Thread by @iam_anandv

As we eagerly await the SC judgement on #Aadhaar, a short thread about the "Crisis management cell" in @UIDAI and how it operates.

1. It knows that the systems that are required to make Aadhaar work have failed and are continuously failing.
2. Everyday the data stares at it.

3. It can't however even attempt to fix these failings because of the implications. For instance, why is the enrollment software still not fixed? Because fixing means pausing enrollments and that is catastrophic admission of defeat.
4. Same with biometric quality captures.

5. Same with missing documents, Same with Biometric mixups, Same with seeding screw-ups aka UP PDS Scam, Gujarat PDS Biometric scam.
6. The starvation deaths, the Airtel Payment bank scam, the Parallel Database scam and so on. The list is endless.

7. Instead, it operates on "keeping a lid" on things. Somehow, anyhow, the cell wants to put #Aadhaar over the finish line, where SC says, it is constitutional so that it can then focus on the failing/failed systems.
8. Till then the following instruments are used.

8.1 Deny everything.
8.2 Media Plants w/o bylines.
8.3 Friendly editorials by Friendly publications.
8.4 FIRs
8.5 Downright propaganda via @WorldBankIndia on Savings and other stuff.
8.6 New Half baked ideas aka Face Recognition, Virtual IDs.

8.7 Deflections such as Data Protection Act
8.8 When all else fails, there is always the charming @NandanNilekani.

9. Events, however have far exceeded the capability of the crisis management cell's capability to contain the outbreak and they know it.

10. Being a nationalist and a hawk on Nat. Sec. , I can't help but be concerned, how the incompetent crisis cell, has deliberately ignored, National Security issues because of the failing/failed systems. I have seen Jihadis and ISI spies get Aadhaar with fake names in 5 seconds

11. And I have brought this up to the notice of the agencies involved. Even then these systems are not fixed because of the perverse way in which UIDAI denies everything. The crisis management cell's DNA has pervaded UIDAI so thoroughly, that I have no trust in it.

So what does it mean? Quite a bit. So many systems that are necessary for Aadhaar to function have fallen apart and broken down that if SC upholds Aadhaar, demonetization would be like a Picnic.

Re-Aadhaarization of the entire nation *again* is the only way to save it.

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