Monday, May 16, 2011

Aadhar Project And UIDAI Booty Sharing Got Sour

Till now it is absolutely clear that Indian government, unique identification project of India (UID project) or Aadhar project of India and unique identification authority of India (UIDAI), led by Nandan Nilekani, are fooling Indians.

Aadhar project and UIDAI are evil designs to indulge in illegal and unconstitutional e-surveillance upon Indians. Aadhar project and UIDAI are based upon deceit and deception. There is no legal framework, no defined policies and guidelines and most importantly no procedural and civil liberty safeguards.

In reality, Aadhar project and UIDAI have evil intentions. In fact, Aadhar project and UIDAI are the most evil projects of India till now. This is the reason why Aadhar project or UIDAI have never got a smooth sail. The failure of Aadhar project is also attributable to the controversial nature of the project as well as due to the arbitrary manner of its launch.

Surprisingly, till now the UID project has not shown any of the requisite parameters that allow it to receive huge public money that government of India is very willing to give charitably. Even the loans and grants by World Bank are without any transparency and accountability. In the absence of any transparency and accountability, the whole project seems to be “booty sharing” by big companies at the cost of public interest.

This is also evident the way finance ministry is allotting public money to UIDAI even in the absence of any legal framework. Further, the UIDAI is itself deviating from its adopted policies and guidelines. For instance, UIDAI is now backing away from its open technological standards and is indulging in the vendor lock-in tactics. The intention is to simply share the hard earned public money with few even when freely available software options are readily available.

Similarly, UIDAI is encouraging making Aadhar number mandatory despite its initial stand. In fact, the Mysore district authorities have declared that quoting of Aadhar number would be compulsory at various levels in the state government offices in the district.

According to Praveen Dalal, managing partner of New Delhi based ICT law firm Perry4Law and leading techno legal expert of India, we have no “Dedicated” Data Protection Law in India. Even India does not have a Data Security Law and Privacy Law. This makes the sensitive information and personal details of Indian Citizens “Highly Vulnerable” to misuse, informs Dalal.

Surprisingly L-1 Identity Solutions, headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, and another U.S.-headquartered company, lead two of the three vendor consortia, which have been “prequalified” by the UIDAI for the first phase of an effort to register Indian residents with a 12-digit unique number using biometric identifiers. It is ironical that the countries who discarded similar projects themselves are implementing the same in India.

Frustrated by the management of Aadhar project, two of the world's largest technology companies - IBM and HP - on Monday opted out from bidding for the 2,000-crore outsourcing contract to manage the world's biggest citizen identity database. It seems the booty sharing of Aadhar project and UIDAI has got sour. No matter how much controversial the Aadhar project and UIDAI may get, we Indians have a habit of discussing the same and then forget about it. Indians wake up before it is too late or another multi billion rupees scam hits you. Similarly, wake up before your civil liberties are sold forever to foreign vendors and our e-surveillance hungry nation.