Aadhar card implementation criticized: Hotmail Co-founder S Bhatia said in a podcast that spending 1.3 billion dollars on Aadhar card was a waste. As it took all the biometrics of every citizen but dint manage to use it anywhere till date. It became a debatable topic about efficiency , necessity and security of largest biometric system.
His statement in the tech industry as influential figure and comments on Aadhar card’s implementation is getting viral. He also added that if the planning and strategy would have efficiently then it could have save funds and would have been completed in 20 million dollars.
With over 1.4 billion enrollments the database of biometrics is largest across the world. But the planning and strategy to gather data took more resources than it was needed.
Was Aadhar card a wasteful investment?
The statement he made sparks the broader level debates about India’s digital priorities. Also questioning the business planning that bureaucrats do. It challenges the efficiency of Higher level Bureaucrats who comes into the system by a very secure medium of great exams but due to less accountability corruption and more resources present lags effective planning skills or they take it for granted.
While Aadhar card can be solution of various government programs, it showed how lack of planning , implementation flaws, limited accessibility and security breaches made it a piled information yet to be used.
Aadhar Card problems
Various concerns faced by experts included:
Privacy Breach: Due to data leaks it is feared to leak all biometric information of 1.4 billion citizens.
Authentication issues: Due to authentication error many rural citizens failed to benefit from government schemes.
High maintenance costs: As security is concerned of this biggest dataset updates and security improvements to funded regularly beyond initial implementation cost.
Launched in 2009 by UIDAI, Aadhar has been the integral part of nation’s biggest project to provide one step solution of every authentication of Indian citizen the initial cost exhausted could be implemented to safeguard its future access and security.