Regarding UID project

It appeared in The Hindu today
http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/article839917.ece?homepage=true

few extracts
It raises four points against project.

1) the project would necessarily entail the violation of privacy and civil liberties of people.

the justification given is as followed
A foundational understanding in the study of individual freedoms,....is that consequence-independent absolute rights are rather hard to defend. Hence, the demand to trade-off one freedom for another is an untenable demand. Each freedom, independently, has an instrumental value, and the loss of one freedom undermines the individual's overall capability to expand up on other freedoms.

my comments: Here the trade which is cited is privacy and security. What will the information available in UID, which will question the privacy of the individual. and who is interested in hiding the information? Location, properties, relation, criminal record- are these the information which you want to hide? What is wrong if greater transparency is brought in the public life. A right citizen will not be afraid of telling facts. Only critical information should be refrained from going public. they remain internal and external security aspect of the nation, business and political strategy a nd some more similar matters. apart from that more it it available in public more responsible citizen will become. going for the collection of information i think nobody can stop government from collecting such information. When Government wanted to collect information regarding presence of muslims in army it did it. why to waste extra expenditure on such survey if they can be made available in single go. These will lead to formation of policies. one can oppose policy. that does not mean that one should oppose the survey itself. during cesus too many data is taken. Is author going to question those data too. even they can be termed as violation of privacy.

then there is another justification pointed out
police and security forces, if allowed access to the biometric database, could extensively use it for regular surveillance and investigative purposes, leading to a number of human rights violations.

So who is afraid of investigation. people may talk of misusing the law by police. but that logic can be applied for any law. does that mean that all such law should be scrapped. there should be law to punish police, who misuse it. but that also means that it can be used. let us give it a chance. It is certainly not undemocratic. nothing much will be achieved by demonizing it.

2)it remains unclear whether biometric technology — the cornerstone of the project – is capable of the gigantic task of de-duplication. The Unique Identification Authority of India's (UIDAI) “Biometrics Standards Committee” has noted that retaining biometric efficiency for a database of more than one billion persons “has not been adequately analysed” and the problem of fingerprint quality in India “has not been studied in depth”.


3)Third, there has been no cost-benefit analysis or feasibility report for the project till now.
My comments: when 70000 crores can be spent for uplifting national image, what is wrong in spend little about a project which has multiple purpose even in future.

4)Finally, the purported benefits of the project in the social sector, such as in the Public Distribution System (PDS), are largely illusive. The problem of duplicate ration cards is often hugely exaggerated. Even so, some States have largely eliminated duplicate ration cards using “lower” technologies like hologram-enabled ration cards.

My comments: when hologram enabled ration card was issues it was to make it proper. if there is any offort to make it better why there is question regarding that. it is known that migrants are not there in their native to enjoy the PDS. so there should be alternative way to implement this. to say that duplicate ration card problem is exaserated means that the problem exists.


there is a political angle too. Like any other The Hindu article the corner stone of the article has to be Hindu bashing for that BJP bashing and for that NDA bashing. that is one of the standard merit of regular columnist in The Hindu. This article fits the bill. so it find the root of problem in NDA rule.

The first phase of today's UID project was initiated in 1999 by the NDA government in the wake of the Kargil War. Following the reports of the “Kargil Review Committee” in 2000, and a Group of Ministers in 2001, the NDA government decided to compulsorily register all citizens into a “National Population Register” (NPR) and issue a Multi-purpose National Identity Card (MNIC) to each citizen. To ease this process, clauses related to individual privacy in the Citizenship Act of 1955 were weakened through an amendment in 2003. In sum, the ground work for a national ID project was completed by 2003 itself.

The parallels between the UPA's UID and the NDA's MNIC are too evident to be missed, even as the UPA sells UID as a purely “developmental” initiative. The former chief of the Intelligence Bureau, A.K. Doval, almost gave it away recently, when he said that UID, originally, “was intended to wash out the aliens and unauthorised people. But the focus appears to be shifting. Now, it is being projected as more development-oriented, lest it ruffle any feathers”.

it has become fashion to put everything one considers wrong in the basket of the political opponent. so there is nothing surprising to read insertion of this logic.