India Govt Slams Moody's 'Hot, Humid' Claims On Aadhaar's Efficiency

Strongly disagreeing with the views presented by Moody's Investors Service that raised doubts about the feasibility of Aadhaar, the Centre has said that the report was prepared "without providing any evidence or basis".

"A certain investor service has, without citing any evidence or basis, made sweeping assertions against Aadhaar, the most trusted digital ID in the world. Over the last decade, over a billion Indians have expressed their trust in Aadhaar by using it to authenticate themselves over 100 billion times. To ignore such an unprecedented vote of confidence in an identity system is to imply that the users do not understand what is in their own interest," the Centre said on Monday.

The Ministry of Electronics and IT said the mentioned report lacks references to both primary and secondary data or research substantiating the opinions it puts forth. The investor service did not make any effort to verify the facts related to the raised issues with the Authority. The report's only reference to the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) is a mention of its website. However, it inaccurately states the number of Aadhaars issued as 1.2 billion, while the website prominently provides the most up-to-date numbers.

The statement said, "The report avers that use of biometric technologies results in service denials for manual laborers in India's hot, humid climate, an obvious reference to India's Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS). However, it is evident that the authors of the report are unaware that the seeding of Aadhaar in the MGNREGS database has been done without requiring the worker to authenticate using their biometrics, and that even payment to workers under the scheme is made by directly crediting money in their account and does not require the worker to authenticate using their biometrics."

The government points out that the report ignores that biometric submission is also possible through contactless means like face authentication and iris authentication. In addition, the option of mobile OTP is also available in many use cases.

The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) issues the Aadhaar card, assigning a distinctive number linked to an individual's fingerprints, face, and eye scan.

According to Moody's report, the Aadhaar system frequently leads to service denials, and it raised doubts about the dependability of biometric technologies, particularly for manual laborers working in hot, humid climates.

Addressing the concerns, the Centre stated, "The report also avers that there are security and privacy vulnerabilities in a centralised Aadhaar system. The factual position in this regard has been repeatedly disclosed in response to Parliament questions, where Parliament has been categorically informed that till date no breach has been reported from Aadhaar database. Further, Parliament has laid down robust privacy protections in the law governing the Aadhaar system and these are observed through robust technological and organisational arrangements. State-of-the-art security solutions are in place, along with a federated database and encryption of data both at rest and in motion. The systems are certified as per international security and privacy standards (ISO 27001:2013 for Information Security Management System and ISO 27701:2019 for Privacy Information Management System)."

The Centre claims that several international agencies such as the IMF and World Bank have lauded the role of Aadhaar.