Aadhaar with safe data, an ideal to aim for

It appears that the Aadhaar unique identity system has cleared all hurdles but one in the Supreme Court and the government’s keenness to promote it as the universal identity for all Indians may fructify. The top court, in a significant ruling, upheld the validity of asking tax-paying citizens to seed the PAN card with Aadhaar IDs so as to plug loopholes in tax administration. At the same time, though, the court has also said those who do not have Aadhaar cards or have not applied for one yet cannot be compelled, by threat of invalidation of their PAN number, to enrol until the Constitution bench of the court decides on a batch of petitions concerning privacy issues arising from Aadhaar.

Concerns do remain about the breach of privacy because lax or corrupt elements in government organisations have been known to leak data gathered for the issue of Aadhaar cards. While some Pakistani citizens have been able to get their hands on ID cards, revealing that security is not watertight in the data gathering system, railway touts have proved adept at generating bogus cards in order to enable their black market operations in travel tickets. The gaps in the system have several implications although a minuscule percentage of shady operations are always to be expected in a system aiming to cover 130 crore people and counting. The problem is that the huge amount of outsourcing in gathering data has left several vulnerabilities.

In an ideal system of identity for all citizens, the advantages are huge on many fronts, including in the matter of collecting taxes. Where the government has gone overboard is in trying to extend the ID to everything, including air travel, which is undertaken even by people of the lower end of the scale of incomes, and hence appears a needless hassle today. Fears have also been expressed that the linkage of Aadhaar with essential activities could turn the nation into a large concentration camp where citizens are under state surveillance 24x7, as the lawyers for petitioners opposing Aadhaar put it. Those who are paranoid about their personal data have reason to fret. But no honest citizen should have reason to worry provided, of course, that the government is also honest in its intentions for Aadhaar.

A Constitution bench would still have to clear the basic validity of Aadhaar with regard to whether it violates the right to privacy. That could be a long process. However, it must be noted that we voluntarily give away a mine of personal information in many activities, like buying a SIM card, and also that the government has a way of gathering information by means other than Aadhaar. The basic argument is that a national identity system can serve India well provided the government can expel all its inefficiencies and deep-rooted corruption which misuses information or even sells it for a penny to marketing agencies. An Aadhaar system with adequate safeguards for security of data is an ideal. The question is, can we achieve that.