Need for an Informed Aadhar Debate

As Aadhar increases in scope, supporters consider it necessary, says L.Viswanath:

“We have Aadhaar getting linked to ration cards, NREGA payments, PAN cards, bank accounts, mobile SIMs, mid-day meals in schools, school admissions, university admissions…the list is endless. In a country plagued by corruption and bureaucratic inefficiency, the hope is that Aadhaar will help eliminate fraudulent identities, thereby saving the direct and indirect losses to the nation.”

Conversely, opponents don’t cite concrete use-cases of how it might be abused apart from throwing phrases (“Orwellian state”) that sound scary. Until its opponents provide such details, supporters will win the argument by simply asking why Aadhar should be restricted only to subsidy schemes, as Subhashis Banerjee points out:

“Admittedly there are substantial leakages in these schemes, but surely the need for de-duplication and strict record keeping and audits are as much, if not more, in the domains of tax compliance, real estate transactions and property records and election funding? Why is it that these do not make for more compelling usage possibilities for Aadhaar?”

Doesn’t America tie everything to your Social Security Number too? Does that make America a police state? Further, in the age of Big Data, supporters will point out another potential benefit:

“(Aadhar can) offer the possibility of using modern data analytics and machine learning techniques for finding large scale correlations in user data. This, in turn, may facilitate an improved design of social policy strategies, including targeting, and early detection and warning systems for anomalies.”

Banerjee would like the Aadhaar debate to “get much more analytical”. Here are some areas in which he has suggestions:

1)      Welfare schemes: Will it really plug leakages and ensure the right people get the benefits? Are we collecting data to check if that is happening?

2)     ID checks accuracy: Is the system having too many false rejects thereby depriving the right person of what he is entitled to? Are we collecting data on the software’s accuracy?

3)     MNREGA deletions: Ever since Aadhar was launched, a huge number of entries have been deleted from the MNREGA database (the employee guarantee database). Are we checking why that has happened? It is because, as supporters say, fakes have been identified? Or is it because, as opponents say, governments don’t have enough subsidy to give and so take the easy way out of just reducing the count of eligible people?

4)     How safe is the data? Aadhar, by itself, has very little data. But as it gets linked to other databases with more information, are we re-checking how secure those other databases are? What are the findings?

5)     Privacy: He has 2 suggestions on this:

a)     Do we have “provable guarantees that the data cannot be used for any purpose other than those that have been approved”? Such as transaction logs that cannot be deleted at all, making them available for future checks?

b)     Do opponents check with technical experts as to what checks are practical? If some checks are not practical, that doesn’t necessarily mean the entire system has to be thrown out. Instead, a cost-benefit analysis would be needed and improvements made later when it is technically feasible.

So I am totally with Banerjee when he says:

“Whatever may be the final decision, one can only hope that it will be the outcome of an informed and high quality debate and not be based on strident dogmatic positions.”