पांच साल पहले उच्चतम न्यायालय ने आधार परियोजना पर सीमाएं लगा दी थीं, आज यह बढ़ती जा रही है। आज मूडीज आधार को लेकर चिंतित है और सबसे भरोसेमंद आईडी के जरिए धोखाधड़ी जारी है।आधार के लिए डेटा संरक्षण अधिनियम का क्या मतलब है? पुलिस व्यक्तियों पर नज़र रखने के लिए आधार का उपयोग कैसे करती है? इस महीने हम नरेगा और आधार पर एक अवश्य पढ़ी जाने वाली रिपोर्ट और इंडिया स्टैक पर एक अवश्य पढ़ी जाने वाली रिपोर्ट साझा कर रहे हैं। फैसले के पांच साल बाद, हम विचार करते हैं।

[इस्तेमाल की गई तस्वीर हरक्यूलिस क्लस्टर के एस्ट्रो-फोटोग्राफर रजत कुमार द्वारा ली गई है]

Where are we now? The Supreme Court had placed limitations on the UID project, today it proliferates. Moody’s is concerned about Aadhaar, and frauds continue to be committed through the most trusted ID. What does the Data Protection Act mean for the UID? How does the police use Aadhaar to track individuals? This month we share a must read report on NREGA and Aadhaar, and a must read report on India Stack. Five years after the judgment, we reflect.

[Image used is a photograph of the Hercules cluster taken by astrophotographer Rajat Kumar]

फैक्ट फाइंडिंग टीम ने यह भी पाया कि बच्चे के परिवार को 21 महीने से पीडीएस के माध्यम से राशन नहीं मिला था. अर्जुन की मां तुलसी यह नहीं समझ पा रही थीं कि उनका राशन कार्ड क्यों रद्द कर दिया गया था, टीम ने पाया कि उनके नाम की वर्तनी आधार कार्ड और उनके राशन कार्ड पर अलग-अलग लिखी गई थी, जिससे संभवतः राशन कार्ड और आधार को लिंक करने के की कोशिश में रद्द किया गया था।

Following news reports that a child had died in March of this year due to malnutrition, a fact-finding team of local activists, social scientists and journalists visited Ghatisahi village and found that the child’s family had not received rations through the PDS for 21 months. While Arjun’s mother Tulasi was not able to understand why her ration card had been cancelled, the team found that her name was spelt differently on her Aadhaar card and on her ration card, likely leading to the cancellation of the ration card in the process of attempting to link both.

Issues within the Aadhaar programme are given terms familiar to technological innovation that lighten and obscure the cost of the programme. When people are unable to link Aadhaar with ration cards due to a mismatch in their names on both, or when the internet fails, or when fingerprints don’t work, we are told to call these “teething problems” bringing to mind a small toddler who is just learning to eat solid food, rather than a state-owned programme mandatorily imposed on population which excludes many from their fundamental rights and entitlements. Exclusion is measured in the percentage of the total population, which is downplayed as being insignificant or not significant enough for action, and issues central to the functioning of the programme are seen as implementation issues rather than intrinsic failures of the programme leading to situations of crises, starvation, death and the destruction of welfare. Every instance of exclusion comes at a grave human cost.

On April 6th, 2022, the Comptroller & Auditor General released a Report on the functioning of the UIDAI which confirmed what scholars, activists have been warning about Aadhaar: it is a badly designed system, with immense surveillance risks, which places an unacceptable burden on people, and violates fundamental rights.