U-I-D and It’s in and out stories

Like was in the 80s and 90s movements against computerization now there are considerable movements against the UPA II Government initiative of Unique Identity Number project (UID).

The beaten up Professor Jean Dreze!!! Argues that:

• “I am opposed to the UID project on grounds of civil liberties. Let us not be naive. This is not a social policy initiative — it is a national security project.”
• "I am not against technology, by I think linking the Unique Identity Number project to NREGA can be very dangerous,"

He also said:

"For a long time, many people may not get their UID's. And there will be total chaos in such a situtation. Also, why impose one more condition on the NREGA? Why not try this on a smaller scale first?

Read also Unique facility, or recipe for trouble? By Jean Drèze

And his close associates says:

• Dreze said the UID will help achieve unprecedented levels of surveillance on ordinary citizens and this may have dangerous consequences for privacy civil liberties and social justice. Echoing Dreze’s view, Roy said the project is a threat to democratic norms and civil liberties and it should be opposed.
• The UK Home Secretary had been quoted as saying that the “The national identity card scheme represents the worst of government. It is intrusive and bullying. It is ineffective and expensive. It is an assault on individual liberty that does not promise a great good.”

Now where Mr Dreze was beaten up is here!!

In ET, it was reported:

• A development economist, Mr Dreze has taken his academic persuasions to the real world — he not only played a major role in designing the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), but also got beaten up by vested interests for trying, in the guise of an activist, to get the scheme implemented as intended.

This was in 2005:

• A close aide of Sonia Gandhi was mistaken for a Maoist guerrilla and mercilessly thrashed by the police in Balrampur near the Jharkhand-Chattisgarh border, a leading daily reported.
• Ananda Bazar Patrika said in a front page report yesterday that Jean Dreze, a noted Belgian-born economist who is a member of United Progressive Alliance chief Sonia Gandhi’s National Advisory Council, was on a tour of the backward region accompanied by 35-40 students of Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University when he was roughed up.
• On Saturday night, security personnel stopped a bus carrying Dreze and JNU students who had come for an on-the-spot-assessment of the federal-funded Rashtriya Rojgar Yojna, or national employment guarantee scheme, in the tribal Surguja-Gumla belt.
• Apparently, the police first dragged a few students out and beat them up. When the bearded Dreze tried to intervene, he was kicked and punched until he revealed his identity and pleaded with the men in uniform to stop beating him.
• Dreze and his boys cut short their traumatic tour after they were assaulted and flew back to Delhi.

Vices against UID:

1. Historical Reasons Against UID//Aadhar Project By Gopal Krishna & Prakash Ray
2. Eminent Personalities Against unique identity number’ (UIDNumber)-mostly socialists!
3. Against insecurity-Mint Report
4. A unique liberal dilemma
5. UID bill skips vital privacy issues