The origin of Aadhar dates back to the year 1999, post-Kargil war times
when the head of security analysis, Mr. K. Subrahmanyam, wanted to assess the
sense of security situation among the citizens of India.
The first prominent step in the inception of Aadhar was taken in
January-2009 by the GoI (UPA-II tenure) under the Prime Ministership of
Dr.Manmohan Singh with the formation of UIDAI (Unique Identification Authority
of India); and by Mr Nandan Nilekani, co-founder of tech giant Infosys
materializes, headed the statutory authority under the ambiance of Ministry of
Electronic and Information Technology. It was, only in March-2016 when Aadhar act
took its shape, passed in the Lok Sabha as a money bill to give legislative
backing to the former and started to broaden its horizons.
The rationale, given in introduction of the world’s largest bio-metric
digital record base by the GoI, was to reach up to the common masses
specifically to the people dwelling in the remote areas to fulfil the aim of
financial inclusion.
There were numerous schemes and benefits articulated by the GoI to
increase the Aadhar-intrusion to the biggest extent possible vis a vis the
introduction of AEPS (Aadhar Enabled Payment Sysytem) where individual can
perform all the typical banking transactions viz. balance check, deposit, cash
withdraw and aadhar-to-aadhar fund transfer in a hassle free manner.
This was introduced to ease the functioning of the Banking
Correspondent's to reach into the rural masses and enlighten them with the
literature of financial inclusion and the benefits in an easy manner.
Another initiative in the same lines was taken by the SIDBI (Small
Industries Development Bank Of India) to ease the business ventures undertaken
by the MSME (Micro,Small & Medium Enterprises) by introducing the digitally
motivated platform of Udyog Aadhar under which the MSME will self-certify its
existence, bank account, owners Aadhar details and other basic information.
Based on the same the MSMEs can be issued, a unique identifier (i.e the
Udyog Aadhar Number), which can be used to leverage all the benefits enlisted
by the respective ministries and departments under the GoI with ease.
Now the big question to ponder upon is what went wrong that the Apex
court had to intervene and make amendments to the Aadhar Act when everything
was adequately going well.
On 26th September, 2018 the Hon’ble Supreme court of India under the
supervision of the 5-judges constitutional bench struck down the Section 47,
Section 57 of the Aadhar Act 2009 which allows the private entities like
telecom to leverage the data collected by UIDAI. The moves come under the issue
of data leakage instances observed globally.
SC also passed the amendments noting that it will henceforth not
mandatory for an individual to link the bank accounts and mobile number with Aadhar
respectively however it is still the prerogative of an individual to held the
link between PAN (permanent account number) and Aadhar.
The semantic of the state of
Aadhar can only be taken by being cognizant of the main objective of the same
rather than glorifying or criticizing the functionalities.
The SWOT analysis should be given impetus to assess how far the
objectives have materialized yet and the identification of the focus areas.
Writer is alumni of IIT BOMBAYyour comment solicited
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