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Praveen Chakravarty | June 23, 2014 4:48 pm Print

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Five years on, we need to examine our xenophobic reactions and

paranoia of the intrusive state.

Five years and Rs 4,000 crore ($800mn) later, there is a pregnant

pause. “Are you who you claim you are?” is a question that more than

60 crore Indian residents can now answer with integrity. Twenty-three

out of the 36 states and Union territories of India can now verify the

authenticity of more than half its residents. Adorning false identities with

motives of terror or poverty can now be eliminated. Clumsy mnemonics

of combinations of name and parents’ names to prevent duplication can

now be replaced with an elegant fingerprint validation. The three lakh

crore ($60bn) spent every year in welfare schemes with an estimated

leakage of Rs 30,000 to 50,000 crore ($6-$10bn) solely due to false

identities can now be plugged. All with the help of the Unique

Identification Authority of India’s Aadhaar programme. A programme that

captured the biometrics of 60 crore residents in four years at a cost of

Rs 65 per person and for a total amount that is less than what the top

two corporate loan defaulters owe their banks.

Aadhaar and the rhetoric of fear

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SUMMARY

Five years on, we

need to examine our

xenophobic

reactions and

paranoia of the

intrusive state.

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To propose Aadhaar be made available only for citizens and leave out purported illegalimmigrants is akin to issuing licence plates to only those cars that have not beeninvolved in a hit-and-run case, as opposed to licensing all cars so as to be able to trackthe ones involved in hit-and-run cases. CR Sasikumar

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7/1/2014 Aadhaar and the rhetoric of fear | The Indian Express | Page 99

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The deadlock returns

New constitution seemsfaraway as court andexecutive protect their owninterests, party bosses

promote corruption.

On a backward journey

Maharashtra government’sproposal of reservations forMarathas points to thecrisis of a fading Congresssystem.

Own goal policies,uniquely Indian

For growth to revive, anti-competition and pro rent-seeking systems will needto change, as in thefinancial markets.

There is zero tolerance

The Modi government, in its

very first test on itsapproach to cases of

sexual assault, has beenfound wanting.

Yet, there are apprehensions over its longevity as Aadhaar awaits its

fate under the new establishment. There is almost a xenophobic

reaction to Aadhaar. It conjures up an image of terrorists from the

western borders or illegal immigrants from the eastern borders of the

country masquerading as foreign residents, and being legitimised

through this system. Or a phobia of tyranny, a country where its citizens

are stripped of all privacy rights and live in perpetual fear of the state

watching them through this Aadhaar x-ray prism.

It is indisputable that national security is of paramount importance to any

sovereign state. Economic benefits, efficient service delivery, citizen

convenience, etc, are merely ornamental if the system that delivers

these benefits compromises on internal security. Most large sovereign

states in the world, such as Japan, the US and the UK, capture

biometrics of only their foreign visitors and/ or migrant workers.

Biometric identification of foreign residents or visitors is deemed

essential by these nations ostensibly to stamp out security threats.

Surely, the decision to use biometric identification as a primary tool by

these developed nations was taken after much deliberation with utmost

priority to homeland security. In this context, the prevailing paranoia over

supposed illegal immigrants in West Bengal getting an Aadhaar number

is perplexing. It is obvious that being able to biometrically identify illegal

immigrants is better than leaving them out of the system. If the

argument is that Aadhaar legitimises their illegality by giving them the

right to welfare benefits, access to banking, rights of adult franchise and

others, then the solution is to not make Aadhaar the sole requirement for

any of these rights and benefits. But to propose that Aadhaar be made

available only for citizens and leave out purported illegal immigrants is

akin to issuing licence plates to only those cars that have not been

involved in a hit-and-run case, as opposed to licensing all cars so as to

be able to track the ones involved in hit-and-run cases. Contrary to the

rhetoric, providing biometric identities to all residents, legal or otherwise,

fortifies internal security measures, rather than diluting them.

Aadhaar has a solitary purpose — to uniquely identify an individual. To

accomplish this, it collects fingerprints of 10 fingers, retinal scans of

both the eyes and tags these to the name, gender, address and date of

birth of an individual. It guarantees zero duplication, that is, no two

people in the pool of 1.2 billion people can have the same set of 10

fingerprints and two retinal identities. This can stem identity fraud, which

is at the very core of everything illegal — from terrorism to migration to

benefit claims and so on. Of the top 20 states (including united Andhra

Pradesh) that account for 95 per cent of the population of the country,

on average, 55 per cent of residents in each state have an Aadhaar

number. Of the top 20 states, 12 states have more than half their

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TAGS: Aadhaar Aadhaar Credentials Indian Residents Xenophobic Reactions

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residents covered under Aadhaar, with certain states like Andhra,

Kerala, Maharashtra, Punjab and Tamil Nadu having more than 75 per

cent of their residents covered. However, Aadhaar coverage in the

border-sensitive states of West Bengal, Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab,

Rajasthan, Gujarat and the Northeast is on average 44 per cent, less

than the national average. Thus, there is a need to ramp up Aadhaar

coverage in these states from an internal security perspective, not

question the need for it.

The other Aadhaar phobia of the state invading privacy rights is more

nuanced and complex. The Aadhaar database in itself has no other

information about the individual other than biometrics, name, date of

birth and address. Which is about the same information sans the

biometrics that one can find of more than 600 million voters on the

Election Commission website. Hence, the fear is more about the moral

right of a state to collect personal biometric information of its residents

for which there is no binary answer. It is a social contract between the

state and its citizens. For a citizen wishing to avail of state services, the

need for biometric identification is purely an efficiency of service delivery

issue, which is a decision of the department or ministry that provides

this service. Entitlement to welfare or other citizen rights cannot be

solely on the basis of Aadhaar, which at best can be a authentication

tool.

National interest has been the resonating theme of Narendra Modi’s

campaign and in the initial days of his stewardship thus far. The prime

minister’s speech in the Lok Sabha demonstrated the trait to rise above

party politics to build a strong nation-state. It is this notion that should

pervade over the impending decision on the future of Aadhaar. It has the

potential to make the country immensely stronger, in its borders and in

its villages.

The writer is board member, the Centre for Civil Society, and was a pro

bono consultant to the Unique Identification Authority

of India in 2011-12.

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