The story so far: On September 21, international credit rating agency Moody’s Investor Service released a report, ‘Decentralised Finance and Digital Assets’, which advocates for decentralised digital identity systems instead of centralised biometric systems like India’s Aadhaar. Referring to “security and privacy vulnerabilities posed by centralised ID systems like Aadhaar”, the report states “the [Aadhaar] system faces hurdles, including the burden of establishing authorisation and concerns about biometric reliability.”
How has India reacted?
The government has strongly refuted these claims. Terming Aadhaar as “the most trusted digital ID in the world,” the government stated that “it is evident that the authors of the report are unaware that the seeding of Aadhaar in the MGNREGS database has been done without requiring the worker to authenticate using their biometrics, and that even payment to workers under the scheme is made by directly crediting money in their account and does not require the worker to authenticate using their biometrics.”
