The government of India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi criticised the assertions made by the international credit rating agency Moody's that called into question the security and privacy of Aadhaar, the country's successful biometric identification programme that the Unique Identification Authority of India issues to each and every Indian citizen. Aadhaar is a 12-digit personal identification number.
According to Moody's, Aadhaar regularly results in service denials, especially for manual labourers in hot, muggy areas.
The Indian government claimed that despite Aadhaar being one of the most respected digital ID systems in the world, the investor service had made broad accusations against it without any supporting data.
"More than a billion Indians have demonstrated their trust in Aadhaar by using it to authenticate themselves more than 100 billion times over the past ten years. It would indicate that the users do not comprehend what is in their own interests to reject such an unparalleled vote of confidence in an identity system, the government stated in a statement.
What was said by Moody's?
The security and privacy qualities in Aadhaar have been questioned by the Credits rating agency, which has their headquarters in New York.
It connected Aadhaar to the dangers of centralised systems that regulate user identity credentials and access to online resources.
"The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) oversees Aadhaar, with the goal of integrating underrepresented groups and enhancing access to welfare services... The method frequently leads to service denials, and biometric technologies' dependability is in doubt, particularly for manual labourers in hot, humid climes, Moody's underlined.
Government of Modi's answer
The report received harsh criticism from the government for not using any primary or secondary sources to back up its assertions and for just citing the UIDAI website.
"The investor service made no effort to gather information about the facts surrounding the concerns highlighted with reference to UIDAI. The UIDAI is the subject of the report's lone reference, which refers to its website, according to the government's statement.
The statement reaffirmed that there had been no security breaches in the Aadhaar database, citing responses to legislative inquiry.
The government also made it clear that employees didn't need biometric authentication in order to link their Aadhaar numbers to the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) database or collect benefits from the programme.
MGNREGA is a social welfare programme in India that was introduced by the former prime minister Dr. Manmohan Singh in 2005 and intends to ensure the 'right to work' for rural Indian people, with a concentration on the mandatory employment of unskilled labour.
The World Bank's G20 Global Partnership for Financial Inclusion (GPFI) document, which was presented at the G20 Summit in New Delhi earlier this month, highlighted the transformative effects of India's Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) over the previous ten years.
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