N Korea’s Kim is Kerala CPM’s last-ditch hero

Subramanian Swamy, member of the Rajya Sabha and an outspoken leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is fond of narrating the story of his first meeting with the late E M S Namboodiripad, who headed the first communist government in Kerala.Those were the days when the Soviet Union was the oracle of all thoughts communist and the cold war with the capitalist West was at its zenith. ‘EMS’, as he was known, was waxing eloquent on the achievements of communism. “You see Swamy, in the Soviet Union there is no unemployment. There is no inflation. There is no rich-poor divide that is the bane of the capitalist world. And there is no crime worth speaking of,” EMS held forth.Swamy says he did not want to dispute such claims because he had no way of verifying what was happening within the Soviet Union in those days as there was nothing called free press or freedom of expression in that country. Whatever data was available was what was put out by the official media and, naturally, everything looked prim and proper.Swamy met EMS again in late 1992 and he did not miss the opportunity to tell him: “You see Mr Namboodiripad, now there is no Soviet Union!”In fact, not just the Soviet Union, there is no China or Cuba as they existed in those days. The ones that go by the same names now are a far cry from the countries that were led respectively by Mao Zedong and Fidel Castro. Surely Mao will find it difficult to recognise the country where he introduced his famous ‘Great Leap Forward’ theory which, in the name of industrialisation, only led to severe food shortage and starvation. Cuba under Castro was no different and Fidel’s brother Raul, who took over from the original revolutionary in 2008, was quick to realise that friendship with the democratic-capitalist US was the only way to solve Cuba’s problems, most of which were anchored on poverty.So, Lenin and Stalin are not relevant any more in erstwhile Soviet Union, Mao is only a figurehead revolutionary in today’s China which has embraced capitalism by the backdoor and Raul Castro’s Cuba is eager to do so on the other side of the globe. Even tiny (North) Vietnam, which fought what is considered 20th century’s fiercest war against the US, has adopted its own version of capitalism.That leaves North Korea as the only abode of communism in the 21st century. Since EMS is no more, it is left to his faithful followers like Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and his party chief Kodiyeri Balakrishnan to cite North Korea and its authoritarian leader Kim Jong-un as the ideal land and leader, respectively for their party cadres to follow. “North Korea is a country that has adopted a strong anti-American stand. Due to this policy, America has been exerting strong pressure on North Korea. However, that country could effectively resist the US pressure,” Vijayan told the Communist Party of India (Marxist) district conference in Kozhikode last week. Balakrishnan said similar things at a meeting in Kottayam. Several posters eulogising the North Korean dictator were put up at the conference venues and elsewhere in the state. What is at work here is the ‘enemy of my enemy’ logic. But both Vijayan and Balakrishnan forget that Lenin, Mao, Castro, Ho Chi Minh et al were all inimical to the US during their times but the leadership that followed in their respective countries did course correction so as to provide a better life for their peoples. The day after Vijayan spoke in Kozhikode, reports said Kim had expressed his willingness to start negotiations with South Korea, and by extension find meeting ground with the US. If eventually the talks succeed – although at present they do not hold much promise – and the demilitarised zone (DMZ) between the two Koreas blur into insignificance, where will that leave Vijayan and his ilk?The problem with finding heroes and ideologues in foreign lands is that they are tuned to the circumstances and conditions of their countries and not some far-flung state in the southern tip of India. Blind belief in their ideologies can only lead to grief in the long run. As it is, communism in Kerala is on borrowed time. Hero-worship of tyrants like Kim Jung-un can only hasten that grief.A unique question on data securityIf you can’t beat them, join them. That’s the adage. But what if they beat you and you can’t join them? You file a police complaint against them! That’s what the worthies in India’s Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) have done.UIDAI is a statutory body entrusted with the task of issuing every bona fide resident of India a unique 12-digit identity number on a card called ‘Aadhaar’. Although it has been in existence since 2009, UIDAI got its prime status as a statutory agency in July 2016 after the Narendra Modi government saw the benefits of such a card, especially in the hands of the economically weaker sections of the society. Till date more than 1.1bn Aadhaar cards have been issued, leaving just a few million Indians without it and these are being taken care of too. The Aadhaar scheme is by far the world’s largest biometric database. Apart from your name, gender, address, mobile number and e-mail ID, the Aadhaar will also have biometric information like ten fingerprints, two iris scan and facial photograph. It has helped the government save billions of rupees by exposing hundreds of thousands of bogus claimants to various government benefit schemes. So far so good.Trouble started when the government made it mandatory for every citizen to link her Aadhaar’ card to a large number of services, from mobile phones to bank accounts and all other financial transactions and investments. While the purpose of the exercise was to identify illegal transactions and detection of ‘black’ or slush money, it has also led to serious issues related to privacy and security of data collected.Even this, to an extent, would have been admissible but what really cooked the goose for UIDAI is its claim that the Aadhaar biometrics cannot be hacked into. Now this is a challenge for any hacker, budding or seasoned. Turns out that there is no rocket science involved in hacking into the UIDAI database. An enterprising lady reporter in the Chandigarh-based newspaper, The Tribune, paid a paltry Rs500 and got a hacker to reveal all the information on the billion-plus holders of Aadhaar in 10 minutes flat! And the paper promptly published her report on its front pages last week.Now, instead of seeking to tie up the loose ends and make the Aadhaar really ‘unhackable’, UIDAI denied there was any breach in its security system. Not just that, the agency has gone ahead and filed a criminal complaint against the reporter, the newspaper and the hackers whose names were also mentioned in the report.This was not just an instance of shooting the messenger but a blatant display of arrogance on the part of authority. The reporter was only exposing a lacuna in the system which, if not corrected, could lead to serious frauds and consequences. Showing a mirror to the powers that be is the prime duty of a free press. As it is, the Supreme Court of India is getting ready to give its verdict on how far the government can mandate the use of the Aadhaar. Any possibility of breaching its security is surely going to affect the card’s credibility. And any attempt to browbeat a free press will only boomerang on UIDAI or any other authority.