Aadhaar is ‘baseless’ in Moody’s assessment, lacking support and evidence: Govt

The Central government on Monday reacted angrily to Moody’s Investors Service’s assessment of Aadhaar’s viability, claiming that the analysis was made “without citing any evidence or basis” and was thus unfounded.

According to a press release from the Ministry of Electronics & IT, over a billion Indians trust Aadhaar, which is the core Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) of the country.

“A particular investing service has made broad accusations against Aadhaar, the most trusted digital ID in the world, without providing any supporting data or rationale. Over the last ten years, more than a billion Indians have shown their belief in Aadhaar by using it more than 100 billion times to verify themselves. The Ministry of Electronics & IT said in the press release that to reject such an extraordinary vote of confidence in an identification system is to suggest that the users do not comprehend what is in their own interest.

The paper in issue does not mention any primary, secondary, or independent research to back up the conclusions it makes. The investment service made no effort to gather information on the problems the Authority noted. The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) is the subject of the report’s lone citation, which directs readers to that organization’s website. The website prominently displays the revised data, however the report inaccurately lists the number of Aadhaars granted as 1.2 billion,” it said.

“The paper claims that the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) in India, with its hot and humid environment, is negatively impacted by the deployment of biometric technology. But it is clear that the report’s authors are ignorant of the fact that Aadhaar was seeded into the MGNREGS database without the employee being required to authenticate using their biometrics, and that even payment to employees under the scheme is made by directly crediting cash to their accounts without the employee being required to authenticate using their biometrics. The article overlooks the fact that contactless methods like face and iris verification allow for biometric input as well. In many usage circumstances, the option of a mobile OTP is also accessible, it was said further.

The paper also asserts that a centralised Aadhaar system has security and privacy flaws, according to the government.

The factual situation in this respect has been frequently given in answer to questioning from the Parliament, and Parliament has been explicitly assured that up to this point, no breach has been detected from the Aadhaar database. Furthermore, Parliament established strict privacy safeguards in the statute controlling the Aadhaar system, and they are upheld by strict organizational and technical setups. Modern security measures are in place, including a federated database, encryption of data in motion, and state-of-the-art security systems. According to the ministry, the systems have received certification in accordance with international security and privacy standards (ISO 27001:2013 for information security management systems and ISO 27701:2019 for privacy information management systems).

“Although the support of over a billion Indians speaks volumes about the value that Aadhaar offers, it is important to note that a number of foreign organizations, like the IMF and World Bank, have praised the role of Aadhaar. The Authority has also been in contact with a number of countries to see how they may implement comparable digital ID systems, it stated.

According to a report published recently by the World Bank and the G20 Global Partnership for Financial Inclusion (GPFI), “the implementation of DPIs such as Aadhaar (a foundational digital ID system), along with the Jan Dhan bank accounts, and mobile phones, is considered to have played a critical role in moving ownership of transaction accounts from approximately one-fourth of adults in 2008 to over eighty percent now—a journey that is estimated to have taken up to t

“Aadhaar is the core component of India’s Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI). India’s plan to create and maintain a Global Digital Public Infrastructure Repository (GDPIR), a virtual repository of DPI, which is voluntarily shared by G20 members and beyond, was also welcomed in the recent G20 New Delhi Declaration. The G20 Framework for Systems of Digital Public Infrastructure is a voluntary and suggested framework for the development, deployment, and governance of Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI).