Open
Letter to the Supreme Court Judges of India hearing PIL’s on Aadhaar
By
Ram
Krishnaswamy
Sydney,
Australia.
Respected
Judges of the Supreme Court of India,
I
am an Australian Citizen and as a PIO, I am totally confused about Aadhaar. Is
it Mandatory for NRIs? Many news reports are floating around, yet
none of the NRIs are sure to date.
I am physically here in Australia as a law abiding Australian citizen but my heart
somehow is throbbing for India; I must say it is Phir Bhi Dil Hai
Hindustani ailment like one’s first love; as we all know our First
Love lasts forever in our hearts.
The
Aadhaar (Targeted delivery of Financial and other Subsidies, Benefits and
Services) Act of 2016, makes Aadhaar numbers legal for all Indian Residents,
however is voluntary and necessary only to receive Government subsidies
that are paid from the Central Fund.
An
amazing move by the former UPA II Government, to serve the needy poor and even
more amazing that the current NDA Government, having unanimously condemned the
scheme, have now gone full throttle promoting Aadhaar.
Former
prime minister Rajiv Gandhi’s famous remark in 1985 that only 15 paise of every
rupee meant for welfare of down trodden reaches them has found mention in the
judgement of the Supreme Court which said this “malaise” can be taken care of
by Aadhaar scheme.
Anything
to serve the 350 to 400 million BPL population is most welcome and the nation
salutes the visionaries.
However,
not being a lawyer, I am totally confused as to how the main Aadhaar Act says
it is Voluntary and endorsed by UIDAI, yet every other Central Government and
State Government body and even Banks, Telcos and Insurance Companies are making
it compulsory and they are not being questioned by the Govt.
Not
only that the same BJP Government has created another Finance Act, that
makes Aadhaar, (which is Voluntary according to the Aadhaar Act,) Mandatory for
PAN cards and IT Returns. Is this legal for one law to circumvent another
original law?
Nandan
Nilekani, the Prime Mover for Aadhaar once said “Aadhaar is Not Mandatory
yet is Ubiquitous”; meaning it will be virtually impossible to live in
India without Aadhaar even though it is Voluntary. I find this whole thing so
deceptive, of the Government and UIDAI fooling the entire population of India.
Why
is Aadhaar not mandatory by Law? Is this a ruse to leave out the rich and
powerful people in India ? If it was made Mandatory there would be no PILs in
the Supreme Court today. Current BJP Government have the numbers in the
Parliament anyway to make Aadhaar Mandatory for all Indians Citizens and NRIs. Very
confusing indeed.
Supreme
Court Rulings: In 2015 the Supreme Court ruled that Aadhaar was not mandatory
nor a condition for accessing benefits one was already entitled to. The SC also
ordered the Government to give this wide publicity. SC also ruled that Aadhaar
Card will not be used for any purpose, other than the PDS scheme for
distribution of food grains and cooking fuel such as kerosene and LPG.
Government
bodies, both State and Central, have blatantly gone against this SC ruling.
The
question is, can an elected Govt and Govt Bodies ignore Supreme Court Rulings?
Why
has UIDAI not enforced the Supreme Court rulings to the word?
Does
this interim 2015 ruling by SC not stand until the Supreme
Court rules after the current hearing of all PILs opposing Aadhaar?
Aadhaar
for PDS
India
has nearly 400 million people (2012 estimate says over 22% of the total
Population of India) who are below poverty line status. This is more than the
total population of USA.
Poverty
line has been defined by World Bank as people having an income of US$ 1.25 per
day max. Ex Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia declared
that Rs 32 income per day would define the Poverty Line.
What
can Rs 32 buy today in 2018 in India is the question ?
Well
off Indians are so blinded by their own Cushy Lives, wealth creation and
entertainment that they seldom think of the wretched lives of these poor and
abandoned people. From the 50s to the 70s, prior to gated communities in the
cities and before people in metros could afford to buy fridges, most people fed
beggars at night with all the left overs. Today this has disappeared in the
cities and today children probably seldom see the starving poor in the metros to understand poverty.
PDS
was launched in 1944 Pre Independence and was relaunched in 1947 in its current
form and included wheat, rice, sugar and kerosene.
Today
GOI is said to spend about 1% of its GDP on PDS. As per Central Statistics
Organisation of GOI, India's GDP (nominal) in 2016-17 was 121.65 lakh crores
i.e. 121650 billion INR. One percent of this GDP works out to 1216.5 billion
INR. For the current fiscal 2017-18, 1% of GDP the figure would be even higher
more like 1594 billion INR. This works out to Rs 3985 per poor person per annum or Rs 10.97 per day ( Plus or Minus as these are guesstimates)
To be truthful no one knows the exact figures including
GOI, as India does not have a Database on its BPL population to determine who
requires PDS Subsidy. Truly Ironic.
Time
and again the pathetically poor BPL population is blamed for
rorting the Government PDS system and this really IRKS me.
Note:
(rorting - is an informal Australian expression - to take unfair advantage
of a public service: eg. Gary's been rorting the system, getting both a
student allowance and unemployment benefit. - Fraud & corruption.)
The
very basis of Aadhaar was the hypothesis that “most Indians” meaning the poor
do not have identities so they needed to be branded individually with a UID, but nothing was
unique about it as it was a blatant copy of the US Social Security Card.
That
the poor in India do not have identities, implies that 400 million poor people
were illegitimate and born out of wedlock. I do not blame Nandan Nilekani for
his assumption, as this is the way the Rich people in India with tinted glasses
see the poor people. They see them as pests whose lives were not worth living.
Perhaps what Nandan Nilekani meant was “the Government did not have any
way to identify the needy poor”. Yet his Aadhaar does not solve this problem
either.
Despite
Aadhaar being voluntary, in 2018 nearly 90% of the Population have registered
for Aadhaar, which is a unique 12 digit number and a bar code that no one else
in India can possess. The irony is definitely 90% of India’s population does
not receive Government Subsidies like PDS.
UIDAI
has admitted to an RTI that only 0.03% of the total number of Aadhaar
registrations used introducers to register for Aadhaar for lack of identity
proof and we can guess that a large portion of this 0.03% will be made up of
Illegal migrants from bordering countries anyway. This negates the
hypothesis that the Poor in India are faceless with no formal identification
papers.
Savings
to Government from Aadhaar in PDS alone:
This
month’s newspaper headlines ( March 2nd week 2018) says “Aadhaar
Linking weeds out 2.75 crore Bogus ration cards Saving GOI 17,500 crores of
Rupees.”
Any
one reading this is misled into believing that the Poor BPL population were abusing
their privilege to receive Government Subsidies through PDS and that poor
people were all natural born thieves.
Justice
A.P.Shah said recently that “We live in an age of Propaganda and Half
Truths”. True and this single statement alone Paints India the Way she is
today; but then even ‘Blind Freddie’ knows that poor people earning less
than Rs 32 a day do not have the clout or buying power to bribe Government
Babus issuing Ration cards. Being dirt poor most poor are also illiterate and
they are at the mercy of the Fair Price Ration shop owners.
India
has 500,000 Fair Price Ration shops; a staggering Half a million of them. It is
common knowledge that the Ration shop owners in nexus with Government Officials
who issued Ration cards generated the 2.75 crore or more Ghost Ration cards to
bleed the PDS System and sell in the black market for huge profits. A few years
ago, there were news reports that PDS Grains were even being exported in
shipping containers from some states to countries like Philippines and
Indonesia.
This
will explain why today Ration Shop owners are doing everything in their
capacity to deny the poor people their due amount of subsidies and have turned
away many who have even died of starvation; this despite UIDAI proclaiming that
no one is to be denied PDS for want of an Aadhaar card. The fact is even people
with Aadhaar cards have been denied rations due to authentication
failures. Can UIDAI and the Government not see who is causing the problem
and why?
The
other common trick used by Ration shop owners is using dodgy weighing scales so
the poor are made to believe they have received their quota but have received
much less. Even if the poor are aware of the fraud, there is not much they can
do but shed tears and grin and bear it rather than being targeted and
victimised.
It
is very clear now as to why the Fair Price Ration Shop fellows have gone on
strike in some states, as thanks to Aadhaar it has made useless 2.75 crores of
fake or Ghost ration cards used to gouge the PDS system.
Is
Poverty a Crime in India ?
Now
the question is, Considering that the 2.75 crore fake Ration cards have now
been wiped out from the PDS system and all the poor people who desperately need
PDS Grains to survive have Ration cards as well as Aadhaar cards, what
is the need for Biometric Authentication ?
Can
PDS subsidies not be issued to the Poor People without Biometric
Authentication ? After all UIDAI only aids with Authentication but does not
monitor PDS issues.
Imagine
being finger printed each and every month for the meagre Government PDS
subsidy. That is adding insult to Injury, only because the recipient is Poor.
Should
we as a nation not treat the needy and desperately poor with some compassion,
respect and dignity ? Is poverty a Crime ?
I
ask this because only criminals are finger printed in western democracies; and
USA, UK, Australia and NZ do not believe in ID Cards as it invades peoples
rights & privacy.
Why
then are we victimising the poor in India who are already the victims of
poverty ?
Lastly
your Honours, BPL is defined as people in India earning below Rs 32 per
day and that is a whopping Rs 11680 per annum and UIDAI CEOs wants these people
to use their smart phones to avail Govt subsidies, receive SMS messages,
Understand KYC, using one time OTP etc. These are poor people who have no money
to buy clothes to cover their bodies or afford food to stay alive and live in
huts and slums of India, and they are also mostly daily wage labourers in rural
farms and have worn out finger prints that lead to authentication failures.
We
obviously have fairies running the “UIDAI”. We should not allow
Billionaires sipping champagne and eating Caviar decide and create Govt
Policies.
As
for activists who have been labelled as Wine Drinking Cheese eating creatures,
Your Honours, the poor have no voice in India to express their grievances and
cannot take the Govt to the Courts through class actions as happens in western
democracies. They need Activists.
I
am left wondering, if ensuring govt subsidies reached the last mile was just a
ruse to tag the entire Indian population with UID through deceit.
"I
have deliberately avoided issues such as Privacy, Money Bill, Surveillance,
National Security, Database Vulnerabilities etc as they are now being looked at
by Your Honours and have only batted for the voiceless 400 million poor Indians
who belong to BPL requiring Government Subsidies."
Mahatma
Gandhi said: "In matters of Conscience the law of Majority has no place".
As a
Nation, Your Honours, we are holding our breath for your final verdict to
redeem democracy and people’s rights especially that of the 400 million Voiceless Masses
Satyameva
Jayate.
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