Aadhaar had a narrow escape from being gutted to the dustbin of history. In a majority verdict, the Supreme Court found it to be an effective instrument for delivering financial help to the marginalised but kept the banks and other private service providers out of its ambit. The exclusionary part of the judgement could have been avoided. If individual right was so sacred for the judges, they should have left it to individuals to decide whether to choose personal convenience and transparency in financial transactions over a life with democratic pretensions.
The SC also ruled that illegal migrants would not be issued Aadhaar. It was a nudge that NDA must take it forward and link Aadhaar with voter ID. It will not only keep voters with multiple, forged and invalid documents out of the electoral system but also remove the anomaly of missing names from electoral rolls. The linkage, though, may not be easy to accomplish. Politicians, who habitually rig elections by resorting to violence and legitimising illegal immigrants, are bound to oppose this move. Still, Aadhaar alone has a reasonable chance of being gradually accepted as voter ID and later, as a citizenship document, something that we direly need in this country of a million divisive forces.
A bunch of professional activists had tried their best to derail Aadhaar. They told the court that it was a grave threat to privacy, forgetting how extensively networking platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and WhatsApp have invaded our lives and how often official and private service providers keep checking on our bona fides. They also demonised it as a mass surveillance tool, that would be used by crime and economic investigative agencies to terrorise people. But if monetary acquisitions are legitimate and financial transactions are proper, what is there to be afraid of?
Their most repeated complaint was that genuine beneficiaries had been denied food, ration, pension, death and birth certificates for lack of Aadhaar and a few had even died waiting in the queue for those benefits. Surely this would have happened in some cases and may again happen, for we have no dearth of cheats and callous officials manning our delivery systems. But for the fear of it, we cannot stop taking new initiatives and improving on them with the help of technology for the greater good. This reminds of carping by discredited politicians who want to return to the Stone Age of voting through ballot papers because of EVM fault in .02 percent cases.
The Aadhaar baiters expectedly had their bedfellows in financial crooks. A senior banker in Bengaluru told me that within two weeks of blocking banks from using UID data, his branch recorded a 250 percent increase in the number of account holders. No such luck was extended to those who received ration, pension, scholarships, stipends, medical assistance and extra money from mid-day meal and MGNREGA schemes by forging names. So far, 14,00,000 (Assam) and 80,00,000 (Uttar Pradesh) ghost beneficiaries have been removed from Anganwadi schemes. Madhya Pradesh and Jharkhand have reported 18,00,000 and 7,00,000 fake recipients respectively of other subsidies. Similar frauds must be prevalent in other states but they seem reluctant to come clean. The SC rightly recognised Aadhaar’s importance in plugging leakages in the distribution of subsidies.
For Aadhaar, the journey has been quite eventful. Conceived in 2009, the best that the UPA could do was to build it as a facilitator to directly reach subsidy to the beneficiaries. But since they were always unsure of the project’s reach and its long-term benefits, barely 3.8 crore individuals could be enrolled under this scheme up to 2014. However, in its formidable avatar under the NDA, Aadhaar at an investment of `2.9 billion, covered 96 percent Indians in four years, enabling them to obtain ration cards, pension, passport, driving license, bank accounts, voters ID, gas and telephone connections etc without having to submit a plethora of papers and running from pillar to post for verification of their credentials.
These numbers will inevitably fall in view of the SC’s directive. But the advantages are so overwhelming that it will not take long for consumers to steadily adopt it. The UID has only to keep taking measures that make it more secure, friendly and convenient. Its detractors may have partially lost the battle, but it will be a mistake for the UID to count them out. They may actually be waiting for the day when a majority of activist judges will see merit in their democratic righteousness and prevent Aadhaar from becoming a national necessity for pan-India identity.
amarbhushan@hotmail.com
Former special secretary, Research and Analysis Wing