 This this project about which I'll briefly say I do I don't think I really need to say very much now five years back I had to explain it again and again now. There isn't very much. I need to say so on the UID. I won't say very much except this that The I don't call it you ID. I know I've said this before but I should say it again because it explains something I don't I call it the UID and not adhaar for a reason Adhaar was was a branding that was given to this project Before mr. Nilekhani was appointed as chairperson of this project He was in 2003 creation that period he and his a team of people with him were involved in Making Bangalore a more livable place as you know, it's become extremely livable now And everything is fine in Bangalore So well while they were doing this task It was called the Bangalore action task force and they needed money to be put into it You know, they had a lot of money the y2k got a lot of people a lot of money So they put some a certain some in crores some 4.8 crores or something It was done through a trust that he and Rohini Nilekhani set up which is called the adhaar trust and Then some years later. He becomes a chairperson of the UID AI They have a nationwide competition on the best name to give this best branding Many people participate in this and the the name that then becomes the Symbol of this grand digital project of this technology project of this identity project of the project That's going to bring all entitlements to all people is Adhaar because there can't be a word better than that so between adhaar trust and the adhaar project given that mr. Nilekhani entered the Project and entered government with the rank of a cabinet minister, but without the responsibilities and answerability of a cabinet minister And given that mr. Nilekhani is continuing interest in it shows a lot of conflict of interest and Given what we have seen in the context of something called India stack Which is something that he mentored and he helped bring in which is actually ruling our lives now and which is actually destroying it because Unfortunately his marketing is better than his technology So it's collapsing all around us, but we are all stuck with this so we need to know these connections So this idea of not saying adhaar and saying UID has a whole story which reveals this project to us So it's just briefly to say that the The most fascinating thing about this project I find is that it started with saying that they were going to deal with corruption and leakage in our system and The idea was that you know we are all such a large population many of us are corrupt. That's why our country is going down here and We are all lawless people so it was important to keep some check on us We do you know we do black money transactions. We launder money. We we do everything that's wrong So we basically needed to have some kind of check kept on us so what is done a project is brought in which is Completely corrupt in its implementation, and I'm not saying this the CEO of the UID AI comes into the Supreme Court He was asked by the court So 49,000 enrollers have been blacklisted people who've been enrolling We don't even know how many of those people that we've given our data to are actually You know designated enrollers and who just came in said adhaar jaiye a pka Whatever they do and I'll give it to you So 49,000 people have been formally and by admission of the government in parliament they've been Blacklisted so the judge asked you know actually when the judges were hearing the petitioners. They said we know okay petitioners They always public in this petitioners. They'll come they'll complain You know initially there was also an outburst if you remember and then everything's quiet and down They listened and then they said okay when the government comes government will give a reply to all that's being said What actually happened in court was that the government had no reply It's amazing. I have never seen I've with I've watched the court for years and years I have never seen a government come with no answer the only thing that they had on their In the paper books was saying that we have we have made so much savings Because we used the UID and actually that savings things were ripped apart I mean it was by multiple people so it's been proved to be a complete farce There hasn't been that kind of saving there was no other argument So one of the best lawyers on the other side was forced to stand up and say what privacy? I don't want privacy. I don't believe in privacy. It was interesting that there are people at that level who don't believe in privacy But that's a personal opinion. It has nothing to do with constitutional position. There was no other argument And that's a significant kind of thing So the judges were expecting some answers from them and they asked this question about 14,000 enrollers and you had they see you're saying Yeah, they were Blacklisted because of corruption They said meaning so you said they were not allowed to collect money when they enrolled people But they collected money and we found it out when we found it out we blacklisted them We also blacklisted some of them because they were deliberately fudging and obscuring the data that was being given to them So to harass the people this is something that the CEO said in court to the five judges of the Supreme Court So here is this database that has been created. This is just one element There are multiple other ways in which corruption has been seen in this project And I think people like Obrapost have done their job in this too So the point is that this is a project that is going to deal with corruption and root out corruption or at least Lesson it and to do that you need you know It's what what's the famous phrase to to catch a thief set a thief to catch a thief So you practice corruption to get rid of corruption. So that's the first part of it the second part of it is Okay, this is always very distracting way. I will stop in five minutes. My ten minute button is on so don't worry The second part of it is about lawlessness We are all of us are people of this country and we are supposed to obey the law To make sure that we obey the law the government make says that they will not obey any law So they start the project without any law they carry on without any law till civil society forces them This is the previous government in 2010 they introduced the law 2011 standing committee says Throughout this law throughout this project. You can't have it happening like this When anybody gives you advice like this and you're and you're a government that wants to carry on There is only one thing to do ignore the advice. So they ignore the advice and it continued till this government in 2014 when they were speaking in In all their election speeches. They were saying that this is a lousy project the moment they come the first thing They are going to do is to throw it out of the window. I Think what's happened is since everything is air conditioned. They can't do anything out of windows So it has stayed on board and that's where it is then the Supreme Court keeps passing orders They say no, no, no, you can't you can't deny anybody any entitlement They go back to the court. This is in 2013 and say no, no, we need to make it mandatory Please allow us to make court says no, so then they carry on in 2014 15 so in 14 when they come They say, okay, we're gonna throw it out. Mr. Rajnath Singh poor man says, okay We'll continue with the national population register. Mr. Nilakini meets Modi and mr. Jetli tells us that when they met Something happened Maybe it's called magic. Maybe it's a miracle. I don't know but something got communicated Which told the Prime Minister that this is the route to go So there isn't any note on it no explanation to any of us But the decision is reversed and they decide not just to carry on with the project But by the end in end of the year, they must have everybody on this database the rest of the story You know the point is that Every step of the way I tried that day to sit down and find one place where this project has been legal It doesn't exist So this the story in that is that if you want people to be league to be legal lawful A government has to be lawless That's the second message from this and the last thing that I leave you with Obviously, there are many stories that have come around this There are stories of conflict of interest if mr. Nilakini is sitting in Infosys today. He's also dealing with GSTN, which he himself helped set up. It's full of conflict of interest I can tell you multiple stories on this but this morning you would have seen in the papers that yesterday There was a hearing in the Supreme Court on something called With which something called Bessel has begun BCIR just go check take a look at it What they've what this government has done is to float a tender to have a tender floated Where all of us, you know all the social media and they've got a whole list I didn't even know so many existed, but they've got a whole list This is part of the digital India program where they want Everything to be monitored because they want to be able to serve the people so they need to know what people are thinking So this is about monitoring the minds and thoughts of the people of this country through a formal system That's to be established within the information and Ministry of Information and Broadcasting about 20 people will be there who will perhaps produce about six reports a day And it's about perception management of all of us It is after a look at this room not a single person here has respect for the government How can you allow a thing like this to carry on so this will do perception management? This will check the leadership in thought and it will learn how to control it This is how far we've come now. What amazes me is not that they are doing this What amazes me was that they were willing to say all this openly in a tender document Think about what that means