Aadhaar Architect Touts System at Davos

“The comments come after an extensive string of controversies concerning the Aadhaar program.”

One of the architects of Aadhaar was putting his strongest spin on the biometric national ID program at the World Economic Forum in Davos this week.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting, the Infosys Chairman, Nandan Nilekani, insisted that Aadhaar is not a privacy-encroaching “data gathering system,” but rather “the world’s largest government welfare programme.”

The comments come after an extensive string of controversies concerning the Aadhaar program. Privacy advocates have challenged the scope of Aadhaar and had some measure of success in restricting it through a recent Supreme Court ruling; and a number of issues have cropped up pertaining to the security and integrity of the system, alongside serious problems stemming from general mismanagement.

None of this stopped Nilekani from lauding Aadhaar as “the world’s largest government welfare programme” at the World Economic Forum, where government and business elites convene to broach big ideas about how to tackle the world’s problems.

“There were lots of unknowns when we began, but we have resolved all the problems now,” Nilekani proclaimed.

Source: India Today