There are numerous countries in the world who have a very low rate of corruption without forcing the citizens to enroll in a scheme like this.
If you think digitizing would reduce corruption you cannot be more mistaken. Its only a matter of time before they figure out other ways. It will reduce only when the citizens respect/fear law and order.
This scheme has a lot of power more than we can comprehend and I don't want it under corrupt hands. As you said, from a person who is so insecure about his own educational qualification that he has lied with a fake degree and does not allow a fair probe into it.
Just curious, can you name them and provide sources.
Compare with the data in this article: https://scroll.in/article/851282/are-countries-with-a-poor-d...
The graphs show the data excellently.
A few years ago, I spent three months interviewing and photographing many of the nomadic and scheduled tribes of Gujarat, which made for a good example of disenfranchised people in India generally: lack of voter id or ration cards, which made it hard or impossible to receive assistance, work, medical care, and attention in general from the authorities.
Huge efforts by organizations such as VSSM and Janpath to help tribal people obtain their correct papers literally changed their lives. It gave them political influence as a large group of voters; it gave them access to applying for land to make permanent settlements.
One group of people that were very upset with these efforts must be apoplectic with rage over Aadhaar: greedy and corrupt representatives in panchayats. No longer would they be the sole conduit for money, food, work and representation.
My €0.02
Indians are very very good at thinking out of the box, and specialize in working against rules. Its our national past time to be honest.
In many cases, people will let you take the money and then will just pressure you for it. Aadhar does not solve that.
Cheaters (which is what corruption is) basically adapt to rules. Your assumption is that things will remain the same.
They will not.
Aadhar achieves nothing, because the core issue we have is enforcement of the law at both the center and the periphery.
This means autonomy of the police force, expansion of the judiciary.
You will not find one party advocating for this. Instead the parties know that Indians love the idea and concept of magic bullets, and they sell that as the product.
This seems like a system that will just hit those with lesser means. I'm not sure I see that as equality or something that would stop corruption.
The issue with bribery is always a differential of power = rent seeking behavior.
This makes aadhar the enabler of corruption, not the remover of it, since now the State is so deeply intertwined in your life that it is inextricable.
Aadhar will long term make things more corrupt. The current levels of corruption will look childish - it returns us to pre 1980 levels of corruption
The people responsible for it can, though.
You can still bribe a judge ... politician, government official just fine off the grid.
Sure, it can work but it does not scale. If clerks spend all day manually answering RTI queries who will do the work?
When you're seeing elevated request volume, it's likely that there's something substantial worth requesting, which is exactly the point of this form of legislation.
Or you're seeing persons trying to frustrate the system with senseless requests. This happens with businesses all the time when they provide courtesy services (sprint's tty service for example was a regular tool for prank calls, USPS and their free boxes resulted in people being flooded with box orders)
I'm 100% for transparency, but it's not a magic bullet. There is a real and non trivial cost for such transparency and it's the price we have to pay for diligence. often, societies seem unwilling to pay and instead demand that an organization do everything they used to and more with no additional resources, and transparency, especially for organizatikns without the resources to have digitized things,means a lot of human input and work.
I know for a fact that in the Indian Railways, people spend weeks digging up information required to answer RTI queries.
Instead of going by feelings ask government employees (preferably someone with a high level view of things) about it.
I am not saying RTI is useless. However, without a computerized infrastructure for most, if not all, protocols and processes in the government, it is just a game of cat and mouse.
The usual solution to a problem like that is to publish the frequently requested types of information in bulk, before they need to be requested, since they are public records by definition. It costs a bit more than doing nothing, but not nearly as much as corruption does.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/09/business/india-bans-large...
2. Till next few days, most retailers were doing backdated bills for large ticket items.
3. In India lot of people didn't had bank a/c. To allow them to convert old currency, people were allowed to convert cash upto 4k INR, by just showing any ID. Bank managers used stash of IDs they had collected over years, to convert huge amount of cash to new notes.
Apart from this, local mafia used millions of poor to get the cash converted. These are common and publicly known methods.
They don't need to put people in bars these days, they need to make life hell for the dissenters so they either leave the nation or be quiet.
The big brother in 1984 did exactly this but thr govts these days are going a step ahead.
You won't believe how many brainwashed "bhakts" tell me how great Modiji is, but they can't justify their claim. It is because of these things that the givt gets away.
Plus the SC has refused to acknowledge govt's stance that adhar reduces corruption. A new judge transfer is coming soon, now that the verdict is going to be against the dictator!
How about actually catching bringing back people who have fled the country like Nirav Modi and Mallya or how about making sure a celebrity like Salman Khan goes to jail.
The govt intelligently stifled free speech by making good on the death of a film star. Tada! Nobody reports on Nirav Modi anymore
Also, the judge who found Salamn as guilty was transferred a day after he pronounced the statement and the other judge, presumably close to BJP gave Salman bail. 80other judgea are transferred
But does the media report on it? No
You forget - corruption or cheating is an evolving system. There is no set of static rules which govern the world. Cheaters as a result always adapt and find an edge.
Finally - The massively hurtful demonitzation exercise failed to uncover large amounts of hidden cash.
While everyone who worked with money knew this, the lay people still believe in magic bullets and tech optimism to solve what are inherently human issues.
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https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/aadhaar-card-mandatory...
India has a lot of problems but most of them stem from two causes:
1. Corruption 2. Inequality
In positions of power, corruption is universal. I have yet to meet a person in Bangalore who has been able to purchase property without paying a bribe. Too many of our government 'servants' are sociopaths. It's a generally accepted fact (with no citation needed) that a non-insignificant portion of government spending on social programs and infrastructure is going un-tracked into private pockets.
Secondly, inequality. A lot of people get away with things in politics. Robert Vadra gets through security checks though he's not a diplomat, Modiji (allegedly) gets degrees without going to college and Jayalalitha from my own state had people falling not only at her feet but touching the tires of her car.
Aadhaar is the 'leveler' that shines light on the financial activities of all these people.
1. Aadhaar is linked to biometrics = aadhaar is linked to a real person
2. You can't live / work in India without Aadhaar = Government employees and people with influence are not exempt.
3. You can't handle money or avail social benefits from the government in India without linking Aadhaar to it = Illegal money can be tracked.
This could solve a lot of problems.
Of-course there are problems with this apart from the well publicized privacy issues. You can apparently purchase fake Aadhaar cards for a few hundred rupees. It's been reported that more than one person has bought an Aadhaar card for a pet and if it's that simple to beat the system then all the good intentions fall flat.