argued that in case if DBT system replaces PDS system there will be chaos and disruption of flow of food will occur as rural markets are not that developed. Also there is concern for special group of people as aged population, single women and for those who are incapable of going to banks to take their benefits. However to use these micro-ATM through BC there are also issues of connectivity to central grid of information, proper penetration of UID based bank accounts and also these people are left at the mercy of business correspondent.

UIDAI was established in February 2009, and owns and operates the Unique Identification Number database. It has been established under the Planning Commission. It provides a unique identification number to all persons resident in India, but not identity cards. UID enrolment was started without any approval from the legislative. However attorney general came out with statement that executive powers are independent from legislative and there is nothing in law that opposes the functioning of UIDAI under executive authorization. The UIDAI bill 2010 was tabled in parliament to make UIDAI into a statutory body but it was criticized by a parliamentary standing committee on finance (SCOF) headed by Yashwant Sinha. Report submitted by SCOF stated that UIDAI compromises with the security and confidentiality of information of UID holders and has major national security issues. Also there is no any law that protects the national data, in absence of such data protection law it would be difficult to deal with the issues like access and misuse of data, surveillance, profiling, linking and matching of a database and security confidentiality of the data. Report cites examples of a similar failed experiment of UK govt and states that lessons are to be learnt from these developed countries about cost to program, technological problems and risk of safety of citizen.

Former justice K. S. Puttaswamy went to court against the linking of benefits to UID scheme. The way the government has gone about implementing this project is odd and illegal. After the Parliament’s Standing Committee on Finance rejection of the National Identification Authority of India Bill, 2010, government did not attempt to modify the Bill and bring it back for parliamentary approval. It is not constitutional to simply proceed using an executive order to implement a scheme that has been rejected. Main problems to this bill are:

·       It does not have Parliament’s approval.

·       It violates our right to privacy, we are required provide biometric information, iris and fingerprints, and there is no system to ensure that all this data will be safe and not misused.

·       Another concern is that it is easy for anyone to get an Aadhaar number. The enrolment centres are run by private operators so anyone can walk in and get one, even undocumented immigrants can get one and that’s a clear security threat.

Supreme Court sent notice to govt on legality of DBT and Aadhaar, arguing that it was unconstitutional and contradicts with right to privacy. SC in its verdict said that Aadhaar cards are voluntary and no person should be discriminated if she/he does not have an Aadhaar number.