Show Me The Money Bill

Over its life of seven years, the Aadhaar project has given us a lot that qualifies as simply illogical, just inane and outright devious — and often all at once.

But until that time is upon us when those sceptical of Aadhaar are declared anti-national and have sedition charges slapped on them, calling the Aadhaar Bill a Money Bill in Parliament will remain the lowest point to which the Aadhaar lobby will have stooped in peddling their ware.

The Illogical

Nobody really has a clear idea, least of all members of the Aadhaar lobby, as to what is it that Aadhaar is capable of and mandated to do uniquely, legally and in the interest of Indians.

In fact, in the words of the parliamentary standing committee that examined the Aadhaar Bill, “We found that the project is not necessary as there are many other ways of identification such as BPL (below the poverty line) card, voter identification card, etc. There is no merit in the project, it is just a wastage of government money”.

Facts, however, never came in the way of the Aadhaar lobby and like a quack peddling his potion as a cure-it-all, claims have been made it can replace the National Population Register, provide national security or plug holes in the subsidy structure of India, depending on which season it is.

But even if one had blind faith and accepted every self-made claim of a self-serving lobby as true, then too the Aadhaar Bill doesn’t qualify as a Money Bill.

Article 110 of the Indian Constitution says a Bill is a Money Bill when it fulfils any one of the following criteria —

• the imposition, abolition, remission, alteration or regulation of any tax;

(b) the regulation of the borrowing of money or the giving of any guarantee by the Government of India, or the amendment of the law with respect to any financial obligations undertaken or to be undertaken by the Government of India;

(c) the custody of the consolidated Fund or the Contingency Fund of India, the payment of moneys into or the withdrawal of moneys from any such Fund;

(d) the appropriation of moneys out of the consolidated Fund of India;

(e) the declaring of any expenditure to be expenditure charged on the Consolidated Fund of India or the increasing of the amount of any such expenditure;

(f) the receipt of money on account of the Consolidated Fund of India or the public account of India or the custody or issue of such money or the audit of the accounts of the Union or of a State; or

(g) any matter incidental to any of the matters specified in sub clause (a) to (f)

In short, Money Bills are mostly all about taxes.

While nothing stops the lobby from turning around and claiming that the Aadhaar is about taxes from now on, it is still going to town selling itself as an identity register. The text of the Aadhaar Bill itself says so.

So even by it’s own admission, it rules out any possibility of being called a Money Bill.

The Inane

Aadhaar has flatly refused to address any of its major lacunae.

On privacy — it refuses to disclose the foreign military industrial partners to whom it has handed Indians’ biometric data.

On technical flaws — it refuses open standards and open audits either of the hardware they sell or the software they use. Even less, the major architectural and systemic flaws like false positives and non-uniqueness.

On political mandate — it refuses to acknowledge how it keeps shifting goalposts and prove that it can do anything that which isn’t already done in some time-tested, simple and low-cost ways (including plugging of subsidy theft).

It is inane to think that a country of so many billion people and so many million power centres, will simply be enthralled buy tech talk and accept a project to document them like criminals just like that.

Secondly, according to this report in The Indian Express published less than a month back, we find that public sector banks have written off mega loans of corporates. And in doing so the government has made the people foot a bill of Rs 1.14 lakh crore.

The absolute expenditure on domestic fuel subsidies in India is one fourth of that figure. The theft, more imagined than real, is in decimals far below visibility.

Given this huge dichotomy, isn’t it inane of the finance minister to make Aadhaar a priority?

Why doesn’t the Aadhaar register prove itself by plugging gaping holes of this corporate loot? Or the siphoning off Indian money to tax havens by India’s super rich few? Why go after the little crumbs the poorest of this country get?

And why doesn’t the finance minister train his guns on tax reforms, which was his calling card before becoming a minister in the Modi government?

The answer lies not in the bizarre or the inane but in the devious.

The Devious

The Aadhaar Bill is no Money Bill.

The BJP has an absolute majority in the Lok Sabha, and the Rajya Sabha — where the BJP is weaker — has no say in Money Bills. Moreover technically the speaker, a member of the BJP, is empowered to declare a Bill a Money Bill disregarding reality, parliamentarians’ views and precedents.

The sole reason why the Bill has been introduced as a Money Bill is to ensure it’s shoved down Parliament’s throat with no questions or opposition whatsoever.

The urgency with which Aadhaar is pursued and the manner in which the Aadhar lobby outlives prime ministerial candidates and jumps over party divides as wide as Congress and BJP is indicative of the invisible money that’s riding on this project.

India’s law follows the principle of “ratio decendi”, which means judgements of the Supreme Court are to be treated like law in spirit by lower courts and for future cases. By the time Modi government assumed office, the Supreme Court repeatedly judged in disfavour of Aadhaar and flagged it for severe transgressions of authority and mandate. Yet why do ministers and lawyers of the Modi government remorselessly continue to pursue the Aadhaar Bill’s draft with no real edits from the Congress time?

Prime Minister Narendra Modi went from opposing Aadhaar as a condemned pet project of Manmohan Singh before elections, to supporting it afterwards. Mukul Rohatgi took the previous government’s legal brief but brazenly added insult to injury by declaring privacy is a worthless pursuit in Aadhaar’s context. And now Arun Jaitley has outdone past Congress ministers in similar roles by resorting to this Money Bill subterfuge.

Theatrics by the finance ministry now pushing this disguised as a Money Bill are fooling no one.

The dressing-up of the Aadhaar Bill as a Money Bill is just another milestone in Aadhaar’s impeccable history of always erring on the side of deviousness.