Bill Gates is a big fan of Aadhaar: https://www.gatesnotes.com/Development/Heroes-in-the-Field-N...

That's because Skype is soon becoming the defacto VoIP for Indian govt communication & guess what's the authentication? Yup Aadhaar!

More over Azure is the cloud storage provider for all govt data moving forward.

So not only Billgates would support Aadhaar, NSA & every party benefiting out of privacy abuse would.

Bill Gates in past has supported horrible centralized mechanisms like Common Core. People like Bill Gates do not fully understand countries like India and their knowledge solely comes from "Intellectual Yet Idiots"[1].

[1] https://medium.com/incerto/the-intellectual-yet-idiot-13211e...

Easy to be a fan when all the harm falls on other people on the other side of the world.

Also easy to be a critic when the harm falls on other people on the other side of the world. There is a cost to inaction as well.

Hi. I'm an Indian saddled with an Aadhaar account. Am I allowed to be a critic?

Certainly. It's a free country after all. There's already an army of "critics" in Indian Supreme Court who want Aadhar to be thrown into the bin under Article 21.

It won't happen any time soon or even ever. There are already talks of a Universal Basic Income by two major parties. They need this kind of infrastructure to roll out their scheme soon.

In short it will be mostly activist rage on Twitter, and beyond that nothing much actually.

Remember: privacy invasion is always ok when no ones dying. When it gets that far, then anonymous comments online disappear.

It solved some problems. I had a lot of trouble opening my NPS account without Aadhar.

He's a friend of Nandan Nilekani, that's why

> Thanks to the work Nandan is doing the world is moving closer to the day when everyone will have access to an official ID

So II guess this is mission accomplished? /s

Realistically there is no concept of security and much less privacy in India. you could do a filetype:xlsx PAN aadhaar on Google and tons of files with phone numbers, addresses etc will show up. The central voting list of all voting eligible indians with age, address, gender etc is publicly available to anyone who wants at https://electoralsearch.in/ You just have to give the starting initial like A and leave everything else blank.

Despite terrible service and security, I still opened an account few years ago. Why? Because statements from private banks are not a valid address for various purposes. I was hit hard because I needed a new passport, and they changed the rule last minute (barely any notice) that only nationalized banks are acceptable, and even if I made a new account I still needed multiple months of statements.[1]

So despite the fact I would rather not have a nationalized bank account at all, I'm forced to keep one just in cases something else changed in future without any notice. And that's one reason why many other people prefer to open at-least one (first) account there.

[1] https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bengaluru/Private-b... [apologies for this terrible website]

This is untrue. The list of documents that are valid as proof-of-address when applying for a passport [1] include electricity bill, water bill, telephone bill, gas connection, election ID, rent agreement among many others. If you're really keen on using your bank passbook for some reason, you'll be happy to know that ICICI and HDFC (the largest private banks) are also accepted [2].

I have an SBI bank account but I've never had to use it for anything in the past half a decade. So I would dispute your claim that it's indispensable.

[1] - https://portal2.passportindia.gov.in/AppOnlineProject/popupo...

[2] - https://portal2.passportindia.gov.in/AppOnlineProject/pdf/Ci...

I was like 20/21 then, without any kind of bills as they were all under parents name. I missed on elections, so didn't have election ID. I had an ICICI account though for years, and it was for a fact rejected back in 2014, and that is exactly why I opened SBI. Maybe they changed the rule now. And that is exactly the reason why I or some of my friends had an nationalized bank account back then. My complain here is that govt keeps changing rules, and SBI is kind of safe choice even though I don't use it for anything.

You could get address proof from local municipality or BDO (if rural area).

And you could get India Post's address proof. Very little known feature but excellent. I have used it once in a city where I was there just for 5 months.

I work with US FIs and security isn't great there either(some don't even have a legit HTTPS cert). Even private Indian banks don't have secured sites, you could still get your details leaked there as well. As for Aadhar, it's no longer necessary for opening an account.

Citibank sends me Credit Card fraud alerts and when I click on those links I end up on links that are not from citibank domain but some third party service. I am then expected to enter my bank login on that site. I always thought this was fishing until the bank support confirmed to me that it is legit.

Many private banks have strange ways of conducting business. I've been receiving calls from ICICI Bank (through private numbers) to verify my Credit Card. The procedure eventually ends with the operator asking me to enter my CVV through IVRS. Now how am I supposed to know if the IVRS(or even the operator) is legit? On one hand we are not supposed to share our details with anyone and the on the other hand the bank itself asks for these details through shady numbers. It's sad that banks don't do anything properly without RBI guidelines.

>unfortunately private banks are out of reach for majority of the population.

Do they have pretty restrictive minimum deposit amounts or something?

Lot of private banks require a monthly minimum balance of INR 10k.

Nationalised banks have zero minimum balance accounts.

SBI has a 5K minimum for most accounts.

banks use PAN number. They didn't ask for aadhaar number.

Btw, I got my PAN number in late 1999, I think.

> They didn't ask for aadhaar number.

???

The Indian banks, especially public banks, have been hounding everyone with an account for their Aadhaar number for the past 3+ years. It only stopped when the 5 judge bench of the SC ruled last year that Indians have a Right to Privacy and Aadhaar cannot be demanded for everything.