waht is the digit revolution?
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In recent times, there have been various controversies surrounding the Central government’s ambitious Aadhaar scheme. More so, making it mandatory to link Aadhaar with various Centrally-sponsored schemes has evoked mixed reactions and people also started to raise suspicion on the security of personal data collected by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI). Speaking about the protection of data and one’s right to privacy, the Supreme Court recently, in its landmark judgement, declared “right to privacy” as a Fundamental Right.
The apex court, however, will examine Aadhaar in this context later this year in November. The question here is how did one of the world’s largest democracies engineer a platform for India’s 12-digit revolution in such a short span of time? Is this really a smart course of action? How was the idea generated? In an interesting take, a prominent India-based political economy analyst, columnist and author, Shankkar Aiyar takes the readers through a complex tale of idealism, history behind such ambitious and controversial undertaking in his latest book titled Aadhaar ~ A Biometric History of India’s 12-Digit Revolution.
“The book was born out of a policy paper. I am a Visiting Fellow at the IDFC Institute and work on public policy. Leaders in the 21st century know what is to be done but struggle to find ways to get it done. The lament about India is mostly on what did not get done. Most revolutions in India were born in the wake of crises ~ whether it is liberalisation of 1991 or Green Revolution of the 60s. In stark contrast, Aadhaar is a planned birth. The scale and success of Aadhaar ~ it is the world’s largest biometric identification platform with 116 crore identities and growing ~ is globally unprecedented. How this frugal-cost smart architecture could be set up amid all the systemic flaws is a story that deserved to be told. Aadhaar, if shepherded well, has the potential to deliver revolutionary change in governance,”