Policy puzzles about UIDAI

— Is UIDAI worth building, in the sense of comparing the financial costs and the financial benefits? In November 2012, we did a cost benefit analysis, and the answer seems to be Yes.

— How should UIDAI think about the user charges for the infrastructure services that it provides? We were part of the UIDAI thought process on these questions in December 2013.

— The public administration side: What were the ingredients that led up to the successful launch? A good paper is UIDAI’s public policy innovations, by Ram Sewak Sharma, September 2016.  Building on this paper, Praveen Chakravarty has an article Building forts, not empires, 9 September 2016.

— There are grave problems associated with privacy in India. How do we avoid the China model? An early paper on privacy in India is Towards a privacy framework for India in the age of the Internet, by Vrinda Bhandari and Renuka Sane, October 2016. This paper includes one section analysing the Aadhaar Act from the viewpoint of this proposed privacy framework.

— Can the judiciary review the Speaker’s decision on classifying the Aadhaar Bill as a money bill? Pratik Datta, Shefali Malhotra and Shivangi Tyagi have a paper from March 2017, in which they feel the answer is Yes.

— If a country had to build an Aadhaar like system, what kind of law and regulations would be required?  Is the Aadhaar Act and the associated regulations (both of which were issued in 2016) an adequate legal foundation? Vrinda Bhandari and Renuka Sane feel this is not the case.