Aadhaar

India Stack

“I could place those who have opposed Aadhaar in three buckets,” says Jain. “1) Those who don't understand, they have constant fear that the government projects are not well thought through. They change their minds once we explain. 2) Those who oppose on the grounds of privacy, they are afraid that it could get too powerful. You have to respect that view, and make the system more secure. 3) Those who have their own agenda. There's nothing you can do about it. You can't reason with them. You just have to live with them.”

The big question is whether we should pull the plug on the entire system because one can never be 100% sure that it wouldn’t happen; or should we think of ways to fix these issues while using it because it promises to make the lives of a large number of people significantly better.

Samsung launched a tablet with Iris scanner, which is more accurate,

A tag on the vehicle, sensors at toll plazas, a charging system (prepaid/postpaid) built on the principles of interoperability and other enabling infrastructure should solve the issue.

When it comes to giving away cash—as in the national rural employment guarantee scheme (NREGS)—the problem is even more complicated because cash is more fungible and has more uses than rice or sugar. The Aadhaar Payment Bridge solves this problem. It’s now possible to credit the payments directly to a beneficiary’s bank.

In Krishna district in Andhra Pradesh, which has seen reforms based on Aadhaar, people have more choice. The ration subsidies are tied to their Aadhaar number, and they can get their rice, sugar and other rationed items from any PDS outlet they want. If they see one outlet giving them a poor deal, they vote with their feet, putting pressure on the entire system to get better.

There was a missing piece—public digital infrastructure. This is where the volunteers, who are keen on building software products in India, are making a difference.

But they are owned and controlled by Google and Apple. India Stack, on the other hand, is open. They are public goods.

In the broader market such competition typically leads to lower prices and better quality, and so it was with UIDAI. Prices came down.

the customer can be held to ransom because there is only one vendor.

Even if we believe that it can solve problems, can something credible and free be built by a bunch of volunteers?

y providing an open, public

physical authentication

The use cases extend to more prosperous Indians too—for example, easing road toll collection to decongest traffic and reduce waiting time at the toll booth.  

Most of them have been created by Google, Facebook or Microsoft. The closest any of these come to Aadhaar is Android which reached a billion in five years, eight months.

including their biometrics, to American tech companies and foreign governments anyway,

cash and grain

tried to defame the programme

Recently, there was a spate of claims that the Aadhaar database was leaking information. That was not true though. A banking official had released the information, which was a criminal act. The fact remains that data can be stolen.

others do not

, especially when they appear to accomplish things in years that activism has not for decades

Reacting to such concerns, the Supreme Court has stated that Aadhaar should not be made mandatory to receive benefits. Meanwhile, over the years, the processes of the Aadhaar system have been improving.

Aadhaar system to make tax evasion difficult. “There are 250 million PANs (permanent account numbers),” Nilekani says, but only about 40 million who file returns.

People who fear Modi find this ominous. They say that the technology of Aadhaar makes it easy for a strongman like him to spy on his rivals and citizens. “The end of privacy,” they write in articles that have Modi appearing to peer into your private lives.

When the Unique Identification programme was launched in 2009 during the Congress regime, everyone thought it was only for the poor.

ಕೆಲವರು ನಾರೀ ತುನಾರಾಯಣಿ(ಹೆಣ್ಣು ದೇವರಿಗೆ ಸಮಾನ) ಎನ್ನುತ್ತಾ ಮೋದಿಯವರನ್ನೇ ಪ್ರಶ್ನಿಸಲು ಮುಂದಾದರೆ

ಸಿಖ್ಖಳಾದ ಗುರ್‌ಮೆಹರ್‌ಗೆ ಸಿಖ್ಖಪಂಥದ ಇತಿಹಾಸ, ಗುರುಗೋವಿಂದ್ ಸಿಂಗ್, ಅವರ ಮಕ್ಕಳನ್ನು ಕೊಂದವರ ಮತ ಇವೆಲ್ಲ ಗೊತ್ತಿರಲೇಬೇಕು ಅಲ್ಲವೆ?

However, even VVPAT is not a foolproof system. It can be prone to the same risks as the EVMs are.

VM to be connected to Internet but EVMs have no internet connection. So, hacking an EVM is not possible.

t such chips can be inserted in

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As for budget dates, it is plain silly to claim that all normal governmental activities should be abandoned when the czars of the EC do their jobs.

He obviously does not read too many newspapers or he would have known without the government having to inform him.

Marathas defeated the Mughal empire centuries late

However, similar books as Shashi Tharoor’s exposing British rule in India as tyrannical could also be written about the Mughals and other Islamic invaders. Mughal rule commonly practised genocide of Hindus and destruction of temples, not merely by Aurangzeb. Such studies could be made on Tamerlane’s genocide of north India and on the older Delhi Sultanate overall – notably Alauddin Khilji, who pillaged India north and south. They could be written on many Islamic invaders and rulers in India over the centuries, some of whom are portrayed as heroes in Indian history books today. But most scholars would not dare conduct such research, as political motives override their willingness to tell the truth.

British and the Mughals that took shape only under Nehru.

From Swami Vivekananda’s Yoga-Vedanta revival, to Lokmanya Tilak’s back to the Gita message, to Sri Aurobindo and his honouring of the Vedas, to the Ram Rajya ideal that extended to Mahatma Gandhi, this respect for India’s past was prominent and proud. Images of Bharata Mata, and songs like Vande Mataram expressed such inspiration

could also be written about the Mughals and other Islamic invaders.

Hindus never convert people

how technology is being effectively used to end the menace of corruption and black money

Bharat Interface for Money (BHIM), a government app,

How could USCIRF outsource a report harshly critical of India, one of the most important democratic allies of the US, to an activist with a history of supporting separatist causes against India that too often employ terrorism against innocent civilians? How can USCIRF give its imprimatur to a report citing debunked sources and smearing the Hindu religion?

left tens of thousands of Hindus and Sikhs dead

Beyond the litany of attacks against India and the Hindu religion in the latest USCIRF special report, what should alarm any observer, is the document’s authorship.

Attacking Hinduism And India

for the first time in USCIRF’s history, the commission makes the overtly Hinduphobic declaration that caste-based discrimination is rooted in Hindu scripture.