^ What happens when a centralised system with brittle architecture fails.
For all the nationalistic spiel, the fact remains that even if I have a passport that proves my identity, service providers (public and private, equally) are forced to ask (or just blindly ask for) my Aadhar number (which I don't have) . Ironic isn't it.
The short sightedness and naivety of this comment is disgusting.
The poor and the rich have had "real" identification that has worked well - the electoral ID for example. Forcing aadhar down everyone's throat with no practical complaint redressal is the issue here. (Good luck getting UIDAI to take responsibility)
Aadhar is not progress. Forcing biometric identification that relies on brittle infra is not progress. It is a sign of short sighted faith in solving people problems with technology.
India can solve its problems by its own when it recognizes that beyond money, there are people who are willing to support its technology movement. Competant tech people have time and again come out against the architecture of the solution - the last to suffer for it was Kiran Jonnalgadda (jackerhack on twitter).
This was a solution designed to give absolute oversight of people, as an exclusionary mechanism.
Clarifying more.
1. Aadhar verification failures are a lot more than its advocates proposes. I have seen logs of verification failure with rates upwards of 30%. (No, I am not willing to disclose where, except that it was available publicly on the website of an organisation associated with the government). Citizens will still go starving with that kind of failure rates. Remember that Aadhar Card is a piece of paper with your Aadhar number on it and no storage whatsoever. This is different from countries like Malaysia where they have a national ID card with biometrics stored on chip.
If the verification fails and it does fail all the time, good luck to the poor people who wants UIDAI (not even under legal obligation to do it by the way) to redress the complaint.
2. Privacy.
I like it how everyone conviniently ignores this :
"Even worse, the government of India is selling access to this database to private companies to use and combine with other datasets as they wish. This would allow companies to have access to some of your most intimate details and create detailed profiles of you, in ways you can’t necessarily see or control. The government can also share user data “in the interest of national security,” a term that remains dangerously undefined. There are little to no protections on how Aadhaar data is used, and certainly no meaningful user consent. Individual privacy and security cannot be adequately protected and users cannot have trust in systems when they do not have transparency or a choice in how their private information will be used."
I mean WTF man. Really ? That is what a Government is supposed to do ? Sell your citizen's data ? Because that is exactly what is happening here.
https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsAsDaemon