UPI has catapulted India into the forefront on the global digital payments landscape. Working hand in hand, the AePS payments system is making life easy for rural folks, notes Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday asked fintech firms to focus on risk management at a time when criminals are using AI to mimic voices, clone identities and create lifelike videos to manipulate people.
The order also highlights further disparities, citing examples of Denmark and Sweden restricting mail-in voting to those unable to vote in person and rejecting late-arriving ballots regardless of postmark, while many US states have embraced widespread mail-in voting, with some accepting ballots without postmarks or those arriving well after Election Day.
Nandan Nilekani said plans are on track to issue Aadhaar numbers to 600 million (60 crore) people in three to three-and-half years.
There is no guarantee that if we speak in only Indian languages, all our faults will be washed away and India will shine. Why then do they bully and belittle the English-speaking? asks Shyam G Menon.
Going by the current pace, UIDAI seems unlikely to meet the target of issuing a million Aadhaar numbers a day to cover half the country by 2013.
Aadhaar is falling behind on technology, missing out on confidentiality and has gaps in its data archiving policy and preserving confidentiality in delivery of the cards to people, says a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG). The performance report, 'Functioning Of Unique Identification Authority Of India', tabled in Parliament on the last day of the budget session notes, assigning a unique identity to all resident Indians was supposed to be the key feature of Aadhaar. But "There were instances of issue of Aadhaar with the same biometric data to different residents indicating flaws in the de-duplication process and issue of Aadhaar on faulty biometrics and documents". It says close to half a million such records had to be cancelled by the Unique Identification Authority of India up to 2016.
'It has also saved the government about $ 9 billion in fraud and wastage because by having that unique number you eliminate fakes and duplicates from your beneficiary and employee list,' Nilekani said at an event on the sidelines of the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
Over the past few weeks, an anonymous person, claiming to be a French mobile app developer, has been using his Twitter account to flag security concerns in the Aadhaar system. Recently, the account released a video showing a hack into the Aadhaar application (app). The Unique Identification Authority of India has maintained that Aadhaar remains safe and secure. Mayank Jain spoke to Robert Baptiste, the man behind the Twitter account called 'Elliot Alderson', to understand the way forward for citizens to keep their information safe.
Climate activist Soman Wangchuk announced on Sunday that he will launch a 28-day fast on Independence Day if the government does not invite Ladakh authorities for talks on demands for statehood and constitutional protection for the union territory.
Teams of students and coders demonstrated in 24 hours diverse programmes impacting health and livelihood issues with use of a personal identity number.
As a consequence of prominence given to the brutality during those few days, a very important aspect of that episode got almost glossed over. This was the intervention by a very significant section of people who restored faith in humanity, and conveyed the message that only a small section of Indians, that too politically backed, were consumed by anti-Sikh majoritarianism. The overlooked facet of the events of 1984 was the story of significant sections of the city's populace, public figures and nondescript ones, stepping out hand-in-hand, to first stand with little but bravery in hands, in the way of attackers, and thereafter to provide immediate relief to those who lives were uprooted and who lost family members in the violence, recalls Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
Over 1,300 people signed the open letter within 48 hours, which was submitted to the Prime Minister's Office on Monday.
Ela Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi's grand-daughter and a peace activist on her PBD award
Since the first Aadhaar number was issued in September 2010, more than 1.33 billion Aadhaar cards have been generated till June 2022. With the Aadhaar enrolment of adult Indians nearing 100 per cent, the main objective of the Unique Identity Authority of India (UIDAI), which was to give Unique Identification numbers (UID) to all residents of India, is almost achieved, said a senior government official. "Enrolment will now be much more update-based, because people keep updating their mobile numbers and addresses.
Aadhaar authentication is an online real-time service and only responds with a yes or no.
The government has amended Aadhaar regulations, specifying that supporting documents need to be updated "at least once" by Aadhaar holders on completion of 10 years from enrolment date.
Where do Vijay and his TVK expect to get their votes from? Vijay has a huge fan following among women, but will they automatically become his voters like they had done for MGR's AIADMK, asks N Sathiya Moorthy.
It's just not a date. It's just not about selecting a candidate. It's not about helping some candidate win. It's about expressing emotion, after ten years, that could reach out in India and beyond it, notes Sheela Bhatt.
In a statement issued on Thursday, the Lakshadweep Research Collective said it along with 60 other signatories from the scientific community have written to President Ram Nath Kovind seeking his intervention to withdraw the "incautious draft" Lakshadweep Development Authority Regulation of 2021.
The venture is applying to the Reserve Bank of India for approvals.
There are unprecedented political implications of identification based on 'biological attributes of an individual', such as employed by Aadhaar, warns Gopal Krishna.
Nilekani said that in India which has the total population of over one billion, only 50 million people had passports which was mere five per cent of total population, around 30 million people paid taxes and over 150 million people had driver licence.
The intial round of efforts did not achieve the objectives fully.
Isn't National Intelligence Grid and UIDAI engineered by vested interests, asks Gopal Krishna.
This is likely to put a brake on the fast pace at which Aadhaar cards have been issued so far to more than 400 million people.
Finance ministry asks bank, insurance & market regulators to issue notifications
Telecom equipment from China may face fresh curbs after the Cabinet on Wednesday cleared a proposal to secure telecom infrastructure by designating a "trusted source" for the purchase of equipment by service providers. Briefing reporters after the meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Security headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Law, Telecom and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said a National Security Directive on Telecommunication Sector has been framed keeping in mind the national security.
Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw points out how the adoption of information and communication technologies can provide India with a very effective health care tool.
More people will be literate, on the Internet, linked to the national identification scheme and likely to receive electricity, especially from alternative-energy sources.
Diversified business house Trident Group would become the first corporate to use Aadhaar Payment Bridge (APB) for disbursal of salaries to its employees.
Nilekani has been maintaining silence on reports about his political plans, which has gained more currency after the KPCC reportedly shortlisted his name among the three probable candidates for Bangalore south recently.
The Aadhaar issuing authority, Unique Identification Authority Of India, has no data on those who have been denied benefits for want of the 12-digit biometric identification number, the Supreme Court was informed on Thursday.
'Biometric Aadhaar-based surveillance is not only about violation of privacy, but also about the treasure hunt for unprecedented financial surveillance and economic intelligence in the economic history of mankind,' asks Gopal Krishna.
The government must be the initial driver.
He has a core team of engineers to develop this platform.
Health insurance has almost 23 per cent market share in the general insurance space.
New Irda rules open the way, with 5 entities getting okay to set up as repositories; firms preparing structures for switch
India does not have a stringent privacy or data protection Act.
The BRICS model will need to demonstrate the efficacy of a second alternative governance structure to reform the Bretton Woods legacy.
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