Reportage on a planet without equitable or sustainable development.
uidai: bouquets, brickbats and bugbears
while i was out bobbing in the bottle green waters of lakshadweep’s lagoons — see previous post — this story on the uidai came out.
Barely six months ago, UIDAI was under siege-not just from civil society activists, but also from other parts of the government. The home ministry, one of whose arms was undertaking a similar exercise of identifying Indians, said UIDAI was setting the identity-bar low, which could pose a national-security problem.
A clutch of ministries, all potential users of its solutions, said UIDAI’s blueprint for cash transfers was not feasible.
Elsewhere, UIDAI’s parent, the Planning Commission, was rejecting its Rs 15,000 crore funding proposal and questioning its processes. And a Parliamentary panel examining a legislation that gave the UIDAI legitimacy was dismissing the project as one “conceptualised with no clarity of purpose”.
The question is: after Budget 2012, which increased UIDAI’s allocation by 47% to Rs 1,758 crore and handed it greater responsibility, is all that opposition a thing of the past now? The answer is yes and no.
I am an Indian journalist with interests in energy, environment, climate and India’s ongoing slide into right-wing authoritarianism. My book, Despite the State, an examination of pervasive state failure and democratic decay in India, was published by Westland Publications, India, in January 2021. My work has won the Bala Kailasam Memorial Award; the Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Award; and five Shriram Awards for Excellence in Financial Journalism. Write to me at despitethestate@protonmail.com.
“Westland closure: Titles that are selling fast and a few personal recommendations,” by Chetana Divya Vasudev, Moneycontrol. (Because this happened too. In February, a year after DtS was released, Amazon decided to shutter Westland, which published the book. The announcement saw folks rushing to buy copies of Westland books before stocks run out.)
Fractured/Earth 
Leave a Reply