Re: Fwd: Aadhaar & NPR: a corrupt surveillance tool, Rebuttal of Nilekani's blog

Vickram Crishna <v1clist-/[email protected]>
Newsgroups gmane.org.telecom.india-gii
Message-ID <1396159121.72837.YahooMailAndroidMobile@web172204.mail.ir2.yahoo.com>
Sent this reply the other day, accidentally direct to Sarbajit instead of the list. 

Actually, no. The petition was filed in the High Court here in Mumbai, and transferred to the Supreme Court on the request of UIDAI. And I didn't join it, I initiated it, together with four others from different walks of life, once the PSCoF report was ignored.

As experience has shown, the petitions were necessary, in order to bring about this interim stoppage. Perhaps interministerial dialogue might have brought a better result, it is hard to say. Certainly an NPR card, perhaps a smart card, perhaps a smart card option rather than a necessity, but one based on responsible identity verification rather than paternalistic identity generation, might be that better choice, perhaps it may not.

If it is a question of delivering cash subsidies to those who deserve them, based on leveraging digital networks, the premise itself is debatable, though not a subject for this list. Also questions of citizenship etc, relevant to the subject of cards and numbers, but again not for debate here. If the purpose is to enable the government to identify its citizens, whether we call it NPR or UID, it is critical to ask why this deserves the spending of public money.

None of these questions and doubts are adequately being addressed today, at any level.

---
Vickram 
communicall.wordpress.com

Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android

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