Continuing from where I left in the last post,let me list out some of the potential stumbling blocks as well as inherent dangers of not taking care of privacy issues.
There are thousands,may be lakhs of villages in India where they still don't have electricity.Even if there is,it's not available most of the time.How then would the card(which I understand,would need a card reader) and its supporting infrastructure i.e computers etc. work in such places?This clearly demonstrates the need for development of power infrastructure in tandem with the UID project.But is this actually possible?Let's see why I personally think it isn't.
In each of its five year plans,the Indian government sets itself a target for power generation capacity addition over the course of the plan period.There hasn't been a single plan period thus far when the added capacity has ever exceeded 50% of the target.In the ongoing plan period,the target has been fixed at 77,000MW but going by the pace of capacity addition,it can be safely assumed that this time's gonna be no better.In contrast,China is adding 1 lakh MW capacity every year in order to meet its burgeoning requirements with a coal fired power plant commencing operations at an average of 1 per week!!But that's a story for another time...What I wish to merely point out is the fact that India isn't becoming energy sufficient for many more years,maybe decades to come.How then would the benefits of the card reach those for whom it has the potential of being nothing short of a life-changer?Aren't these the very people who have been accorded the highest priority in the project?So much so that the pilot project is going to issue cards to those registered under the NREGA and then to everyone else.
There are a number of privacy issues which need to be sorted out.An elaborate policy framework needs to be outlined which would unambiguously specify who exactly is authorised to access the data of citizens.Failure to protect privacy could result in not only some pesky but innocuous calls from telemarketers,it could actually endanger your life.Imagine this data getting into the hands of crime syndicates and the underworld.A rich businessman could end up receiving threatening extortion calls based on the data of his income tax returns.In case of riots,the data could help rioters identify localities and houses of people belonging to a particular community.If that sounds far fetched,consider this.In the Gujarat riots in 2002,Hindu rioters used data obtained from voter lists to identify shops and houses of Muslims and specifically targetted these installations,leaving those belonging to Hindus untouched.This gross misuse of voter lists would've never come to light but
for the fact that the speed and efficiency with which frenzied mobs targetted Muslims,leaving all Hindu properties unscathed made investigators smell a rat.And this isn't an isolated case.Kashmiri pundits,who have been driven out of the valley in lakhs by Islamic fanatics and are now living as refugees in their own country,were a victim of the same plot.In fact,the former are supposed to have derived inspiration from the latter in use of voter lists.These two instances are enough to show what catastrophic and horrifying consequences unprotected data in the public domain could entail.Certainly this is an aspect that cannot be overlooked.
In an article in the TOI,Mr.Swaminathan Ankleswar Aiyar pointed out that Indian bureaucrats have always sought to scuttle any initiative to give power in the hands of the people.They always manage to find loopholes in anything that seeks to bring about transparency and accountability in the system.I'll concede that RTI Act is a glowing exception but then again,bureaucrats continue to make attempts at diluting the law by pressing for exemption of file notings from the purview of the Act.With this mentality,can one trust these babus not to notch up innovative schemes to beat the system and thereby retain their stranglehold on funds and assets?
The most challenging aspect of the project however,in my opinion,is the source for the data Nilekani is going to use to prepare the database.Multiple sources are being tapped-LPG gas connection holders' list(11 crore connections in all,which assuming an average family size of 5 covers 55 crore people-nearly half the population), voter lists,ration card lists,PANs etc.Of these,ration card lists and voter lists have a large number of phantoms and there are a large number of people holding multiple PANs.How does Nilekani propose to weed out those who are either dead or non-existent from these lists?My hunch is that the compulsion for biometric data would eventually weed out these people but nevertheless large amounts would have been wasted by the time absence of biometric data confirms non-existence(every card is expected to cost Rs.30 at the most conservative estimate.)
Although I wanted to elucidate the technological aspects of the smart card as well in this post,I guess it would make it very long.So if you're more of a tech-oriented person,watch out for the next and final part of this series.
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