Essay on Uses and Abuses of Aadhaar Card

Aadhaar Card has been made mandatory for almost every official work. It is the only accepted ID proof in most of the cases and in addition to this, the Aadhaar number is linked to most of the other documents and services. For example, the Aadhaar is linked to bank accounts and PAN cards and Aadhaar did make life easy in some aspects but like the coin has two sides, even the usability of Aadhaar is under question as there are some Abuses of Aadhaar card which comes along with the Uses of Aadhaar Card. In this article, we have some of the major uses as well as abuses of Aadhaar card.

Uses of Aadhaar Cards

• DBT– Direct Benefit Transfer was introduced by the government for LPG subsidy and under the scheme, the person needs to link the Aadhaar card with the LPG account and the subsidy on the LPG gets directly transferred to the bank account of the person. This has plugged the leakage in subsidy.
• Digital Life Certificate– Now because of the Digital Life Certificate, it is possible for the people to obtain pension without their physical presence. This has helped a great way and the Aadhaar helped in the implementation of the same.
• Receiving Money and Provident Fund– Aadhaar has also made it easy to make transactions easily. There are many UPI platforms which make use of Aadhaar card and in addition to this; it is now easy to withdraw PF because of Aadhaar card.
• Higher Security– Aadhaar card works as a central ID and in addition to this, it is possible to put in records in the central database so Aadhaar has made our community safer as the criminal record of a person can now be checked in nick of time.
• Passport in 10 days– If the person applying for the Passport has an Aadhaar card then it is possible for him to obtain a passport in just 10 days. Earlier the lead times were much higher but today, the same has been decreased to 10 days.
• Digital Locker– Government of India has provided digital lockers to people so as to keep their documents safely and the digital locker can only be accessed with help of Aadhaar card. This has made it easy for people to save and use the documents as per the need.
• Voter ID Linking– The government is presently working on EPIC linking and this would give a new dimension to the democracy as this would eliminate all the false votes by deactivating the invalid or duplicate voter ID
• Quick KYC– Because of Aadhaar card, the KYC process has been expedited and it takes only a few minutes to activate a SIM, open a bank account or open an Investment account across various platforms

Abuses of Aadhaar Cards

• Prone to Hacking– Since the cyber threat across the world is increasing, it would not be wrong to say that the Aadhaar Card database is prone to hacking and a lot of personal data can be leaked easily.
• Breach of Privacy– With help of Aadhaar, the government can track each and every financial as well as anon-financial transaction of the person and this is a total breach of privacy. The government is adamant about the use of Aadhaar in every aspect of daily life.
• Identity Theft– Aadhaar Card can also be used for identity theft and there had been cases when someone used the Aadhaar card of a third party for his own benefit.

The government of India is improving UIDAI with every passing day and soon these loop holes or the abuses would also be eliminated from the system which will make the system perfect just like the social security number in the United States of America.