There is no alternative afaik. The issues however are:
1. Friction in getting the card in the first place, especially in cases that are out of the ordinary.
2. Extensive and mandatory use of the card for routine non-governmental things that are not benefits or bank accounts. This is more pervasive than one may realize.
>2. Extensive and mandatory use of the card for routine non-governmental things that are not benefits or bank accounts. This is more pervasive than one may realize.
This is common in almost every country that has central ID system. Businesses want easy way to track someone using Primary Key that doesn't change. It's even bigger benefit to business if it's Primary Key that's same across all businesses.
Only way to prevent it is having laws that ban use of the number in business dealings but few countries have those laws.
Now the real fun begins when the primary key almost never changes, and is considered never-changing by most businesses and computer systems, but there is an extremely small number of cases when it does, in fact, change.
Poland is like that for example. Our PESEL number encodes gender by whether one of the digits is odd or even. People with a legally-sanctioned gender change get a new PESEL, and a lot of systems aren't prepared for that.
The Gender change process here is extremely long and arduous, and the number of transgender people was very low until recently, so most institutions weren't prepared to deal with it.
> This is common in almost every country that has central ID system.
Not true. The US has a Social Security Number but it is not needed for everyday business use. It is not needed for getting a cell phone number, for example. In India, the Aadhaa card is needed for getting a cell phone number.
It's required for getting postpaid cellular plan. It's also required to do banking so credit/debit card you give them, they likely can use that to backtrack.
Biggest one is probably health insurance. I'd be surprised if you can get any (private, employer-sponsored, ACA exchange, Medicaid, Medicare) health insurance plan without an SSN. Medicare at least makes sense since it is administered by the Social Security Administration.
Right. If you are a rich country there is enough margin in business or resources for government agencies to use alternatives with people who don't provide SSN.
The total cost of implementing Aadhar system is less than couple of months of SSA admin expenses. Median per capita income tax in US is $15K and in India it would be 200-300 dollars. The point is at that level of revenue and expenses the quality of service, privacy, sensitivity to ones belief, one can expect from government is very low.
Complaining about Aadhar is more in tune of complaining about wine selection at Dollar store. This even if obviously true hardly rises to level of public welfare.
SSA is de facto used as one, but it isn't actually mandated.
The Aadhaar system is based on Malaysia and Singapore's National Registration ID Card (MyKad/IC respectively) system, as both countries had similar needs to India's for distributing benefits and validating identity.
Don't know the details but the cell phone number thing is due to terrorism reasons and mandated by the government, not due to individual businesses choosing to. Used to be you could just buy sim cards using cash.
1. Friction in getting the card in the first place, especially in cases that are out of the ordinary.
2. Extensive and mandatory use of the card for routine non-governmental things that are not benefits or bank accounts. This is more pervasive than one may realize.