Former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi famously remarked that only 15 paise of every rupee spent for the welfare of downtrodden actually reaches them. Corruption and inefficiencies riddled Indian welfare schemes. Aadhar was envisaged to curb this trend by giving unique identification to each resident.
Aadhar delivered in monetary terms. As of December 2019, the Government of India (GoI) reported[1] an Estimated Gains of Rs.1,70,377 Crores from DBT by removing fake beneficiaries. In the PAHAL scheme alone, 4.54 crore duplicate, fake, inactive LPG connections were eliminated by making Aadhar mandatory to avail LPG subsidy.
Aadhar can also be leveraged for Data-driven governance, given that it has immense granular data about Indian residents. However, despite immense administrative uses of Aadhar, there are Human Rights problems in making Aadhar mandatory.
Firstly, Aadhar threatens individual privacy. The State of Aadhar (SoA)[2] study reported that 36% of the 1,50,000 households surveyed fear a risk of Government surveillance by linking Aadhaar with many services. With developments in Artificial Intelligence, the Aadhar database can be trained to develop a surveillance system for the GoI.
Privacy threat is also from cyber-criminals. India is the third most vulnerable nation to cyber-attacks as per Symantec Corp’s 2019 report[3]. Identity thefts can lead to incalculable financial losses of residents. Terrorists, hostile nations etc., can abuse the Aadhar database to interfere in Indian elections or to take the Government to ransom.
The second problem is digital exclusion, that hurts downtrodden the most. SoA estimated that nearly 10 Crore people, which includes the homeless and third genders, still don’t possess Aadhaar. It is also estimated that nearly 2 crore people faced exclusion from key welfare schemes despite having Aadhaar. Moreover, the exclusion is not only from the welfare schemes. Many banks and schools still demand for Aadhaar cards, despite the Supreme Court (SC) ruling to the contrary. Often, the exclusions are also because of minor errors on the Aadhaar card.
Understanding the importance of Aadhaar, the solution to the above discussed problems lie in regulating the use-cases of Aadhaar. Appropriate uses of Aadhaar would ensure the benefits of Aadhaar and also ensure that the problems of privacy and digital exclusion are minimized.
Framework for appropriate uses of Aadhaar and regulations required:
- Aadhaar for Targeted welfare schemes: Given Aadhaar’s success in DBT. it should be continued. However, to prevent digital exclusion:
- Offline authentication of Aadhaar cards should be facilitated. While using QR Codes is feasible, paper based authentication should also be allowed given India’s socio-economic context. Machine Learning tools can be deployed to identify fake offline authentications.
- The process to update Aadhar cards should be simplified so that minor errors don’t lead to exclusions.
- Aadhar as an identity platform: SoA estimated that Aadhar has been the first government document ever for 8% residents. Thus Aadhar can be a tool for financial, economic and political inclusion when used as an identity document for bank services, job applications, voter ID etc. However, to address privacy issues:
- An institutional mechanism to maintain data in silos should be created. This prevents profiling of individuals and thus protects privacy. This institution should be a constitutional body to prevent any executive interference.
- Only masked Aadhar, where the first 8 digits of Aadhaar number are masked, should be used for identification purposes. It should be made punishable for private parties (banks, SIM card providers) to hold complete Aadhar cards of customers. Masked Aadhaar not only helps in identification, but also prevents the Government and cyber-criminals from being able to profile individuals.
- Aadhar for Prevention of Money Laundering: Apart from linking to PAN card, Aadhaar can also be allowed to link to property registrations to fight benami property. Combined with Blockchain technology, this can also help fight illegal land encroachment as being piloted in the State of Andhra Pradesh[4].
Aadhaar is a double edged sword. Like any technology, it is value-neutral. It’s the human agency that should create sound regulatory policy so that the gains from the technology are maximized and pains are minimized.
References:
Sai Krishna 