The U in UIDAI by Usha Ramanathan

SouthWord

Lawyer Usha Ramanathan has been one of the most vociferous voices against the Unique Identification Authority of India's Aadhaar project. She represented petitioners in one of the many cases against the UIDAI that the Supreme Court collectively heard arguements this May. At a public talk, hosted by the Centre for Law and Policy Research in Bangalore, Ramanthan spoke about the numerous problematic facets of the biometric-based Aadhaar project. This 5-part series highlights some of those arguments. The stated goal of UIDAI/Aadhaar is to eliminate ghosts and fakes and deduplicate people. This, it first said, would be done on the basis of biometrics that are unique. But then the UIDAI's internal reports claim that demographic and environmental factors that decide whether biometrics work or not. The Authority then changed the narrative.