throwaway423447

> leapfrogged the world.

And why is that ? Because the powers that be decided to push it down the throats of Indians.

A particular section (to which I belong) is quite afraid with the direction India is taking. Reddit /r/india has many discussions along lines that I'll summarize.

- Aadhar was forced into being without legislation or check/balances.

- The guy heading it is Nilekani, a not so ethical dude, who once ran Infy, and has quite a lot of influence with the right people, both in the US and India.[1]

- Previous admin. was likely planning on making it mandatory "citizen id", but was pushed back by the courts.

- Current admin. has magically turned back on their erstwhile opposition due to "a presentation" and have finally made it mandatory, for everything from passports, SIM cards, and tax refunds.

- Aadhar has no legislative curtailment. There is nothing stopping them from forcing the collection of my DNA, and then selling those to some insurance company in a few years.

- There is also nothing stopping the vogons in the Indian state (and the corporatocracy it serves) from getting hold of all my data... because you know "national security". Accountability is the last thing you'd expect of the Indian state; transparency probably being penultimate.

- This means that anyone who declines to be part of the Animal farm, can neither leave the country nor work there. Jaitley really screwed us over. Naturally this is dressed up as a "us- vs-them" "nationalistic" "black-money hunting" "anti-western/left" move, and this is what comments on Indian newssites reflect. Ironic that the system will be used to clamp down even harder on the people who belong to a English colony run by Brown sahibs, which has made it its goal to destroy every culture, language and religion that are its heritage.

- Next stop is likely the complete destruction of cash (and thus opposition), by tying it all back to Aadhar (which the parent is cheering for). Very very scary future.. will be moving out before the prison cell closes shut.

[1] India's IT Industry does not serve India; now that the outsourcing play is coming to a halt, many are looking to diversify. One way out is to secure massive contracts from the state.

It should be noted that this was achieved by giving 6 months of 4G data (1GB/day at > 6Mbps) + free telephony, for a mere $6.

Things should normalize once the freebies stop; Jio however will have a massive collection of Indians Biometric identities (and much else skimmed off of "Big Brother" Aadhar) and their browsing habits, which we currently have no idea how they'll exploit. Worse, we have no regulation over Aadhar's data-sharing, nor over the privacy of citizens.

India's state telephony company now injects ads into non-HTTPS sites, and tracks users using the services of a private company. Considering Ambani's complete lack of basic ethics, one can be sure that they'll be much more clever with it than the generic dolts at BSNL.

... and two minutes later the name of the brave person will be manure. Not because one's egregiously wrong, not because of lack of ethics, but because it'll be affecting many powerful people and their emissaries in the academia. Common story in the GMO industry. Oh, and it doesn't hurt to be prepared for all the ad hominem hit pieces: "Left loony" "commie" "anti-science" ...

The conquering grounds for the corporatocracy is also the developing world, a place which naively swallows whatever any of the reigning superpowers throw at it (hint: India is not/never will be a superpower). Very sad this.