India’s Aadhaar Policy Update: What It Means for Businesses and Citizens

India has made some changes in the Aadhaar authentication integration policy which has raised major concerns among people. So, is there actually something there you should worry about? No. Are the changes negative or positive? It's positive if you see it from a larger perspective but a little negative in terms of execution speed.?

So, what has changed in the Aadhaar authentication policy? The changes that have been made are solely for business owners. The new policy says that from now onwards, any private entity that wishes to integrate Aadhaar authentication for the betterment of their services will have to follow a three-step process mentioned below:?

Step 1: The business that wants to include an Aadhar authentication feature, will write an application stating every major to minor detail of their business, justifying why it needs this feature and how safe and ethical it will be for the users.

Step 2: The application will be sent to the respected state ministry that manages operations related to the business model. For example, if you run a hospital, pharmacy, or any health-related business, the application must be sent to the state health ministry.

Step 3: The State ministry will check the application and judge whether the integration is following the security standards of the state or not.?

Step 4: If approved, the application will get forwarded to the central ministry which will check the reliability and authenticity of the application.?

Step 5: If the central ministry approves your application, it will then reach the UIDAI which will check the application and finalize the permission for the integration.?

This is now a 5 step process which used to be a single step. Businesses before, only needed to write an application to the UIDAI to enable such integrations. Now, the question arises why? Why this sudden addition of steps??

As per reports, the government has added steps to protect the misuse of Aadhaar details. By adding the surveillance of state and central ministry bodies, it hopes to strengthen the privacy of the Indian people, so that nobody in the country faces any identity or financial theft while using services both online and offline.?

To all the people who have thought the government has made it mandatory for people to give their Aadhaar details everywhere, it’s not like that.? You as a non-business owner will not face any changes in the use of Aadhaar information.?

However, these changes make it a bit problematic for businesses as 2 more steps have been added which indicates the delays that are going to take place in acquiring such integrations. But good things take time and if all of this is for better privacy and security for people then why not? What do you think?