Comment by manishsharan | Hacker News Reader

Comment by manishsharan | Hacker News Reader

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Counterpoint : My parents in India love the "digitizing India initiative" and do not share your opinion. My mom, who has knee surgery and difficulty walking , can summon a three wheeler on Jugnoo (uber is expensive for retirees), get groceries delivered etc. My dad can pay the bills online for water and electricity and check his bank account. Residential ownership records are digitized -- the bureaucracy is less powerful . I had visited MCD offices in Delhi 20 years ago and now recently -- I would have to be blind to say that things have not improved dramatically. 20 years ago I had to wait for 3 months for a document which should have been given to me ; last mont I just had to wait in a queue for an hour --- I never paid a bribe in both cases.The Adhaar card has worked very well : I remember when I first wanted to get a cell phone in India -- proof of identity and residence was a nightmare as I was a renter.With the adhaar card, this is not an issue.

However, I am curious about your experience in India. I browsed through your comment history and I sense your loathing mixed with pessimism of all things Indian. Would you care to share your experience ? How did your experience shape you ? I am genuinely curious.

The truth is somewhere in the middle. Government digital services are improving, but not at the pace that people may expect. Modi scrapped the practice of getting attested documents. Now you can self attest. There are also some interesting initiatives like digilocker[1] where the government documents are issued and stored based on Aadhar number. You can use that to submit documents to third parties directly from digilocker. People have opened bank accounts using Aadhar [2] within minutes.

There are some challenges to address. You still have to deal with the bureaucracy. E.g. I went to apply Aadhar for my wife at my local municipality office. The person who was distributing the application form asked me to come after 5 hours. The reason he gave was there is some meeting going on and he can't give the form to me until the meeting was over. I had to then involve my ward councilor and the chairman(mayor) to get the form. Now official gave a different reason. People are wasting the forms, so we are not distributing it. I thought you must be kidding me. Since I knew the elected officials I got these forms. Think about people who don't know important people in that office.

There are privacy concerns about Aadhar. Government need not collect biometric information for Aadhar. They should have made Aadhar similar to US social security number instead of collecting biometrics.

[1] https://digilocker.gov.in/ [2] https://twitter.com/deepakshenoy/status/744208624545763329

How is that got anythign to do with aadhar/uidia?

Yes, change has happened, and it got much faster after the 1991 reforms, but what has that to do with digital india?

Calling Jugnoo/uber/ola = companies serving customers.

Pay bills for water/elec/banking = same as above.

Residential ownership digitized - as are several other records, and this has been going on for a while.

To get a phone you need proof of ID, and aadhar isnt the only one.

BUT - in my life time I have seen it become compulsory to provide ID when you go to stay at a hotel (this is from before 2005), extensive ID to buy... well almost anything.

Want to know who got what medicines, then got onto a flight, and went to which hotel, along with other persons who went to the same place?

Well thats the system we are building.

And the aadhar team has by design (and I know that some of those guys probably come to HN) created a "market place" style system. Anyone can and is supposed to use their infra to validate ID data.

Thing is, I am old enough (and not even that old) to remember when you didn't need it. When there were not scanners in front of malls and in front of hotels (post 26/11 additions. I saw them come up).

The west built their success with systems which worked, not tech magic bullets, and thats always what counts in the end

I don't think anyone in GOI feels Digital India == aadhar. That's only part of it. Digital India is about creating the ecosystem which starts from providing Internet access, digitizing more govt services, creating awareness among rural population to sell their goods(my uncle sells cotton online through a govt portal now), access health care services etc. Farmers now get their alerts from Indian Agriculture dept, Irrigation dept etc.

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