The Aadhaar Effect: Why the World's Largest Identity Project Matters

by Charles Assisi, N.S. Ramnath

Identification vs profiling; state welfare vs state surveillance; privacy vs transparency -- the idea of Aadhaar has bitterly polarized India since its launch eight years ago. No other project has captured the imagination of the people-or inspired such awe and anxiety-in recent memory.

Aadhaar began life with a singular offer an identity to those Indian residents who didn't have any. Along the way, it evolved into the welfare state's flagship technology and altered forever how government, business, and society interact.

The Aadhaar Effect is the story of the visionaries-bureaucrats, technologists, activists-who created or challenged India's biggest juggernaut. It is equally the story of humans conflicted about complex choices that may make the world a better place.

Award-winning journalists N.S. Ramnath and Charles Assisi dive deep into the 12-digit number that has touched 1.2 billion lives and counting-and in the bargain, made the world sit up and take note of India's ambition.

Genres: India

328 pages, Hardcover

Published February 13, 2019

Reviews

[Ron Jack · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has been one of those which have touched aspects ranging from government functioning, economics of decision making, the interplay of platform / open source technology ideiology, technocrats, civil society, NGOs and the judiciary, juxtaposing these strands against the canvas of public policy. It’s opened several idea corridors, or should I say idea platforms, in my mind and provided nuance to grey that is here to stay! One single takeaway, if I am forced to think, would be that large scale interventions cannot and should not be polarized. Time and patience is invaluable and rushing anything with large impact will have unintended and unforeseen consequences. Devil lies in the detail execution of any grand idea and as versions of the same implementation will evolve with feedback loops, pushes and pulls. Chucking the Aadhaar based on what’s playing out so far or grand-scaling it with all its faults are both short sighted. On this one, it’s a long term game and we need to piece by piece build this lego set.


Read more of my review here : https://rohanjaikishen.wordpress.com/...

[Alok Agarwal · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is commendable to write a book on a topic that has seen so much passion and divergent views and with each passing day a new development is happening. The book released on 24th of October would already have enough material to write a sequel to it. I must complement the authors to write a book with the balance of putting both sides of the story in an unbiased fashion. The number of people involved with this project are immense and most of them have got some mention somewhere in the book. Aadhar, RTI, GST and IBC are the current topics which people want to know more and more about due to their large scale impact on India. A must read for someone who has interest in financial inclusion which rural India. The success of any scheme depends on its simplicity and Aadhar is just about that.

[Varun Moka · Rating 2 out of 5]

I appreciate the idea behind the book but unfortunately the writing is poorly executed.
It could have been written in a much more organised and systematic manner which is why it didn't seem very interesting to me.

[Roshin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting book with some good insights. Gives a decent background to Aadhaar and outlines various operational, political and philosophical issues involved. It's not the clearest of books though - I wasn't sure of what point was being made in a few chapters.

[Adora · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pretty comprehensive review of Aadhaar.