Before
I start a few obligatory statements and clarifications:
- Aadhar
is not a card but a number
- Pakistan
did not kill my father, the war did.
- I
did not score a triple century my bat did
Having
got that out of the way and proved that I am a deeply patriotic Indian, I must
say that I have been increasingly disturbed by the bedlam caused by our
Government insisting that you need to add your Aadhar number when filing your
Income Tax Return.
The
most voluble opposition to Aadhar is based on the premise that the data
captured when making an Aadhar is not secure i.e. the data can be hacked easily
and confidentiality is not safeguarded. The paranoids take this further and say
that because of this lack of confidentiality “Big Brother” can monitor you and
this could be to your detriment.
Of
course there are several other arguments to oppose Aadhar. These fall into what
I call the “Exceptions must be the Rule Bucket”. Just because a minuscule
number of people do not have usable fingerprints [old people have bad quality
fingerprints as do labourers] the whole system should be shut down. This type
of argument is common in India – the Exception must be the Rule. In fact that
is why we have so many bans. A small proportion of the population is affected
by a book or a movie means instant banning.
Anyway,
again generalizing, the opposition to Aadhar comes from our Intelligentsia, our
Great Indian Intellectual, also the Great Indian Liberal, the NGO, and the
Jholawalla. Of course, again generalizing,
all these folks do not need an Aadhar. They can get by quite easily without
one. It is the poor who really need an Aadhar.
I
am proceeding on the footing that the Aadhar data is in fact not secure, that
it can be hacked, it can be easily accessed and it can be misused. Agree. I say
yes, you are correct. However, I have a couple of questions for you
Jholawallas.
My
first question is, other things being equal; I have not quite understood how
providing your Aadhar with your Income Tax return would by itself increase your
risk. In other words when you do provide your Aadhar with your Tax Return, can
your Tax Return be seen by the same hacker who hacks your Aadhar information.
Could you please answer this? I really want to know.
My
second question is that to the best of my knowledge the amount of data captured
on the Aadhar system is not only rather irrelevant but is also insignificant.
Yes, you have the name, address and details of what subsidies are paid into
your bank account. The point I am making is how secure is your tax return? The
Tax Return has far more serious information. All your investments, your sources
of income and God Knows what else. Is there any security built into the disclosure
of this Information? In fact, with the multiple reporting requirements that are
in place, the Income Tax Department get information from several sources – your
Bank, your Stock Broker, the BSE & NSE for your trades, from the Sub
Registrar when you register any document buying and selling property, from Jewelers,
from Credit Card Issuers and so many more. Is any of this secure?
Let
us also proceed on the footing that the data behind the Aadhar is tiddlywinks
when compared to the data in a Tax Return.
By
the same token, is the PAN number secure? The PAN is directly related to your
Tax Return. Can you hack the PAN? Is the date secure? I have no idea.
Leave
hacking aside for the moment. Let us deal with simple physical disclosure.
Giving
someone a Xerox copy of your Aadhar, in my opinion poses no problems and discloses
no information. The Jholawallas have a problem with the Aadhar. What about all
of us happily handing out copies of our Tax Returns to all and sundry. If you
want to open a bank account, or a Demat account or a trading account are some of
the instances that come to my mind when you will be forced to hand over your
Tax Return, which you will do without a second thought. Is there even a fig
leaf of security? The physical copy of your return is bandied about by all
kinds of people. Do we protest?
What
about applying for a visa? If you apply for a visa to travel to the USA, Great
Britain or any Western European country you will happily give a copy of your
tax return to your travel agent. The travel agent will pass it on to all his
peons who will in turn it over to VSF the Visa Handling Agency and so on and so
forth. If you do not have a travel agent, you can remove one layer of
inquisitive peons, but, the position is not much better. Is any of this potent
information confidential? I seriously doubt it. What does the Consulate do with
all this paper, I have no idea. Is it secure?
Could
you ask the Jholawallas, so het up about confidentiality, if they have ever
refused to give their tax returns to a Consulate when applying for a visa on
grounds of lack of confidentiality? I am sure the answer will be no. All our
friendly Intelligentsia, Great Indian Intellectuals and Liberals need their
visits abroad. They would give their right arm leave aside the tax return. The
NGO and the Jholawalla are even more pathetic. They need their precious
projects – A Review on the Impact of Well Water on the Basket Weavers of
Bastaar or The need for Toilets in Andaman - approved and their grants and funding
from the Ford Foundation. They too will happily give in their tax returns.
I
am not for the moment suggesting that Aadhar should not be made more secure.
What I am saying is that why should we have double standards. We should have
highest confidentiality for Aadhar as well as our tax returns. Strict rules
should put in place that if anyone misuses or discloses your Tax Return, he
should be jailed. Why should all manner of peons have access to your tax
returns I cannot understand?
As
I was writing this post, I was sent a link to an article on Aadhar published in
the Leftist i.e. Intellectual rag Scroll.in which you can read here. I cannot
tell you how utterly stupid the argument is in that article. This post is not
to critique that article, but to make you aware of the sheer “intelligence” of
our Intelligentsia. The articles states that the Aadhar card is not proof of
citizenship. Agreed. The article then says that the Aadhar card is one of the
documents that the Passport authorities accept when issuing the passport. The
article argues that if the Aadhar is not a proof of citizenship how can it be
used to issue a passport, which is a proof of citizenship. I was dumbstruck by
this argument. To my simple mind, a passport is the primary proof of
citizenship. There is no document issued prior to a passport that proves your
citizenship. Further, the other documents that are acceptable to the passport
authorities viz: Utility Bills,
residence rent receipts or letters of residence by the Secretary of the housing
Society, PAN cards, etc., none of them are proofs of citizenship. Any foreigner
[read Bangladeshi] can get these documents as a matter of course. To say the
least I am mystified at the intelligentsia’s stream of thoughts.
I
really despair at how daft the Intelligentsia, Great Indian Intellectuals and
Liberals are. There are huge problems in India with information and its
confidentiality. It would have benefited us all if their opposition to Aadhar
on grounds of confidentiality would have been expanded to things like our data
being held by so many diverse repositories. But then, I guess I am expecting
too much from our Intelligentsia, Great Indian Intellectuals and Liberals.
