290 - 744 - A chink in the armour - Hindustan Times

Pratik Kanjilal,
October 08, 2010
First Published: 23:02 IST(8/10/2010)

The Aadhaar universal ID has been rolled out to general applause and will soon change our lives across the board. The project should accomplish its mission, which is to improve the delivery of rural welfare. It may liberate the poor and marginalised from the cash economy and give them access to formal finance and banking. And if the ID is made mandatory for big transactions, it may reduce money laundering and shrink the black economy. And yet, a crucial chapter is missing from this bestselling success story. The law protecting Aadhaar data from illegal access is yet to be written.

Remember 1991, when Manmohan Singh and P.V. Narasimha Rao topped the bestseller lists by opening up the economy? That success story had suffered because Singh neglected to write a crucial chapter on safeguards. Liberalisation without adequate controls and oversight spawned the Harshad Mehta scam, which wiped out the stock market, destroyed nascent public confidence in investing and damaged the reputation of leading banks and institutions, including the Prime Minister’s Office.

Two decades later, we are repeating history by rolling out the Aadhaar story to gushing reviews, but with a chapter missing again. It was supposed to lay down the law on privacy and data security. In India, electoral rolls have been used to target riots. We have seen profiling by religion, region, class and community — ask the Muslims, the Nagas, the very poor and the ‘criminal tribes’. The government is blasé about even the lowest form of data crime, mobile spam. However, it temporarily banned bulk SMSes before the Ayodhya judgement, so it’s not helpless in this matter. It’s just not very helpful. It’s increasingly disrespectful of the citizen’s privacy and, invoking the spectre of terrorism, wants to read our lives like an open book. In this atmosphere, implementing Aadhaar without privacy safeguards is as risky as liberalising the economy without market controls.

Nandan Nilekani, chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India, has said that the agency only gathers identity data, which is already available with separate government agencies, adds biometrics and uses it to authenticate identity.
 

But that is a half-truth. Aadhaar already has a financial profile thanks to its welfare and banking functions. Besides, it will connect the dots between the data stockpiles of various government agencies. It will assemble fragmented data about individuals into comprehensive information and, through connections with the National Population Register and the National Intelligence Grid, it will allow government to generate the profile of anyone residing in India, right down to their travel patterns and spending habits.

Terrorists and thugs will get their just deserts, but should the rest of us be data-mined? Especially when we know that our data will be leaked or sold eventually, like our phone numbers are sold to spammers? Many countries have seen misuse of national identity data despite having legal safeguards like the European Directive on Data Protection or the US Federal Privacy Statute. And the Aadhaar system’s data safeguards are merely technical and procedural, not legal. Before it is fully deployed, we should enact umbrella legislation specifying penalties for illegal or arbitrary data access, whether by government, private parties or individuals. Until then, Aadhaar will remain a success story with a tragic flaw.

Pratik Kanjilal is publisher of The Little Magazine

pratik@littlemag.com

The views expressed by the author are personal

219 - UID gets nod despite objections - Hindustan Times

New Delhi, September 25, 2010

Even as a large section of the civil society, intelligentsia and even some members of the Sonia Gandhi-led NAC have raised objections to the UID identification and registration, the Union cabinet on Friday approved the proposed National Identification Authority of India Bill, 2010, which makes UIDA a statutory body.

In an open letter sent to Gandhi on Thursday, on eve of NAC meet, the Right to Food Campaign while pressing for universalisation and identification of all the poor objected to use of UID kind segregating technology. “No use of technology for identification purpose which can violate the civil liberties and human rights of the people,” the campaign said.

“There is no real informed debate on the project which has enormous potential of segregating the population (based on few parameters). It is a matter concerning people at large—public money being spent to profile common public,” a NAC member earlier told HT.

“There are some objections to the project from some members. Though I am not rejecting the project out, we have to see what kind of safe guards we have in place against the concerns,” Harsh Mander, another NAC member told HT.

187 - Unique ID plan hits advisory panel roadblock - Hindustan Times

Prasad Nichenametia
1st Sepember 2010

Even as the target dates for issuance of first lot of UID numbers are stretching, the opposition to the Nandan Nilekani-led plan is increasing. After protests from NGOs and prominent individuals opposed to the authority they say is violating rights and provisions of the Constitution, some National Advisory Council members want a discussion and approval of the system before it can go into the public.

According to a member, the issue was supposed to be taken up in NAC on Monday but can be taken up in the next meet.

"There is no real informed debate on the project which has enormous potential of segregating the population (based on few parameters). It is a matter concerning people at large — public money being spent to profile common public," a member told HT adding the opinion is shared by some more people in the council.

In a petition sent to the Prime Minister, UPA chairperson and heads of government, a coalition of more than 100 NGOs, demanded scrapping of the project with immediate effect.

"UID violates basic rights to equality, dignity, privacy, expression and the right not to be discriminated against… it could be potentially discriminatory in a nation where caste identity is the most predominant socio-politico marker," the letter said.

It also called the appointment of Nilekani and functioning of UID as non-transparent, ‘influenced by vested corporate interests.’ The coalition now proposes to take the campaign into the public. The activists opposed to linking UID with the decennial census, said would consider boycotting the process.

"There is vast difference between census and UID. Without explaining what it means MoUs are being entered with private companies. They say UID would reform systems like PDS, but no detail of how it will is available in the public domain," activist Aruna Roy said.

"Involvement of private sector is alarming. We are afraid as where this data taken along with census can end up," Anil Chaudhary of INSAF said.

 

186 - Not all that unique - by Reetika Kehera - Hindustan Times

Reetika Khera, Hindustan Times
New Delhi, August 30, 2010

The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI)’s ambitious plan of issuing a unique biometric-enabled number, innocuously called ‘aadhaar’, to every Indian resident has finally begun to generate a debate on citizen-State relations,  privacy, financial implications, and operational practicalities.

What the debate has largely missed so far, however, is the credibility of the UIDAI’s claims in the field of social policy, particularly the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) and Public Distribution System (PDS). Tall claims (“the project possesses the power to eliminate financial exclusion, enhance accessibility, and uplift living standards for the majority poor”) have been made. Scrutinising the UIDAI’s documents reveals their poor understanding of how PDS and NREGA leakages occur and little evidence of creative thinking on plugging them. Instead, one is treated to rhetorical statements peppered with the ‘Aadhaar-enabled’ buzzword.

In the days of cash payments of wages, it was quite easy to embezzle NREGA funds by inflating attendance records and pocketing the difference. In 2008, the government made it mandatory for all NREGA wages to be paid through banks and post offices. The introduction of payments through accounts has made corruption difficult, but three ways of siphoning off money remain — extortion, collusion and fraud. Extortion means that when ‘inflated’ wages are withdrawn by labourers from their account, the middleman turns extortionist and takes a share. Collusion occurs when the labourer and the middleman agree to share the inflated wages that are credited to the labourer’s account. Fraud means that middlemen open and operate accounts on behalf of labourers and pay them cash. Biometric-enabled UID to authenticate identity can only help to prevent ‘fraud’, but is of little use in preventing collusion or extortion.

Even on the specific issue of eliminating fraud, the UIDAI’s thinking is muddled. “Once each citizen in a job card needs to provide his UID before claiming employment, the potential for ghost or fictitious beneficiaries is eliminated.” Elimination of ghost beneficiaries would be an important contribution, but as the same sentence makes clear, it requires compulsory and universal enrolment. Yet, public statements convey that UID enrolment will be voluntary.

Nilekani speaks of “how having a UID can give automatic benefits” (Indian Express). In practice, there will be automatic exclusion as those who do not enrol will be turned away. We learnt this lesson the hard way in the transition to bank payments. Poorly-equipped and understaffed banks were expected to open millions of NREGA accounts overnight. Labourers began to be denied work — “no account, no work,” they were told. The UIDAI is also poorly informed. “In many areas the wages continue to be paid in the form of cash.” In fact, the transition to bank payments is largely complete (83 per cent NREGA job cardholders have an account). Tamil Nadu is the only ‘area’ where wages continue to be paid in cash (retained for the sake of speed).

Sometimes the UIDAI documents contain plain gibberish. Jumping on the social audits bandwagon, they say: “The village-level social audit committee can be selected after authentication with the UID database. The social audit reports filed by the village-level committees can be authenticated by the biometrics of the committee members and the social audit coordinator.”
Turning to the PDS, the most important contribution of the UID would be to eliminate duplicate cards. But what proportion of cards in circulation are duplicates? The little reliable data on this suggest it is not large: 2 per cent in Tamil Nadu and Chhattisgarh’s computerisation drive to issue hologram-enabled cards eliminated 8 per cent duplicates.

The UIDAI believes that “a key source of leakage identified in the PDS, is subsidised food drawn from the ration shop in the names of eligible families by someone else”. Again, a quick tutorial on PDS leakages might help. There are two major sources of leakage from the PDS: one, diversion of grain, en route to the village ration shop. Dealers then appear helpless saying that they have been issued less by the authorities. Two, dealers undersell (e.g., only 25kg out of the 35kg entitlement) and yet make people testify on official records that they got their full quota. When villagers are disempowered and forced to buy from the same dealer, they feel resigned to being cheated.

The UIDAI recommends that people be freed from the monopoly of dealers, i.e. if he is corrupt, they can go to another. (Finally a usable idea, but alas, an old one.) Conflating the UID with benefits, the UIDAI goes on to make a bogus claim of “portability of benefits” (at least four times in their paper). Portability of benefits requires grappling with operational issues that Aadhaar cannot solve.

Aadhaar is about “inclusivity, the purpose is a better quality of public service delivery, it’s about giving people, who have been denied identity, a chance” (Nilekani, Economic Times). Yet, the UIDAI states: “The NREGA programme can be used to enrol residents into the UID programme” and that the PDS “will provide the necessary impetus for penetration of UID”. If the idea is to use the existing NREGA and PDS database to enrol people, where does ‘inclusivity’ come in? Perhaps the UIDAI needs the PDS and NREGA databases more than these programmes need the UID.

If the UIDAI is serious, it must think about the difficult questions: what if the grain/wages are snatched away after authentication, or if tele-links or hand-held devices break down? What about the costs involved? Illegal fees are routinely charged for ration and job cards — what prevents this from happening while finger-printing? Most importantly, what will Aadhaar add to what can be achieved by computerisation of operations, a reliable MIS, and simpler ‘technologies’ for transparency (e.g., the information walls in Rajasthan)?

If the rhetoric on inclusivity is only a ‘PR’ exercise, what actually drives the UID project? As former Intelligence Bureau chief A.K. Doval candidly said in Tehelka, “It [UID] 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.”

Reetika Khera is a development economist at the Delhi School of Economics The views expressed by the author are personal

 

134 - Chhattisgarh's food revolution by Ejaz Kaiser, Hindustan Times

Chhattisgarh's food revolution
Ejaz Kaiser, Hindustan Times
Jagdalpur, July 11, 2010First Published: 22:54 IST(11/7/2010)

Since she could remember, labourer Rama Nag (34) didn't know what her ration card meant, that as one of India's nearly 400 million officially poor people, she was entitled to subsidised foodgrain.