Do you trust Modi with your data?

India’s biometric identity scheme should not be compulsory

The BJP government should listen to people’s qualms about snooping

WHAT would Gandhi have made of Aadhaar, the ambitious scheme to provide each of India’s 1.3bn residents with a unique, biometrically verifiable identification? There is much that might have impressed the great pacifist. Before Aadhaar’s launch in 2010, many Indians had no proof of identity that could be recognised across the sprawling, multilingual country; now 99% of adults do. A cheap, simple and accurate way to know who is who, it helps the state channel services, such as subsidies, to those who really need them, thwarting corruption and saving billions. Linked to bank accounts and mobile phones, the unique 12-digit numbers can be used for swift, easy transfers of money. In time, they should help hundreds of millions of Indians enter the formal, modern economy.

Yet Gandhi might also have been alarmed. After all, he cut his political teeth resisting a scheme to impose identity passes on unwilling Indians. That was over a century ago, in South Africa. Aadhaar could scarcely be further removed in intent from colonial racism: it is designed to include and unite, not exclude. Still, many Indians worry that a programme billed as voluntary is increasingly, with little public debate, being made mandatory. This puts the whole project, and all its benefits, at risk of being struck down by the courts. And the government’s high-handed dismissal of concerns about its methods is stoking fears that it might misuse the data it has collected.

In recent months the government of Narendra Modi, the prime minister, has made access to a dozen government programmes contingent on possession of an Aadhaar card (see article). In March it sneakily inserted into a fast-tracked budget bill a rule that requires taxpayers to link their tax number with Aadhaar. There is talk of adding such things as school lunches and the purchase of airline tickets to this list. In answer to a question in parliament about whether the state was, in effect, forcing citizens into the Aadhaar scheme, the reply from India’s minister of finance was blunt: “Yes, we are.”

This would appear to contradict India’s Supreme Court. Its judges have yet to rule on a score of petitions aimed at stopping Aadhaar, but in the past two years the court has issued several statements asserting that the identity scheme should be voluntary—or at any rate that it should remain so until the court decides otherwise. Until it issues a binding opinion, the danger lingers that a pile of important government schemes could in future find themselves dangling in legal limbo.

In theory, the law on Aadhaar passed last year by Mr Modi’s government includes stringent protections against the sharing of information; its rules allowing exceptions on grounds of national security, although vaguely worded, appear well intended. Sweden has required all citizens to have a national ID number since 1947—the year of India’s birth—with little trouble. Most Swedes consider the scheme, which is linked to tax, school, medical and other records, an immense convenience.

Stockholm on the Ganges

But India is not a tidy Nordic kingdom. Mr Modi’s government, with its strident nationalism and occasional recklessness—such as last year’s abrupt voiding of most of the paper currency in circulation—does not always inspire confidence that it will respect citizens’ rights and legal niceties. By sneaking the linkage between Aadhaar and tax into a budget bill, it raises concerns about intent: will the government stalk tax evaders, or perhaps enemies of the state, using ostensibly “fire-walled” Aadhaar data? Many Indians will remember that, following sectarian riots in the past, ruling parties were accused of using voter rolls to target victims.

Mr Modi, who before taking office dismissed Aadhaar as a “political gimmick”, has been right to seize on its potential to transform India. It can bring more efficiency to government, convenience to citizens and savings to businesses that need to identify their customers. But for Aadhaar to fulfil its potential, Indians must trust that it will not be misused. Adopting coercive regulations, ignoring the Supreme Court’s qualms and dismissing critics peremptorily will achieve the opposite. As for the Supreme Court, it should stop dithering and make its views clear. Gandhi, a lawyer as well as an activist, would certainly have approved of that.