From making the Aadhaar card a mandatory document to leaks of Aadhaar details online, Aadhaar had been one of the central controversies of 2017. However, Aadhaar’s specific impact on the student community has been one of the lesser ventured-into areas, ironically. Here are 7 points relating to Aadhaar and its impact on the student community:
1. Student loans will be more conveniently accessible when acquiring them from banks:
Sometimes, parents, guardians, or whoever is initiating the loan on behalf of the student does not have a credit history making it difficult for the bank to understand the credit-worthiness of the individual. This may lead to the loan application being declined by the bank. But after the implementation of Aadhaar, banks will be more confident in giving out loans, since they would be more secure in knowing who they’re working with.
2. Student scholarships:
Students entitled to receive a scholarship from the government will get the amount credited to the Aadhaar enabled bank account. This unambiguous way for students to avail their scholarship under various schemes will leave little scope for irregularities or illegalities in the process, like siphoning off money meant for students from BPL families by administrative servants. This increases the accountability of many of these schemes which were hitherto not implemented well.
3. Minimisation in the use of college-paperwork:
Because Aadhaar would incorporate the important biometric details of students starting from the date of birth to the specimen signature, it reduces the administrative overhead of colleges by minimising the use of paper. So during admissions, Aadhaar would save you the trouble and hassle by enabling you to submit all the required documents through one concrete database of biometric details.
4. The privacy concern:
Whether you acknowledge this or not, privacy is, in no uncertain terms, is authoritative. From the ‘personal integrity’ point of view, the discomfort that arises from information about our lives being available to people or institutions with whom we do not wish to share it is real, especially among the youth. Some believe that this interpretation of privacy is an elitist concern. However, this should not trivialise the debate on privacy, as students of today would best understand.
5. Potential for misuse against targets from the student community:
Delhi University is known to be the hub of student politics and youth leadership. Often these high-flying student leaders get embroiled in conflicts with the state forces or parties holding political affiliations which differ from theirs. In the rather complicated present day student-state equation where police are often found complicit in crimes, spying, and persecution, it may be possible for vested interests to plant records of biometric details matching someone they want to target among evidence.
Image Credits: Mission Sharing Knowledge
Vaibhavi Sharma Pathak
