When the Indian government embarked on the plan to issue a compulsory nationwide universal identification (UIDAI) and accompanying digital payment system, the idea was that technology would act as an efficient tool for service delivery as well as a panacea for rampant corruption.
Delivery of food and other resources, including payment transfers, by the Indian government has been the backbone of a government system that attempts to alleviate the stresses faced by a large, impoverished rural population. This would now be enhanced by a superbly efficient system was the thinking.
Instead, critics[1] maintain that the Aadhar system has not only not helped the process of providing welfare or stemming corruption, but that it has instead exposed huge tranches of private data to massive security breaches undertaken by rogue profiteers.
TECHNOLOGY A BURDEN IN THE HINTERLAND
Economist Reetika Khera has been a strident critic of the program and in her editorial[2] in the New York Times, she said that the process of authenticating identity -- which necessitates getting your fingerprints read by a hand-held machine -- requires a reliable electricity supply to access servers via the internet, something that is still extremely fickle in parts of India, especially in the north. If any of the many steps involved in authenticating identity fails, applicants are denied their food, as has been the case.
Also, physical presence of the beneficiary is required for authentication today versus the past when a relative or neighbour could be dispatched to avail of the benefit, said Khera, which means that the old and infirm are most vulnerable. There have been instances where beneficiaries have starved[3] to death from failure to go in person to provide authentication under