Opinion: Government's CoWin Claims Can Work Only In WhatsApp University

Earlier this week, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and two of his ministers were in full damage control mode. The personal information of lakhs of Indians registered on the Union Government's CoWIN portal was leaked. Details of Aadhaar, passport number, PAN and more were all freely accessible through a Telegram bot. Anyone could easily access details through a basic phone number search.

Despite such a large-scale breach of data registered with a government platform, the Union Government did what it does best - deny and then underplay the violation. Even as the data continued to be widely accessible, the government said, "The CoWIN portal of the Health Ministry is completely safe with adequate safeguards for data privacy. Furthermore, security measures are in place on the CoWIN portal." The statement added that the data being circulated was stolen in the past and was not sourced in this week's breach. An excuse that would only hold good in a class taught at WhatsApp University!

This is not the first data breach on CoWIN. Dismissing the previous attempt made in January, National Health Authority CEO RS Sharma had said, "CoWIN has state-of-the-art security infrastructure and has never faced a security breach. The data of our citizens on CoWIN is absolutely safe and secure." Five months later, ministers have dismissed this colossal breach as "mischievous" reporting. No lessons learned.

One can't help but observe the BJP's nonchalance towards this massive data breach. After all, this breach of data on servers of government institutions is not the first. In December 2022, five servers of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) were attacked and 1.3 terabytes of data was encrypted. In a hospital where lakhs of citizens come to access affordable healthcare, services were suspended for a week and sensitive data of 40 lakh patients was lost. There is more.