---
title: "Citizens Aadhaar Data And Digital Trails To Be Used To Go Cashless But For Whose Benefit At What Costs To Citizens"
description: "The National Democratic Alliance has stated that the decision to withdraw Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes is aimed to make India a “cashless economy”. 
Aadhaar, is being presented as a crucial tool..."
pubDate: 2017-03-01
author: Rethink Aadhaar
category: Uncategorized
originalUrl: https://rethinkaadhaar.in/blog/citizens-aadhaar-data-and-digital-trails-to-be-used-to-go-cashless-but-for-whose-benefit-at-what-costs-to-citizens
---

The National Democratic Alliance has stated that the decision to withdraw Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes is aimed to make India a “cashless economy”. 
Aadhaar, is being presented as a crucial tool in the hands of the government and financial institutions to enforce a transition to digital payments and new opportunities built on “digital footprints” of individuals.
The coercion and illegal manner in which the biometrics-linked digital identity number which in the last few years has been been made mandatory for accessing essential services is now being repeated in forcing a switch to electronic payments, rather than this being a matter of choice of users.
National biometric identifications projects have been discussed and debated in other countries such as the United Kingdom (the UK started and then dismantled its biometrics database in mid-2000s). But an important difference is what is being built upon and surrounds UID/Aadhaar, is initiatives like India Stack being built by software “think-tank” and lobbyist group ISpirit, that several former UIDAI employees have now joined as “volunteers”: IndiaStack is building layers of applications on top of Aadhaar for use by financial services sector companies. Aadhaar is being designed such that citizens' data will be collected coercively by the government but made available for use both by the state, and private companies through systems that are built upon Aadhaar.
Where are citizens’ rights and freedoms within such a system?
Where are the safeguards and what are the protections? What have we learnt from the massive bank data breach experienced earlier this year when over Rs 1 crore of individuals savings were wiped out? Did Aadhaar-based system play a role in it?
With the attempt to route all payments through UPI which comes under the NPCI, lack of clarity about legal safeguards, data protection etc, it is time to think through these issues.