September 26, 2023: The electronics and information technology ministry on September 25 said over a billion Indians trust Aadhaar while trashing a recent report by Moody’s Investors Service that questions the efficacy of India’s digital identification system. In a note issued late on Monday, the ministry tore into the report saying it has no factual backing.
“A certain investor service has, without citing any evidence or basis, made sweeping assertions against Aadhaar, the most trusted digital ID in the world. Over the last decade, over a billion Indians have expressed their trust in Aadhaar by using it to authenticate themselves over 100 billion times. To ignore such an unprecedented vote of confidence in an identity system is to imply that the users do not understand what is in their own interest,” the ministry said in the note titled Aadhaar, the most trusted digital ID in the world — Moody’s Investors Service opinions baseless.
While stating that the report does not cite either primary or secondary data or research in support of the opinions presented in it, the ministry said that Moody’s did not make any attempt to ascertain facts. It also highlighted the fact the report incorrectly cites the number of Aadhaars issued as 1.2 billion even though the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) website ─ “sole reference cited in the report” ─ prominently gives the updated numbers.
“The report avers that use of biometric technologies results in service denials for manual laborers in India’s hot, humid climate, an obvious reference to India’s Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS). However, it is evident that the authors of the report are unaware that the seeding of Aadhaar in the MGNREGS database has been done without requiring the worker to authenticate using their biometrics, and that even payment to workers under the scheme is made by directly crediting money in their account and does not require the worker to authenticate using their biometrics,” the ministry said.
The report ignored that biometric submission was also possible through contactless means like face authentication and iris authentication. In addition, the option of mobile OTP is also available in many use cases, it added.
Rebuffing Moody’s concerns on security and privacy vulnerabilities in the centralised Aadhaar system, the ministry said that the factual position in this regard was repeatedly disclosed in Parliament.
“Parliament has been categorically informed that till date, no breach has been reported from Aadhaar database. Further, Parliament has laid down robust privacy protections in the law governing the Aadhaar system and these are observed through robust technological and organisational arrangements. State-of-the-art security solutions are in place, along with a federated database and encryption of data both at rest and in motion,” it said.
The ministry said that while the vote of confidence of a billion-plus Indians is sufficient testimony to the value offered by Aadhaar, several international agencies, including the IMF and World Bank, have lauded the role of Aadhaar. Several nations have also been engaged with the UIDAI to understand how they may deploy similar digital ID systems.
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