INDIA/UNIVERSAL ID (LAZARO) PBS NHWE -- JULY
29, 2017
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Over the past seven years, across India,
almost every citizen has
stood in line to get a new national ID. It’s a 12-digit number backed by
biometric security. A
head shot plus fingerprints plus an iris scan. It is the most exhaustive
headcount by a country in
history. Ajay Bushan Pandey heads “Aadhaar,” the agency running the
identification program.
AJAY BUSHAN PANDEY: We have now reached the figure of 1.15 billion people.
Among the adults, more than 99 percent of the adults have Aadhaar now.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Pandey says the Aadhaar Project, which has so far
cost 90 billion rupees -- about a billion-and-half dollars -- improves national
security by making it easier to monitor border crossings with India’s
neighbors, like Pakistan and Bangladesh. He says the biometric IDs verify
identity and weed out corruption by replacing paper records -- if they even
exist-- with electronic ones. Aadhaar is bringing vast sections of the country
that barely entered the Industrial Age into the Digital Age.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Many people in India don’t have birth
certificates or formal IDs, and the government says that the Aadhaar program
will correct this problem by issuing everyone a unique biometric
identification. “A tool of inclusion” is what the government calls it.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: A-third of India’s population survives on less
than two dollars a day.
They and many low-to-middle income people receive government benefits
including temporary
employment in public works, farm subsidies, and food commodities
distributed through ration
shops. The system is rife with fraud: fake paper IDs, fake beneficiaries,
and theft by middlemen
preying on vulnerable, often illiterate people. The new harder to fake IDs
are designed to
alleviate these problems says a spokesman for India’s ruling party, the
BJP, in the Capital of
Delhi.
SUDHANSHU TRIVEDI: 30 years back, when late Mr. Rajiv Gandhi was
Prime Minister of India,
he has used a phrase: ‘When 100 rupees goes from Delhi, only 15 or 16
rupees reaches to the
targeted poor.’ Now we have ensured that if 100 rupees goes from here, the
entire 100 rupees
directly reaches to the person concerned.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Given its promise of security and efficiency, the
government recently decided to make Aadhaar mandatory for a growing number of
financial transactions. Every bank account and tax return must now be linked to
one’s biometric ID, and an Aadhaar number is now required to receive any
welfare benefits.
AJAY BUSHAN PANDEY: The World Bank has estimated that if government
of India uses Aadhaar in all its public welfare schemes, the annual savings
would be to the tune of almost 11 billion dollars every year.
SIDDHARTH VARADARAJAN: I think that the savings that the government
claims which spring from Aadhaar are vastly exaggerated.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Opponents of Aadhaar, like columnist and editor
Siddharth
Varadarajan, were skeptical when it began as a voluntary program to improve
transparency in
the welfare system. Now, they are alarmed. Varadarajan says a country where
300 million
people -- a quarter of the population -- do not have reliable electricity
is unprepared to take
such a huge digital leap.
SIDDHARTH VARADARAJAN: You need electricity 24/7, you need the Internet
up and running 24/7, you need proper data speeds. So given the limitations of
technology, given the absence of a privacy law, for the government to
steamroller this kind of scheme, to my mind seems to be rather ill advised.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Internet service is at best sporadic in many parts
of India, and in regions where Aadhaar IDs are now required, one recent report
by a workers’ rights group found the system has done little to reduce
corruption. Attorney Gautam Bhatia represents some Aadhaar opponents and
citizen activists who’ve taken the government to court.
GAUTAM BHATIA: For example, if you are, say, a farmer in the
rural areas, then say you are entitled to rations or to kerosene, for example,
oil, and when that is based upon your biometric authentication, you have to go
to the person who is authorized to authenticate you. And that person may simply
say your authentication failed and not give you your entitlement, and then you
are basically left without that for that one month, and in fact the report
shows that many families have gone many months without access to very
important, important, entitlements.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Bhatia says the new technology will not wipe out
corruption but it has violated a basic tenet of democracy:
privacy.
GAUTAM BHATIA: You’re giving the state centralized access to a
very vast citizenry’s data, personal data. That is where the problem lies. You
are fundamentally altering the relationship between the state and the
individual. You are putting the individual in a position where her actions are
visible in a certain way to the state, whereas we think that the relationship
should be the other way around.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Already there have been several leaks of personal
data. Aadhaar opponents worry rogue operators or hackers could steal biometric
data like fingerprints, allowing Indians to be profiled for commercial or
political purposes. But Aadhaar’s director says his agency’s systems are state
of the art and privacy concerns are overblown. He adds, when the system
authenticates a person, it does not keep any records of transactions.
AJAY BUSHAN PANDEY: Aadhaar also places restriction on merging of various
data bases. So you cannot link the various databases and create a surveillance
tool. Aadhaar Act provides a very strong protection against any such move, so
any violation of the law will be taken very seriously.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Editor Varadarajan is not reassured, because, he
says, the rule of law is frequently flouted by corrupt or incompetent
officials.
SIDDHARTH VARADARAJAN: If India was a better governed state, if the rule
of law operated in a more transparent manner, half of these objections would
vanish.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: When he was in the opposition, Indian Prime
Minister Narendra Modi called Aadhaar a gimmick. But in power, he’s embraced it
-- insisting his government has built in privacy safeguards. And Modi wants to
vastly expand its scope.
TV DEBATE: “The whole act was enacted for the purpose of
passing on the subsidies more efficiently, not to convert a democratic country
into a police state.”
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Aadhaar has sparked robust debate on Indian news
outlets like “Mirror Now” but not so much in the streets.
MAN: "It works...to open a bank account, it works..."
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: In this poor section of Delhi, where almost
everyone has an Aadhaar number, there’s been no controversy, because people
told us they have far more basic worries.
WOMAN: “Nuksan nahi har lakin fayada bi nahi.”
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: “Nothing lost, nothing gained” with the new ID,
this woman said, as she washed cans she’d fill with water as soon as the
municipal tanker arrived. There’s no running water here. And this man
complained ration shops often claim they are out of the subsidized rice and
other essentials. India’s Supreme Court has affirmed the government’s right to
link Aadhaar to welfare benefits and tax returns. But it has yet to rule on
whether being forced to provide biometric information violates an individual’s
right to privacy. When the court answers that question, the fate of the world’s
largest single database of biometric information will be at stake.
###
|
TIMECODE |
LOWER THIRD |
1 |
1:15 |
FRED DE SAM LAZARO SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT |
2 |
2:07 |
SUDHANSHU TRIVEDI BJP SPOKESMAN |
3 |
2:54 |
AJAY BUSHAN PANDEY AADHAAR |
4 |
3:36 |
SIDDHARTH VARADARAJAN FORMER EDITOR, THE HINDU |
5 |
5:03 |
GAUTAM BHATIA ATTORNEY |
6 |
5:45 |
AJAY BUSHAN PANDEY AADHAAR |
7 |
6:18 |
SIDDHARTH VARADARAJAN FORMER EDITOR, THE HINDU |