As a tech professional, it's extra disturbing the way the government pushes these harebrained schemes by marketing them as 'Digital India', 'India Stack', etc. thus getting visiting dignitaries from other countries to lap it up. We really need to be careful that we don't whitewash autocratic bureaucracy by branding it digital innovation.

Note the spin from Aadhaar proponents in this NYT article--that it's the equivalent of building interstate highways, or that citizens are the biggest beneficiaries. They neglect to mention that the program is mandatory. If people were truly benefiting, they wouldn't need to force everyone to link so many of their life activities with this database--we'd do it voluntarily.

During the demonetization disaster of Nov 2016 (in which 86% of the cash value in circulation was deemed unusable overnight), once the problems became clear, the government went on a massive PR spree saying that despite the problems faced by ordinary people, the policy will spur 'digital payments'. 18 months later it's clear that this was a stupid claim--the cash in circulation has matched or exceeded the amount that was demonetized. I wrote about this at the time here but I'm still very upset about what went down and the whole 'ooh this will lead to digital innovation!11' deflection. https://hackernoon.com/i-boycott-paytm-5df93d189356