Government rebuffs Moody’s Aadhaar views; says a billion Indians trust it

Ministry rebuffs Moody's report on Aadhaar, citing its trustworthiness, security and privacy protections. Over a billion Indians have expressed their trust in Aadhaar by using it 100 billion times. International agencies, nations have lauded Aadhaar and its role in enhancing financial inclusion.

The Electronics and IT Ministry late on September 25 took on a report from Moody’s Investors Service that raised questions about the efficacy of Aadhaar and asserted that there have been no breaches reported from the unique ID system’s database till date to dismiss concerns about security and privacy in a centralised system.

In a note titled “Aadhaar, the most trusted digital ID in the world — Moody’s Investors Service opinions baseless” , the ministry said a number of international agencies, including the IMF and World Bank, have lauded Aadhaar and several nations have also engaged with the Unique Identification Authority Please of India (UIDAI) to understand how they may deploy similar digital ID systems. Moreover, it emphasised that over a billion Indians have also expressed their trust in Aadhaar by using it to authenticate themselves “over 100 billion times”.

In a report last Saturday, the global rating agency had said that Aadhaar’s biometric authentication systems often results in “service denials” for users and are unreliable in hot and humid conditions. The agency had also red-flagged security and privacy risks to users of such centralised systems where a single entity such as a government electoral roll “controls and manages a user’s identifying credentials and their access to online resources”.

“A certain investor service has, without citing any evidence or basis, made sweeping assertions against Aadhaar, the most trusted digital ID in the world,” the ministry’s riposte noted. “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,” it averred.

“The report in question does not cite either primary or secondary data or research in support of the opinions presented in it. The investor service did not make any attempt to ascertain facts regarding the issues raised by it from the Authority,” the ministry pointed out, before stressing that Aadhaar is the foundational Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) of the India stack.

The recent G20 New Delhi Declaration has welcomed India’s plan to build and maintain a Global Digital Public Infrastructure Repository (GDPIR), a virtual DPI repository, voluntarily shared by G20 members and beyond, it added.

“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),” the ministry noted. “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,” it argued.