Unique Identification Agency of India, the authority that issues the Aadhaar card, is willing to spend close to Rs 30 crore a year for a media makeover campaign.
A report in The Economic Times says the agency has got a go-ahead from Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It says that UIDAI has floated a proposal and are looking for advertising and creative agency to ‘dispel misconceptions’ that the data in its possession is not safe and that it has a “spotless record” in data security.
According to the report, the proposal floated by the UIDAI wants to project Aadhaar as an example of ‘nation building.’ “In recent months, some reservations on Aadhaar had cropped up, mostly misconceived,” says the proposal.
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The ET report says the proposal mentions that there were misconceptions on lack of statutory status for the UIDAI. The UIDAI reportedly says that it is a “bona-fide legal entity” which is administrated “like any office” of the government and that it was answerable to the Parliament and the CAG in the function it performs.
Rajesh Bansal, assistant director general of the UIDAI confirmed the development to the newspaper and said that they were indeed looking to hire an agency for the image-makeover.
The UIDAI would seem to need that much coveted facelift after reports mentioned how Sharad Sharma of iSpirit, one of the agencies associated with Aadhaar, admitted to have trolled those who argued for better privacy and security standards vis-a-vis Aadhaar.
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Sharma was called out by Kiran Jonnalagadda, the co-founder of HasGeek, in a medium post which went viral. In it, Jonnalagadda showed how Sharma used multiple accounts on social media to troll those who didn’t have something nice to say about the biometric code.
UIDAI’s plan would possibly involve not getting into this kind of a situation in the future.
