Comment by nmridul | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nmridul | Hacker News Reader

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Let me tell you what it is trying to solve.

If I'm a poor and illiterate in India, I neither know what special programs or subsidies the government has for me (I'm illiterate and the news does not reach me).

The middle men already has forged my identities and the amount that the Government sent me is already shared by them in the middle.

This is what the government is trying to solve. To make sure that what is being sent is received by the correct person.

It may not solve it entirely. But at the very least it will make it difficult for the middle men to forge the identities now. Or at the worst case, the middle men will have to share a portion of what they receive with the end user (the poor me).

When you look at it from a first world perspective, then your freedom and government control seems to be the main concern.

But when you have had no food for the last week and you don't have your own house and have no way to feed your family, then the freedom to shout against my government is my last priority.

But that's not what it's being used for. UID compulsory for gas? UID being used for all sorts Of things other than assistance to the poor.

UID data being compromised already - first hand account in this thread.

Constant feature creep. Every single person who has such positive hopes needs to take a good long look at its real implementation, it's reall failings and it's drawbacks. Without looking at potential possible positives.

Cooking gas is heavily subsidized in India. Maybe not many poor are able to afford it, but still the lower middle class rely on this subsidized gas. And this is one way the government can try to reduce the misuse. I'm not saying it will completely remove the misuse. But any reduction is good for the society.

All of these are cost/benefits. If the cost is giving extremely powerful abilities to an entity which finds its best interests in playing communal games to score points in its vote base, then the lesser of two evils is corruption.

Any reduction is not good for society when it comes with huge costs.

The Indian people do not passively wait for government permission to have a voice, they buy it every day with action and sometimes with their lives. Large areas of India have reduced or virtually non-existent government control thanks to the efforts of the Naxalites to free themselves from a government still mired in racist traditions and an economy shaping itself to the worst excesses of neoliberal capitalism.

If the poor have no food or homes it is because they have been taken from them by a greedy government and a brutal police force. They will reclaim their lives and achieve justice not through waiting for liberal reform or by surrendering further control to a government instituting bare-minimum programs in an attempt to appease away the inevitable, but through continued people's war.

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