The billion-strong citizen identification system, Aadhaar, has given rise to businesses keen on illegal harnessing of this private data, say the authorities. Outfits are offering services to print the Aadhaar details on plastic cards, something the Union information technology ministry warned against on Monday.
These entities charge anywhere between Rs 50 and Rs 600, and are listed on e-commerce websites, apart from own online presence. Under the Aadhaar law, collecting and storing of the data by private companies without the user’s consent is a crime. Monday’s warning from the ministry to e-commerce marketplaces such as Amazon, Flipkart and eBay to disallow merchants from collecting and printing such details was a result of this. Business Standard could not find any listings of Aadhaar printing services on Flipkart but there was one on Amazon (taken down) and no less than five such listings on eBay. PrintMyAadhaar is one of the more well organised outfits operating in this space. “Get your E-Aadhaar printed on a PVC card for easier handling,” reads their website.
Users are prompted to fill their Aadhaar details on the website, pay Rs 50 and have the card sent to their houses. PrintMyAadhaar even offers discounts for bulk orders. “Collecting such information or unauthorised printing of an Aadhaar card or aiding such persons in any manner may amount to a criminal offence, punishable with imprisonment under the Indian Penal Code and also Chapter VI of The Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act, 2016,” read the statement from the ministry. Currently, Aadhaar stores a person’s name, date of birth, sex and address, apart from their biometric data. While the biometric data isn’t available to these PDF printing shops, the rest of the information is, according to Srikanth Nadhamuni, chief executive officer of Khosla Labs and a former head of technology at the Unique Identification Authority of India. However, collecting this data poses no security risk to the Aadhaar infrastructure, he added.
“Allowing somebody to accumulate large amounts of data from Aadhaar users in general is not a good practice. We should ensure that the Aadhaar details of people remain private and it should only be up to the discretion of the end-user to share this,” said Nadhamuni. Some security experts say Aadhaar does pose a security risk, as it makes available an individual's details in the public domain. Several institutions are treating Aadhaar just like any other proof of identity.
“Transactions that should have been conducted using biometric authentication are being conducted just by presentation of paper documents. What is happening most commonly is that people are giving a printout or photocopy of their Aadhaar acknowledgement as their proof of identity to get a SIM card. The risk here is that somebody can get a mobile number against your name,” said Sunil Abraham, executive director of the non-profit Centre for Internet and Society.= He says the other technical issue with Aadhaar is the lack of a smart card that stores a person’s information, as in a digital signature. Due to the lack of this, people don’t know what information to keep private and what to make public. Conventional security techniques would have had a person keeping their PIN private (as with a bank account). If this personal PIN would have been saved on a smart card, which users wouldn’t have had much to worry about.
“In the case of Aadhaar, the authentication factor and the identification factor are in the public domain, because many people might have your UID number and people release their biometric data everywhere. Due to this broken technological solution, we are now through policy putting band-aids, saying people should not disclose their UID number unnecessarily,” added Abraham. Photograph: Reuters Alnoor Peermohamed in Bengaluru.
Demand will boom in the US and China, but exporters say it will be difficult for India to tap these markets. Subhayan Chakraborty reports. Global trade growth is expected to rebound in 2017, but India may not be able to take advantage of this in the US and China - major markets where consumer and industrial demand is set to drive trade forward. Recently, the World Trade Organisation raised the estimate for growth in world merchandise trade volume for 2017 to 3.6 per cent from 2.4 per cent it had projected earlier. The revision is because of positive economic trends in North America and China that are leading to a resurgence of industrial and consumer demand. The US is the largest destination for Indian exports, earning $42 billion in 2016-17. The share of goods heading to the US has increased over the past five years to 15.3 per cent in 2016-17.
However, major export categories such as textiles and gems and jewellery have stagnated in the US market. India's textile exports to the US, across categories such as apparel, made-ups and accessories, have suffered over the last few years due to cheaper alternatives from Bangladesh, Vietnam and the Philippines.
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'Our market share has stagnated in the low single digits and I do not see a change anytime soon, either in the US or in Europe,' said S K Jain, chairman of the Apparel Export Promotion Council. India's exports of gems and jewellery, especially rough or processed diamonds, were $9.7 billion, up 12 per cent in the last year.
But experts said the trend might be reversed next year. The US is a major market for Indian manufacturers of generic drugs, almost half of which, by volume, reach US shores. 'In the US, almost 80 per cent of generics are sourced from India. However, the market share has stagnated while growth in value terms has slowed down,' said P V Appaji, former executive director at Pharmexil. This was mainly due to price erosion, he added. On the other hand, India is ill equipped to expand exports to China, its largest trading partner.
Only 3.68 per cent of India's exports find their way to China. Facing a $51 billion trade deficit with China, India is trying to upgrade its basket of exports to the country. Cotton, iron ore and copper, the mainstay of Indian exports to China, have come under increasing scrutiny as both the government as well as exporters try to shift towards value-added exports in an attempt to cap the growing trade deficit. Then commerce and industry minister Nirmala Sitharaman had said export focus should shift away from raw materials. The commerce ministry has identified industries such as hardware, electronics, pharmaceuticals, textiles and automobile components to realign and boost exports.
With a burgeoning middle class and rising wages, China is expected to relinquish its dominance over labour intensive, low-end manufacturing in the near future. This is an opportunity the Indian industry is hoping to exploit. Changing consumption patterns have also shaped greater demand for consumer goods in China, where overall demand in the first half of 2017 was driven by growth in industry (up 6.4 per cent) and services (up 7.7 per cent). 'We are trying to harness our strength in labour intensive sectors where India enjoys significant advantage over other developing nations,' a commerce ministry official said. The top five export categories to China are all input products. These are used by China to manufacture goods that it ships abroad, often back to India.
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These, along with other raw materials like iron and iron ore, constituted more than 70 per cent of India's exports to China, said Ajay Sahai, director general, Federation of Indian Exports Organisations. These export categories were subject to volatile global commodity prices and should be swapped for products higher in the value chain, a trade expert based in Delhi said. Photograph: Kim Hong-Ji/Reuters Subhayan Chakraborty in New Delhi.