During IIT-Bombay’s annual Mood Indigo festival on Friday evening, there was a heated debate over the issue of Aadhar card. The two stalwarts involved in this debate were former Finance minister P Chidambaram and Infosys co-founder NR Narayan Murthy. While Chidambaram was taking a libertarian perspective of Aadhar card. Murthy was advocating on the need for the legislature to make laws that protect privacy. Criticising Modi government, Chidambaram said, “government is completely deaf” to any reasoning against linking Aadhaar to everything under the sun. To this Murthy replied, “Like any other modern country, there is a need to establish individual identities in the form of a driving licence, at the same time ensuring that there is no violation of privacy with such an identification.”
Chidambaram, on the other hand, argued that using Aadhaar for every transaction has “serious consequences” that will turn the country into an “Orwellian state”, compromising the ideals of a liberal democracy and an open society. “If a young man and a young woman want to have a private holiday, they may not be married, what’s wrong with that? If a young man wants to buy condoms, why should he disclose his Aadhaar or identity?” Former Finance Minister added, “Why should the state, that is the government, know what medicines I buy, what cinemas I visit, what hotels I stay in, who are my friends?” he asked further. He added, “If I am in the government, I should resist the temptation to know about all these activities which individual citizens do.”
Murthy defended by saying that Aadhaar is a simple verification of identity. He added “I disagree with you. All of the things you talked about are available on Google today. I think it is time India had a certain way of identifying each individual. In every developed country, you need a social security number, there is no privacy violation. The Aadhaar database does not keep medicine data. You can’t trash Aadhaar just because our parliamentarians haven’t worked hard and produced privacy laws. The responsibility of the Parliament is to ensure nobody hacks into it. Parliament should have the authority to say in what areas Aadhaar can be used.”
Reminding that the UPA had launched Aadhaar, Chidambaram said, “I stand by Aadhaar. What I’m questioning is linking Aadhaar to activities that have nothing to do with the government.”
On linking of bank accounts to Aadhaar, Murthy said, “Bank accounts being verified by Aadhaar is a very important issue. Tomorrow, it is not possible for someone to conduct a false transaction.” Chidambaram said, “Banks have KYC even today. Linking to Aadhaar is the first step for the government to know everything about your financial transactions. And having been in government I will tell you, I should resist the temptation of knowing about all these activities that individual citizens do.”
Chidambaram, who is yet to link his bank account with Aadhaar number, wanted the linking of Aadhaar on a halt until the Constitution bench of the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear petitions on the issue. “There is only one person in the country who can authorise tapping of telephones, the home secretary of India. But do you believe telephones are not being tapped by unauthorised persons? While Parliament might pass a law on privacy and data security, we should not give anyone an opportunity to tap into that data by creating a common link by Aadhaar. Linking of Aadhaar must be kept to a bare minimum,” Chidambaram said pointing out that the linking of Aadhaar was being done now not on a voluntary basis but because people were being flooded with mails and text messages from banks and financial firms.
He said the government seems deaf to any reasoning against linking of Aadhaar to “everything under the sun”.