The Central Government of India issues a 12-digit unique identification number to every citizen of the country since January 2009. This number is obtained on the basis of demographic data and biometrics and is being used as a single identification document by the citizens of the country.
Aadhaar is the world’s largest UID system holding a record of more than 1.19 billion Indian residents. It was introduced back in the day with the aim of eliminating any duplication in the entries for the beneficiary database for the Public Distribution System in the country. And 9 years later today, it has become, more or less, a mandatory document for an Indian citizen to have.
For the Indian citizen, the Aadhaar card is a beneficial document for it has multiple benefits. Fundamentally, it is used as an identity card that does not have one specific purpose behind it (unlike say the voter ID) and can therefore be used for multiple purposes. For instance, it can be used as a proof of address, proof of age etc. It allows the holders to conveniently avail the government subsidies they are eligible for. It also assists the citizens in government processes such as the opening bank accounts, acquiring passports, for LPG subsidy etc.
And yet not everybody is satisfied with the way the Aadhaar system is working. There is tremendous scepticism and debate on how safe and secure the Aadhaar database really is. In August 2017, an IIT graduate was arrested for accessing the database without authorisation. This was accompanied by multiple instances of people’s Aadhaar details being revealed by government websites. Moreover, in 2017 several reports of the biometric data in the Aadhaar database being misused to carry out unauthorised transactions saw the light of the day. These instances prove that concerns relating to the feasibility, lack of legislation, security, and privacy of the Aadhaar database have been present for a long time.
Where is the problem?
After the recent judgement delivered by the Indian Supreme Court, which ruled that the Right to Privacy was a fundamental entitlement of every citizen, issues relating to the privacy of information stored in the Aadhaar database began to spark heated conversations.
The Aadhaar initiative has been a phenomenal step both in its conception and execution. To keep a database with records of over 1 billion Indians running makes Aadhaar an initiative that was rather ahead of its game. We have already spoken about the major benefits it brings with itself. But a main concern remains in the centralisation of the data. All the data that is collected by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) before issuing the Aadhaar to a citizen (the basic demographic information, ten fingerprints, two iris scans) is stored in a centralised database.
Even though the government claims that the UIDAI central server database is guarded by super-tight security, no one can afford to be oblivious to the fact that any authority with malevolent intentions or hackers will have access to all the personal data and location of every single citizen and will therefore have the freedom to inflict extreme surveillance and targeted damage.
Blockchaining the Aadhaar — a solution
Implementing a distributed and decentralised technology as the blockchain into the Aadhaar would help the UIDAI to comply with the privacy and data protection stipulations that have been outlined in the Right to Privacy judgement. If Aadhaar was to be built on a blockchain platform, the database would become immensely difficult to hack. With the element of permission that is essential to gain access to the information stored on the blockchain, the blockchain-based Aadhaar database could potentially succeed in dispelling the surveillance fear.
And of course, the network would be able to make the most of the other blockchain benefits using the smart contracts. (more on this in the coming blog posts)
While we focus on the Aadhaar database here, it is worth noting that India has a plethora of data depositories each with its own data structure. A large part of these depositories are yet to go digital. These differences make it almost impossible for two departments to successfully communicate with each other and the lack of a single source of truth that can confirm the data validity makes it vulnerable to manipulation.
In such a scenario, a single shared ledger that can cross trust boundaries while being secure and immutable can not only solve the communication problem but also cater to the validation, security, and hacking issues.
Where does Eleven01 come in?
Building something as massive as the Aadhaar database again from the ground-up is not something that the government can afford to do. To implement a blockchain-based Aadhaar, or any other government initiative, which can aid the government in eliminating fraud and corruption and improving governance would require a protocol that removes any kind of subjectivity from the equation.
Eleven01, with its novel India-centric blockchain protocol, can potentially assist the government here. The dynamic use-case agnostic and typology-agnostic protocol developed by the Eleven01 Foundation may be able to help the government to execute a country-wide blockchain ledger where all the data relating to a specific citizen will be stored.
We are developing an improvised way to integrate oracles into the protocol which will make possible retrieving the data from an external server (in this case, the existing centralised Aadhaar server) and transmit it to the blockchain. This would solve the problem of having to work on the database from scratch.
Eleven01 also brings forward the concept of GovChain01 which will be this common ledger wherein with the origin of a new person, a new entry will be created on the chain. Other information like educational profiles, social and employment data etc. can be built into the ledger. A person’s complete profile will be available on the chain, or through an off-chain mechanism via a pointer. At any given time those with access to that data can view the information through Eleven01’s inherent privacy feature.
This same infrastructure can be used by government organisations and/or departments to store all their interactions with other departments. For instance, by having their own individual chains on the blockchain, different RTAs can share seamless data with each other or the education sector can have its own chain wherein the educational information of individuals are stored on the blockchain eliminating the unnecessary use of paper and long waiting time in queues.
On Wednesday, The Supreme Court of India passed the verdict that it is not mandatory to link the Aadhaar with bank accounts, telecom service providers, educational institutions etc. but is an absolute must for PAN cards, filing income tax returns, and availing the services provided by the government of India. The SC asked the Government to bring in data protection laws in sight of this decision.
The blockchain integration with Aadhaar could help achieve this and also spring up new and interesting business models, which will create sustainable avenues to support such large initiatives on an ongoing basis and creating efficiency and transparency benefits for all the stakeholders in the country.
