Sucheta Dalal : Data and Finance has led to insecurity -
Sucheta Dalal, Money Life Foundation: at
India, an Orwellian State in the making: A Public Meeting on NPR, Aadhaar, NRC, CAA and Data Protection, by PUCL and Article 21 Trust ( 06.02.2020
What do these issue like AI, Privacy, Data mean for all of us. Moneylife Foundation's (celebrating its 10th Aniiversary on 6th Feb. 2020) work for the last 10 years has been been confronting these issues. What does data do, it creates systems, who dictates it? it is Capital, finance capital, whihc pull the strings,
So whatever the reasons maybe the national interest, NPR, or Kargill War for that matter.. when data bagan to be collected it was finance capital that focussed on how it is extracted, It was spun to say it was going to help the poorest of the poor get an identity, and this was true because people didnt have an identity..so the poorest people who wanted to open a bank account, they were so critical to all of us who expressed worry. They said how does it matter to you. Each of you have five ideneities, we cant even open a bank account. So you did have a huge chunck of the population which was pro-aadhaar, who did not see the importance of the talk of privacy.
It was not a card only. It was up there in the database. The reality is not begining ot sink in. Because when aadhaar was started they didnt even talk about "payments".. Today when the governmnet claims that 99% of the people or more have aadhaar, what do you know? Every day you get fifteen tokens, you stand in a queue in a bank, because you have to pay money, to be updating everything that is a part of your life. You change a bank account, it has to be updated if you have linked the bank account, if you have changed your address, it has to be linked, whatever you do, you have to go back and link it. And for a few of us, who are in a better category, particularly those who have premium accounts in private banks which will probably be more efficient, things sort of work. What ahppens to the poor people. They are forwver standing in queue. A watchman of our building could not withdraw his life savings, as his PAn did not work, the aadhaar doesnt work, Why doesnt it work because both have mistakes in t. Why does it have mistakes? The sub-contracting private people who do the aadhaar data entry are the cheapest that contractors can find.
We also know about deaths because people cant get PDS. the newspapers today spoke of silicon moulds. Money Life has a demonstration by experts that with a bit of fevicol you can create fingerprints.
What is it that worries us. India has zero grievance redressal. When you are affected, you may be a tiny number in that huge data, which Artificial intelligence is going totake apart. for you it is your life. It is a few lakhs which has goine out of hard earned savings. And you will spend the next ten to fifteen years, correcting this..
And the last thing which should be worrying all of us is the concept of civil death which can happen because of aadhaar, and data, because you can have a lto of htings enshrined int he privacy Act, it does not work in real life. So when you are a victim, and this is happening everyday. Everyday you will have one case where income tax has written to a bank and said freeze the account of xyz, because we have raised a demand on him. The demand maybe completely illegal. You may get a notice under PMLA, anybody else.. if you have adhaar linked to your PAN, linked to your bank account, this civil dealth can happen anytime the governmnet chooses to target you and your hard earned savings, your money. And this is the governmnet which has told you afte demoentisation, put all yu rmoney in your bank account. It is much worse if you have it in shares because even that is in an electronic datbase which also be frozen overnight, and you will literally be left with nothing.