Fix Aadhaar defects now

It has done a lot of good but concerns such as privacy and faulty biometrics need attention

There are several “deficiencies” in how India’s national identity project, Aadhaar, is managed, according to a report tabled by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) in Parliament last week. The assessment is based on a performance review of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) that lasted four years between 2015 and 2019 that found several concerns. Chief among these were instances of junk enrolment and low-quality biometric information, UIDAI’s inability to directly audit whether fingerprints and retina scans of citizens could be stored by third parties, the lapse in verifying whether an applicant has indeed resided in India for six months before enrolling (as is the rule), and a much-publicised project to give Aadhaar numbers to newborns that led to “avoidable expenditure of ₹310 crore”.

As CAG itself notes, the role UIDAI has played in streamlining citizen services is immense. (HT Photo)

Each of these has serious implications. First, as CAG noted, is the risk of privacy if authenticating agencies such as banks and telecom providers that commonly use Aadhaar for identity verification begin storing biometric data. Second, there are questions over the sanctity of the database, which already underpins several functions such as tax filing, pension distribution, and in the future could become a significant determinant of voting rights. Given this, the presence of duplicate entries or of people who may not have been eligible is concerning. Third, there is inconvenience to citizens when shoddy biometrics recorded during enrolment means they are unable to use biometric authentication and have to pay to have it rectified.

As CAG itself notes, the role UIDAI has played in streamlining citizen services is immense. Even a simple feature of allowing migrant workers to buy subsidised ration outside of their home state has only been made possible due to Aadhaar. But it is the scale of India’s population that also makes the deficiencies in the database and its risks a major problem. Even a 0.1% error rate would mean 1.3 million records are affected. Activists have pointed out a systemic fix that could help address these problems: The appointment of a separate oversight entity. Indeed, such an approach is being planned by other countries, such as Australia where the oversight and operations of the project are handled by different entities. The CAG report shows, and the UIDAI responses agree, that Aadhaar needs fixes. These will inevitably be painstaking, which makes it contingent on the government to start soon.