The Aadhaar: “Evil” Embodied as Law

Abstract

India is known the world over for many wondrous details; history of human origins, languages, mathematics, medicine, music, foods, culture, scenic beauty, landmarks, diversity of peoples, climates, contrasts and above all, spirituality. More recently, however, India, and the distressing privacy annulling actions on the sub-continent have become the chief discussion point among those in the world who are alarmed over the ways in which personal privacy is being encroached upon by moneyed interests of all variety, and by those governments who are willing to collude with them, under false pretenses. In a nation with nearly 1.4 billion people, one readily identified as the world’s largest democracy, forces are now at work, arbitrarily, autocratically, undemocratically, and unconstitutionally deploying, what has come to be known as the world’s largest biometric national ID program (scans and captures iris, fingerprints and facial inputs into a government database), called The Aadhaar. The Aadhaar, initially sold to the tax-payer as a program only to exist per volunteer citizen participation, has speedily, and in the span of less than 2 years, gone from being that volunteer participation program, to a “you must enroll” program, intent on siphoning a citizen’s most personal information into government custody. More importantly, the government, against initial Supreme Court ruling, is now actively pushing for the widespread adoption of the Aadhaar into every segment of the Indian Society, without any constitutional reading, deliberation or ruling. As a member of the national parliament, and as the only opposing voice to the implementation of the Aadhaar, in a chamber of 545 members, the author aims to candidly introduce the reader to the leading issues that are enabling the Central government and moneyed interests to collude, and to suppress democratic processes to ramrod the Aadhaar legislation through the parliament as a ‘money bill,’ and what this Indian program and experience could herald.