[jace]

There are a very large number of people from whom biometrics cannot be collected, or cannot be reliably collected (meaning they change rapidly):

1. Newborn babies (who are all issued Aadhaar without biometrics) 2. Children (rapid change) 3. Old people (fading eyes, wrinkled skin) 4. Workers handling harsh materials (smoothened fingertips) 5. Disabled people (missing fingers) 6. Visually impaired (iris scans won't work)

Biometrics are optional in the design of Aadhaar because all these classes have to be accommodated. But in practice? How do you distinguish between "unable to provide biometrics" and "refusing to provide biometrics with fraudulent intent"? Who makes this determination in each case where biometrics are required?

The design of Aadhaar also imagines that the machine is more reliable than the human authority using the machine, so the human does not need be trusted and government can therefore outsource citizen interactions to non-gazetted officials (ie, cheaper for the govt), who no longer have the authority to override the process when biometrics cannot be used.

This destruction of government accountability is the problem. This is the other half of the Aadhaar project. It's not just an innocent technological system, it's one that was explicitly conceived and funded as a way for one ideology within government (neoliberalism) to dismantle an older socialist ideology, without any thought for what happens to the technologically-excluded.