Aadhaar: Digital foresight gave us identity leadership

Fierce critics of the idea are in a rush for digital IDs across the world as the reality of their utility unfolds

- RAHUL MATTHAN

India's digital identity project has had, throughout the life of the Aadhaar project, more than its fair share of criticism. Almost as soon as it was announced, it had to deal with angry opposition from all quarters, raising concerns about the fact that it was going to invade personal privacy and the surveillance that could result if its database were to be misused.

So widespread was the discomfort with Aadhaar that every time I travelled outside the country, I found myself having to explain why we were building it. This was particularly the case in Europe, where, in the data protection circles I inhabit, no one had any qualms expressing their disapproval with what we were attempting. While I could understand how their lived experience during World War II might have made them nervous about any attempt to establish a citizen ID database, what was disappointing was that so much of their concern came from an imperfect understanding of how Aadhaar had been designed.

It has been nearly 15 years since the first Aadhaar number was issued and all the fears that it would lead to mass surveillance have, for the most part, not come to pass. Aadhaar has largely been used to deliver subsidies, provide benefits and ease public access to services. Not only did the technology not 'fail at scale,' as we were warned it might, none of the widespread exclusion we were told would result came to pass. At the time of writing, over 130 billion Aadhaar authentications have taken place, suggesting that, at the very least, the system must have worked 130 billion times.