ToxicsWatch, Journal of Earth, Science, Economy and Justice

Purochana, the architect and adviser of Duryodhana in the Mahabharata was employed to construct the Lakshagriha (lacquer house) to entrap and kill Pandavas. Dronacharya, the commander-in-chief of Kaurva’s military force had designed the Chakravyuh (military labyrinth) in which Abhimanyu was trapped and killed. Jane Mayer refers to the "carpet" of the adversary in her book Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right.   

Unless one ascertains the real owner of the Lakshagriha, the mind behind designer of the Chakravyuh and the manufacturer of carpet or digital carpet, fatal consequence of residing, entering or standing on them in a gullible manner cannot be avoided. The collaborators who are master creators of irreality, disguise themselves as loyalists and commit “innocent” fraud on their leaders. More than 50 Prime Ministers and heads of States including two from India have been assassinated but most of the loyalists and intelligence officials who betrayed them have not been made accountable.The opposition leaders including those whose stature was/is taller than the Prime Ministers and Presidents have always been vulnerable.  

The cartel of automatic identification (ID) firms operating from Washington, Paris, London, Brussels and Davos responded by getting a “Task Force for preparation of Policy Document on Identity and Access Management under India’s National e-Governance Program” constituted in October 2006.

The cartel deployed Purochana like persons in India’s oldest political party through its youth wing at an unguarded moment in order to impregnate the party with an “innocent” idea of a digital cave akin to modern day Lakshagriha based on automatic identification of individuals. Subsequently, unique clones of Purochana were installed within the union government, state governments, armed forces, ruling parties, opposition parties and media houses.

Notably, there was formal launch of the World Bank’s eTransform Initiative on April 23, 2010, in Washington for converging private sector, citizen sector and public sector and subsequent to Interpol’s e-identity database project and UID related initiatives of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). Ignoring the recommendations of a study by LSE against "inappropriate" biometric national ID with "capability to electronically trace and profile all" published in June 2005, the Task Force for preparation of Policy Document on Identity and Access Management submitted a report which disclosed the “Indian” version of the UK’s National Identity Card scheme is being packaged and initiated as Unique ID (UID) scheme "to create a central database of resident in the country". Notably, the 34 members of the “Indian” Task Force included representatives from the Technology Solution Providers like i. IBM, ii. Microsoft, iii. Oracle, iv. Computer Associates, v. Novell, vi. Honeywell, vii. HP, viii. Red Hat, ix. ILANTUS Technologies, x. MPhasis and xi. PwC besides other members from NIC, Department of Information Technology (DIT), National Institute for Smart Government, Ministry of Commerce and Industry's Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (E-BizProject), Standardisation Testing and Quality Certification Directorate, ECIL, Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances, Osmania University, IIT Kharagpur, Indian Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore and Society for Promotion of e-Governance in India. The “Indian” concept of unique identification (UID) scheme was first discussed in 2006. The administrative approval for the project "Unique ID for BPL families" was given on March 3, 2006 by Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communications & Information Technology during the tenure Dayanidhi Maran as the minister. 

The Planning Commission's Process Committee led by Dr Arvind Virmani was formed on July 3, 2006 to suggest processes for updation, modification, addition and deletion of data fields from core database under "Unique ID for BPL families’ project. The Committee hired Wipro Ltd as its consultant. Wipro prepared a 14-page long "Strategic Vision: Unique Identification of Residents" in July 2006 envisaging the close linkage that the UID Number with the electoral database. Another 15-page long Wipro document entitled "Does India need a Unique Identity Number?" cited example of UK's Identity Cards Act, 2006 to advance the argument for a biometric UID (Aadhaar) Number. 

After UK repealed The Identity Cards Act 2006 by The Identity Documents Act 2010 to abandon its National ID card project, the beneficial owners of Wipro, the advocates of biometric UID (Aadhaar) scheme and the donors of ruling partied and opposition parties  think their cunning and deceptive silence will justify continued incorporation of biometric identification under the Aadhaar Act, 2016, a clone of UK’s Identity Cards Act, 2006. Having introduced Purochana like individuals in country’s grand old party from the firms that are part of World Ban’s eTransform Initiative, these donors are under the impression that world’s tallest opposition leader will not repeal Aadhaar Act, 2016, the way UK has repealed it.

Unlike the accounting report of the LSE, the report of the Comptroller Auditor General (CAG) of India reveals that CAG was misled to belief that it was Department of Information Technology, not Wipro Ltd which submitted the “Strategic Vision–Unique Identification of Residents" to Process Committee, which approved a UID Authority like entity to be created by executive order. The Process Committee furnished a detailed proposal in this regard. Notably, CAG was misled to ensure that it does not audit the conduct of erstwhile Planning Commission's Process Committee and Wipro Ltd, their consultant who has been accused of 'undue favours' in the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) project by CAG. The report of Dr. S.I. Ahson headed 34-member Task Force for preparation of Policy Document on Identity and Access Management had revealed in April 2007 that the Project Unique ID (UID) is "to create a central database of resident in the country".

A confidential document of UIDAI titled ‘Creating a unique identity number for every resident in India’, leaked by Wikileaks on November 13, 2009 reads: “One way to ensure that the unique identification (UID) number is used by all government and private agencies is by inserting it into the birth certificate of the infant. Since the birth certificate is the original identity document, it is likely that this number will then persist as the key identifier through the individual’s various life events, such as joining school, immunizations, voting etc.” CAG’s audit report failed to audit the deleterious impact of UID/Aadhaar database for the electoral  database and the fundamental right of voters.

The establishment of the UIDAI for issuance of 12-digit Unique Identity unique identification (UID)/Aadhaar numbers assigned to the residents of India in January 2009 and the enactment of Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits, and Services) Act, 2016, the second e-commerce law through a Money Bill has been detected to be constitutionally questionable by a 5-Judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court of India. In the meanwhile, over 144 crore Aadhaar Numbers have been issued as of March 2026. Initially, UID/Aadhaar Number was declared “voluntary” as a fish bait, drawing lessons from a similar project in Pakistan and subsequently it has been made mandatory in an illegitimate manner. The union government claims that over 2200 social welfare schemes of government using Aadhaar Number. It has also claimed that more than 270 good governance schemes and services are using Aadhaar Number and around 500 entities in the financial and telecom sectors have notified to use Aadhaar Number and numerous private and public service providers employing offline verification of Aadhaar Number for rendering services to individuals.

The commercial czars who are benefiting from Aadhaar Number Online Database were brought to light in Comptroller Auditor General (CAG)'s audit report on UIDAI's performance. But government which misled Lok Sabha on July 20, 2022 about Action Taken Report is now using media blitzkrieg to defend the indefensible Aadhaar Number project in the aftermath of the revelation by CAG’s audit report on the performance of UIDAI, a creature of Aadhaar Act.

Like the CAG’s audit report of 2016, the CAG’s audit report released in April 2022 too makes a specific reference to WIPRO Ltd. There is a reference to Agreement with Data Centre Development Agency (DCDA), Bengaluru and Agreement with DCDA, Manesar with Wipro Ltd. CAG has remarked that “The file related to AMC part  was only provided for scrutiny. The file related to selection process of the vendor was not made available. Since the contract involved technical issues, the same was out of the scope of the Audit for scrutiny.” Had UIDAI provided the required files related to “selection process of the vendor”, the audit report would have ensured that sunlight is indeed the best disinfectant.

The Executive Summary of CAG’s audit report begins by talking about “Identification of the right individuals” for “welfare schemes”. Immediately after that it starts talking about how “Citizens were required to furnish multiple documents….to various Government as well as private agencies.” It refers to the inconvenience of “those who did not have any of these identity documents.” It states that in order to “overcome the challenge, the Union Government decided to introduce a unique identity (UID) for the residents of India” in 2009. Contrary to the claims of the promoters of biometric UID/Aadhaar like Nandan Nilekani that “Millions of people without any ID, now have an ID”, the fact is that of all the Aadhaar numbers issued to Indian residents till date – 99.97 per cent had pre-existing identification (ID) documents. This has been revealed in a reply to an application of Ujjainee Sharma and Trishna Senapaty under Right to Information Act by UIDAI. This proves that ‘an inability to prove identity” has not a major barrier to access benefits and subsidies.

CAG’s audit report has detected that “There were instances of issue of Aadhaars with the same biometric data to different residents indicating flaws in the de-duplication process and issue of Aadhaars on faulty biometrics and documents.” It underlines that the Aadhaar database continued to have ‘such questionable’ Aadhaars.

The report asserts that “Issue of Aadhaar numbers to minor children below the age of five, based on the biometrics of their parents, without confirming uniqueness of biometric identity goes against the basic tenet of the Aadhaar Act” unmindful of the fact that “Supreme Court has stated that no benefit will be denied to any child for want of Aadhaar.” It brings to light the fact that UIDAI continues to incur avoidable expenditure on the issue of Bal Aadhaars.

Unmindful of legal complications or inconvenience to holders of Aadhaar issued prior to 2016, UIDAI has failed to identify and fill the missing documents in their database.

The audit report points out that “the quality of data captured to issue initial Aadhaar was not good enough to establish uniqueness of identity.” It reveals that UIDAI is “not in a position to identify reasons for biometric failures and residents were not at fault for capture of poor quality of biometrics.” It also reveals that UIDAI does “not have a system to analyze the factors leading to authentication errors.” UIDAI has failed to “carry out verification of the infrastructure and technical support of Requesting Entities and Authentication Service Agencies before their appointment in the Authentication Ecosystem.” UIDAI has failed to adopt a “data archiving policy, which is considered to be a vital storage management best practice” while maintaining one of the largest biometric databases in the world.

In violation of the Supreme Court’s verdict and in violation of Aadhaar Act 2016 (as amended in 2019), UIDAI is providing “Authentication services to banks, mobile operators and other agencies”. In the aftermath of the deletion of Section 57 which provided for “the use of Aadhaar number for establishing the identity of an individual for any purpose, whether by the State or any body corporate or person, pursuant to any law, for the time being in force, or any contract to this effect”.

The deletion of this provision was in compliance with the Court’s judgment. In the majority judgment, it is stated that apart from authorising the State, even ‘any body corporate or person’ is authorised to avail authentication services. This can be on the basis of purported agreement between an individual and such a body corporate or person. Even if we presume that the legislature did not intend so, the impact of the aforesaid features would be to enable commercial exploitation of individual biometric and demographic information by the private entities. 

The part of Section 57 that allowed for people to voluntarily provide their Aadhaar number to body corporates and individuals, especially on the basis of a contract between the person providing the Aadhaar number and the person acquiring/ authenticating the Aadhaar number, has been held to be unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. But the amendment to Section 4 of the Aadhaar Act that deals with ‘Properties of Aadhaar number” re-introduced clauses that have already been ruled to be unconstitutional.

The audit report reveals that the UIDAI has failed to levy penalties on Biometric Service Providers for deficiencies in their performance in respect of biometric de-duplication and biometric authentication. CAG has recommended that “Agreements in this regard should be modified, if required”. This also creates a logical compulsion for States ruled by opposition parties to unsign their MoUs with UIDAI.

The audit of the functioning of UIDAI reveals that UID/Aadhaar has put the privacy of present and future residents, Prime Ministers, Chief Ministers, judges, legislators, soldiers, civil servants and intelligence officials and their families at risk. It shows how contracts awarded by UIDAI in the name of the President of India to favour private entities.

The audit report concludes that “There were flaws in the management of various contracts entered into by UIDAI. The decision to waive off penalties for biometric solution providers was not in the interest of the Authority giving undue advantage to the solution providers, sending out an incorrect message of acceptance of poor quality of biometrics captured by them.”

The report also reveals that “UIDAI had not ensured that the client applications used by its authentication ecosystem partners were not capable of storing the personal information of the residents, which put the privacy of residents at risk. The Authority had not ensured security and safety of data in Aadhaar vaults. They had not independently conducted any verification of compliance to the process involved.”  

CAG has detected that although the “Aadhaar Act stipulates that an individual should reside in India for a period of 182 days or more in the twelve months immediately preceding the date of application for being eligible to obtain an Aadhaar. In September 2019, this condition was relaxed for non-resident Indians, holding valid Indian Passport. However, UIDAI has not prescribed any specific proof/ document or process for confirming whether an applicant has resided in India for the specified period and takes confirmation of the residential status through a casual self-declaration from the applicant. There was no system in place to check the affirmations of the applicant. As such, there is no assurance that all the Aadhaar holders in the country are ‘Residents’ as defined in the Aadhaar Act.”

But CAG is yet to audit contracts by UIDAI that enabled transfer of Central Identities Data Repository (CIDR) containing all Aadhaar numbers along with corresponding  demographic information and biometric information of Indian residents to foreign and domestic firms, recommend deletion and fix accountability for such a grave act that compromises national security. Notably, Banks and Telecom operators are not mentioned in the Aadhaar Act. All advertisements, SMSs and demands for Aadhaar number are illegitimate and illegal. Supreme Court has declared Section 57 of Aadhaar Act as “Unconstitutional”, outlawing Aadhaar “use for other purposes”.

In such a backdrop, how can world’ tallest opposition leader, his party and allies consider Aadhaar Number database to be deemed legitimate unmindful of the fact that Section 57 of the Aadhaar Act which enabled data transfer to private entities has been declared unconstitutional by the Constitutional Bench of the Supreme Court of India?

It is apparent that the case against Aadhaar Act is pending before a 7-judge Constitution Bench since November 13, 2019 due to lack of judicial courage in the aftermath of the dismissal of Justice Clara Sooronkulova, a judge at the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Kyrgyzstan by Parliament of the Central Asian state to ensure that biometric identification law is not declared unconstitutional by her.

Justice Sooronkulova said, “everyone has to decide for himself whether he wants them to trust the state or not. If you do not deal with politics, politics will deal with you.” Endorsing her position, Temirbek Asanbekov, a former presidential candidate of Kyrgyzstan, reacted, “By introducing biometric registration as a condition for participating in the election, the state creates artificial barriers. To elect and be elected is a constitutional right and not an obligation. We should bear in mind the general state of information security in the country. Citizens’ data could become accessible by various extortionists or even international terrorists. Who will guarantee that evil-minded people will not gain access to this database?” Her dismissal has widely been noted as an act of governmental interference in judiciary. She was sacked on June 18, 2015.. There seems to be a relationship between the sacking of a judge at the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Kyrgyzstan and the inability of the 7-Judge Bench to adjudicate against Aadhaar Act, which has been found to be unconstitutional by a Supreme Court’s 5-Judge Constitution Bench of India in Rojer Mathew vs. South Indian Bank Ltd. & Ors.  [2019] 16 S.C.R. 

The opposition parties, citizens’ parties and independent media are yet to adopt the insight from this judgement to promise the repeal of Aadhaar Act and related schemes. UK’s example demonstrates that national electronic-biometric scheme enabling laws can be repealed and initiatives like centralised National ID database and CIDR of UID/Aadhaar Numbers are reversible, not eternal and irreversible. Unlike UK, so far the parties in India have not been able to demonstrate political courage in this regard           

Significantly, Information Technology (Reasonable security practices and procedures and sensitive personal data or information) Rules, 2011 framed under sections 87 (2) and 43A of the Information Technology Act, 2000 refers to biometric “technologies that measure and analyse human body characteristics, such as 'fingerprints', 'eye retinas and irises', 'voice patterns', "facial patterns', 'hand measurements' and 'DNA' for authentication purposes.” It is apparent that the term “Information Technology” and digital-biometric identity is pregnant with wider meaning which has unprecedented political consequences. The explicit and implicit provisions of the IT law, Aadhaar law and free digital trade deals with countries like USA and UK creates a compelling necessity for globe’s tallest opposition leader to safeguard Indians from Venezuela and Iran like digital gullibility by using political imagination of the freedom struggle against imperialism in myriad disguises.  

After the defeat of the Tony Blair led Labour Party government, which knowingly took UK into an illegal and illegitimate war against Iraq, the scheme was scrapped by the coalition government of David Cameron-Nick Clegg led Conservative Party-Liberal Party government. But the its spectre continued to haunt citizens of UK after the return of the Blair-era regressive biometric identification policies of the Labour Party till July 21, 2026, when the new Burnham led Labour Government announced that it has cancelled the digital ID programme, the mother of India’s digitial-biometric ID programme branded as Aadhaar.

Ironically, unmindful of UK’s 2010 Act that repealed UK’s biometric national ID scheme, UK’s firms like Ernst & Young signed a contract agreement in February 2010 with the President of India for UIDAI. In an RTI reply dated October 25, 2013, UIDAI shared a truncated contract agreement with Ernst & Young. The contract agreement states that “the Unique ID will be a random 12-digit number with the basis for establishing uniqueness of identity being biometrics”. It announces that “we will provide a Unique Identity to over 113.9 crore people.” This is evidently a fraudulent announcement because UIDAI with which the agreement has been signed had the mandate to provide Unique Identity to only 60 crore residents of India, and not to 113.9 crore people. It is evident that while the government kept Ernst & Young informed about its motive, it kept states, citizens, the parliament and the Supreme Court in the dark. The contract agreement reveals that “biometric systems are not 100 % accurate” and “uniqueness of the biometrics is still a postulate.” This admission pulverizes the deceptive edifice on which MEITY’s UID/Aadhaar of Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and National Population Register (NPR) of Ministry of Home Affairs rests.

The "Digital Identity Sectoral Analysis Report 2026" of UK's Office for Digital Identities and Attributes, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology based on an updated study of the digital identity sector in the UK which was published on July 8, 2026 reveals that the registered UK location of the 275 digital identity firms. The report has identified domestic and global office locations for all firms in scope. This data suggests that the majority of firms are founded or headquartered in the UK (73%, 202 firms), and over one in four (27%, 73 firms) are founded or headquartered internationally, but have a UK presence via a registered entity. Out of the 202 UK headquartered firms, 73 (36%) appear to have at least one office outside of the UK. The majority of internationally headquartered firms are based in the USA (45) with the remainder from countries such as Switzerland, France, Israel, Australia, the Netherlands, and 12 other countries. For the 73 UK-headquartered firms with a physical presence in international markets, the report found that 214 offices across 51 countries including 15 in India (21%) with reference to UK headquartered companies with a physical presence in India.

Are they working to promote India's supreme national interest, the way UK did so through its presence in India during 1605-1947? Did these offices play any role in the finalization of Article 12.7 on "Digital Identities" and Article 12.12 on "Open Government Data" under Chapter 12 on Digital Trade in the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) between India and UK signed on July 24, 2025 and which entered into force on July 15, 2026 subsequent to negotiations which were launched on January 13, 2022.

Article 12.7 of the agreement reads: "Digital Identities-1. The Parties recognise that cooperation between the Parties on digital identities will promote connectivity and further growth of digital trade, while recognising that each Party may take different legal and technical approaches to digital identities. Accordingly, the Parties shall endeavour to pursue mechanisms to promote compatibility between their respective digital identity regimes. 2. The Parties shall endeavour to facilitate initiatives to promote compatibility, which may include:(a) fostering technical cooperation between each Party’s implementation of digital identities; (b) developing comparable protection of digital identities under each Party’s legal framework; (c) supporting the development of international frameworks on digital identity regimes; (d) identifying and implementing use cases for the mutual recognition of digital identities; and (e) exchanging knowledge and expertise on best practices relating to digital identity policies and regulations, technical implementation standards and security standards, and the promotion of the use of digital identities." 

It is apparent that UK has signed the agreement after the groundwork for control of India’s data wealth and resources has been done by entities like Ernst & Young. As per the contract agreement of UIDAI with Ernst & Young, the latter can keep data of all present and future Indians up to seven years!    

Article 12.12 of the agreement reads: "For the purposes of this Article, “government data and information” means non-proprietary data and information held by the central level of government and, to the extent provided for under a Party’s laws and regulations, by other levels of government. 2. The Parties recognise that facilitating public access to and use of government data and information stimulates economic and social development, competitiveness, and innovation. To this end, each Party is encouraged to expand the coverage of government data and information digitally available for public access and use through engagement and consultation with interested stakeholders. 3. Each Party shall provide interested persons with a mechanism to request the disclosure of specific government data and information. 4. To the extent that a Party chooses to make government data and information available to the public, it shall endeavour to ensure that to the extent possible the data and information is in a machine-readable and open format, and can be searched, retrieved, used, reused, and redistributed. 5. To the extent that a Party chooses to make government data and information available to the public, it shall endeavour to avoid imposing a condition that unduly prevents or restricts the user of that data and information from: (a) reproducing, redistributing, or republishing the data and information; (b) regrouping the data and information; or (c) using the data and information for commercial and non-commercial purposes, including in the process of production of a new product or service. 6. The Parties shall endeavour to cooperate to identify ways in which each Party can expand access to, and use of, government data and information that the Party has made public, with a view to enhancing and generating business, and innovation opportunities, especially for SMEs, including start-ups." 

A joint reading of the India-UK agreement and the contract agreement between UIDAI and Ernst & Young indicates that The Repealing and Amending Act, 2023 was enacted a low key manner to repeal The Aadhaar and Other Laws (Amendment) Act, 2019 through Section 2 and the First Schedule of the 2023 Act to undo the omission of Section 57 of the Aadhaar Act, 2016 through the 2019 Act and to facilitate the “Digital Trade” and “Open Government Data” related provisions under India-UK agreement, a bilateral international law. It is apparent that it is an attempt to outwit the judgement by the Supreme Court of India.    

After Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement between India and UK came into force, Burnham became UK’s Prime Minister on July 20, 2026. A Research Briefing on “Digital ID in the UK” published on September 4, 2026 by the Library of UK’s Parliament wherein, he is quoted as having stated on September 29, 2025 that there was “a risk of an opportunity cost situation here, where something can consume a huge amount of time and actually doesn’t come through”. Now his government has cancelled the national digital ID programme in order to use the savings to fund the government’s priorities on the cost of living. It is evident that LSE’s report stands vindicated. It also vindicates the findings of the report by the India’s Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance which had cited this report to question and trash India’s unique identification Authority of India Bill, 2010. Is there a connection between the date of delayed announcement of cancellation of UK’s National ID scheme by the Labour Party government and the date of entry into force of the digital trade agreement between India and UK? Wasn’t one of the predecessors of Burnham connected with the first family of Infosys Ltd  the visiting temples to get the agreement signed? Nandan Nilekani, the first chairman of UIDAI was appointed on June 25, 2009 while serving as CEO and Managing Director of Infosys Limited. How is it that both ruling parties and opposition parties are fond of him? Are they standing on the same carpet?

At the behest of the beneficial owners of foreign military and financial entities, Purochanas have built a coalition of the collaborators to support digital Lakshagriha as something which was inspired by Gandhi’s talisman to wipe the tears of the poorest of the poor. After an irreality of benign digital initiative was created, world’s tallest opposition leader was taken for a ride by making him and his party adopt an automated method of recognizing a person based on a biological attributes, wherein a sample of the biological attribute of the entire population is taken, processed by a computer and stored in a Central Identities Data Repository (CIDR) for “one-to-many matching” and “one-to-one matching”.

In her book, Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, Mayer reveals how two tycoons operated behind the scenes for decades to influence politics, policies and laws in the USA. These commercial czars defeated almost all genuine pro-people policies and laws and promoted laws like REAL ID Act to promote biometric identification although it is conclusively established by scientists that it is inherently fallible. The red-and-blue carpet on which Barack Obama stood to take oath as the President of USA after the electoral victory of Democratic Party was custom made in accordance with a government contract, which had been manufactured by Invista, a subsidiary of Koch Industries owned by the two tycoons, the key donors of the Republican Party. Did Obama succeed in doing what his party wished to do while standing on the carpet of the donor of the Republican Party? Can the leader of the oldest party of the leader, his party and his allies succeed without promising to abandon the digital-biometric carpet which has been myopically laid out in India unmindful of its unprecedented lethal consequences for the present and future Indians.   

The stature of the world’s tallest opposition leader will get established and reinforced only if he can pierce through the chakravyuh of digital cave architecture created by tycoons, drawing insights from the simile of cave recorded in Plato’s The Republic else he, his party and his allies will meet the fate of Abhimanyu and will be burnt to ashes in the digital Lakshagriha like the leadership in Iran and  Venezuela.    

Dr. Gopal Krishna 

Also read: India's First Mass Surveillance, Mass Spying Unending Census Case-Part 19 

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 (The author is a practicing advocate and a researcher of philosophy, mass communication and law. His current work is focused on the philosophy of digital totalitarianism and the monetisation of nature. He has appeared before the Supreme Court's Committees, Parliamentary Committees of Europe, Germany and India and UN agencies on the subject of national and international legislations on UID/Aadhaar/NPR, DNA profiling through criminal identification procedures, nuclear damage, consumers, land acquisition, biological diversity, finance, hazardous waste trade, water cycle and corporate crimes since 2001. He is an ex-Fellow, International Research Group on Authoritarianism and Counter Strategies (IRGAC)-University of Potsdam, Germany.)

Corporate Corporations and Opportunism

They Have No Soul – The Opportunism of Corporates

September, 2026

When I was pursuing my Ph.D at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in New Delhi, I originally planned to submit my dissertation on climate-related disasters and corporate crimes. In between, I had to deliver a research presentation on the Bhopal gas tragedy.

At my university center, when students delivered presentations, professors and attendees would pose difficult questions. Therefore, I went to give the presentation carrying a bag packed with notes and supporting evidence. Seeing the heavy weight of my cloth shoulder bag packed with books and documents, they laughed; I replied, “I know what happened to the other students. That is why I took these precautions.” In my talk, while discussing the disaster caused by Union Carbide Corporation, I referred to it as an “industrial genocide”. Objections were raised, advising me not to use loaded terms like "genocide." I remember responding to them by saying, "Those are the words of Prof. Upendra Baxi, not mine." In the course of my doctoral research work, I studied the origin of corporations, their history, the unsuccessful attempts to regulate them and the current initiatives for regulating transanational corporations and other business enterprises. Thus, I have an abundance of data to write on corporate opportunism.

Union Carbide's catastrophic footprint is not confined to Bhopal alone; it exists in the United States as well. Many years prior, the company employed African Americans for mining work there. Many of them died from silicosis. Every time a worker died, someone would immediately fetch a coffin from a warehouse. A journalist reporting on these deaths investigated these coffins and uncovered a shocking truth: the company had manufactured and kept dozens of coffins ready well before the workers had even died.

In 1970, Union Carbide applied to conduct operations in India. For five years, the central industrial development authority of that time did not permit it. They knew the company's technology was substandard. Approval was only granted in 1975, during the Emergency. "We never gave permission; we couldn’t do anything about what was granted during the Emergency," a former official once told me. Whose opportunism granted that approval?

In Bhopal in 1984, due to the company's negligence, poisonous methyl isocyanate gas leaked, killing thousands of people. It stands as one of the world’s worst industrial disasters. Seeking compensation for this, India filed a lawsuit in a U.S. court demanding $3.3 billion. However, in 1989, the Supreme Court of India settled it for just $470 million. Why did they agree to accept such a small sum?

In 2002, Dow Chemicals Company acquired Union Carbide. When one company buys another, the acquiring firm is responsible for all its assets, liabilities, and ongoing issues. Dow Chemical, however, claims that the Bhopal issue is not its responsibility. To back this up, they displayed legal opinions written on official letterheads by two prominent Indian lawyers-cum-politicians. None of these will hold up in court, and litigation related to this is still ongoing. Did Union Carbide genuinely manufacture only pesticides? Did it also operate another facility there to test chemical warfare agents? Was methyl isocyanate the only gas that leaked that day? There are no clear answers to any of these!

Meanwhile, Dow Chemical itself set aside $2.2 billion for a U.S. government agency as compensation solely for damages caused by Union Carbide's asbestos mines in that country. Isn’t having one approach for their home country and another for others the very definition of opportunism?

Speaking of asbestos, here are a few facts: In 1924, it was discovered in London that asbestos causes incurable lung cancer in humans, and a report was formally submitted. Even so, the corporations involved never stopped excavating it and distributing it across the globe. Today, asbestos is banned in 70 countries around the world. But not in India. It continues to arrive from Russia, Kazakhstan, and China. Corporations continue manufacturing its byproducts for their profits.

Consider how popular baby talcum powder from the American multinational Johnson & Johnson is. Lawsuits were filed across the United States alleging that asbestos contamination in their talcum powder caused cancer. Over here in India, the company advertised that its baby powder was safe. It was never banned here. Instead, their factory in Maharashtra was simply shut down, and that was the extent of the action taken. 

Did the company not know that their powder was contaminated with asbestos? Even back in the 1970s,

According to an investigative report by Reuters, the company knew about it as early as the 1970s. Yet, what should we call the fact that it continued to conceal the issue? There are many names for it. One of them is opportunism.

This is the age of information technology. Earlier, the sole objective of corporations was to make profits. Today, it is to collect data—and convert that data into money. This is what is called surveillance capitalism.

Google once had the slogan “Do No Evil” as part of its philosophy. Today, as the company has become more “honest,” those words are no longer part of its stated philosophy. The company has shifted its stance.

You may remember the internal memo that Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg circulated among the company's directors. In it, he reportedly said, in essence, “Don't worry about good or evil; focus on what becomes popular.”

Remember how Mark Zuckerberg faced questioning before the US Congress over providing data about Meta users and their friends to another company (Cambridge Analytica) and earning advertising revenue from it. 

WhatsApp recently ran an advertisement saying, “Nobody—not even WhatsApp—can see or hear your chats and conversations.” Do you still believe that?

The companies that operated the mines in the Kolar Gold Fields ran schools and hospitals there as long as mining operations continued. Once the mining industry ended, all of these were shut down.

Corporations have no soul. They are against nature; they are against humanity. Their only objective is profit.

During the 1970s, multinational corporations from USA were involved in overthrowing governments in South America. They interfered in domestic governance. Following this, Chile brought a resolution before the UN to establish regulations governing multinational corporations. The UN formed a committee headed by former Reserve Bank of India Governor L. K. Jha pursuant to his work another UN committee was asked to draft such code of conduct for corporation. The committee submitted the a draft code of conduct in 1983 and subsequently it was finalized. 

Although the issue continued to be discussed in 1989 and the 1990s,  it was adopted by the UN General Assembly on December 21, 1990 but it was not pursued and the text of the Code of Conduct of Transnational Corporations was never implemented. Do I even need to explain why?

In the meantime, on September 11, 1973, Chilean President Salvador Allende was killed in his presidential palace, admittedly as a result of the influence of a corporation.

In 2003, a UN Sub Commission on Human Rights headed by Prof. David Weissbrodt prepared a draft report for the UN Norms on the responsibilities of multinational corporations concerning human rights. However, it was dismissed by corporate associations on the ground that it was duplicate, a copy of existing provisions.

I asked David Weissbrodt about UN Norms being duplicate. He replied with a meaningful response: “Yes, it is duplicate. Therefore, that does not mean it is unnecessary.”

Prof. John Ruggie was made the UN Special Rapporteur on business and human rights. He developed a framework concerning the human-rights conduct of corporations. It called for  voluntarily regulation by corporations. What particularly struck me in his report was his observation that "corporations are undemocratic economic organisations.”

The recent efforts for an enforceable binding international treaty have been underway since 2014 "to regulate, in international human rights law, the activities of transnational corporations and other business enterprises”. The draft text of the new treaty is ready, an outcome of over 50 years of effort by countries like Chile, Ecuador, India, China, South Africa and others. It can ensure that business enterprises are subservient to both peoples’ will and legislative will. It can establish the primacy of human rights and public interest over private economic interests.   

In India, under the Companies Act, 1956 corporations could contribute 5% of their annual income to political parties. In 2011, during a discussion on Black Money, Congress leader Manish Tewari said in Parliament, “Funding given to political parties is the mother of black money.”

Within a few hours of his statement, the Companies Bill was introduced. It allowed corporations to contribute up to 7.5% of their average net profits over three years to political parties based on the recommendations of Yashwant Sinha headed Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance.

Do we need another example to explain the meaning of irony?

Not only that, when corporations are allowed to spend up to a total of 14.5% on parties, NGOs and corporate social responsibility, should Parliament serve at the pleasure of large corporations? Or should large corporations remain accountable to Parliament? I leave that to your surmise.

In 2017, another amendment was made to the same law. Corporations were no longer required to disclose which political party they had given money to. The 7.5% limit was also removed. This effectively meant that corporations could contribute any amount they wanted.

This was the foundation for the introduction of electoral bonds.

In 2024, the Supreme Court declared the amendments made to the law unconstitutional and struck down the electoral bonds scheme. However, I regret that nothing was done regarding the funds that had already been received through the scheme.

The Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) had filed a case in the Delhi High Court against the Congress and BJP, alleging that they had received corporate funding from foreign sources in violation of the law. In 2014, the High Court delivered a historically significant judgment stating that the Election Commission should take action against these parties.

The affected parties appealed against the judgment in the Supreme Court and later withdrew their petitions. Parliament subsequently passed retrospective amendments introduced by the government to the Companies Act and related laws, making such funding received since 1975 legally valid. 

The root of the functioning of corporations whose sole objective is profit is opportunism. It is from this opportunism that their criminal activities arise.

Adivasis of Singhbhum, Jharkhand aptly say, "companies do make us smile, they make us cry", "companies do not feed us, they feed on us."  

In the aftermath of the Cambridge Analytica and biometric identification database scandal, it is crystal clear that corporations want to establish apparent truth because real truth reveals their dehumanizing nature.       

Dr. Gopal Krishna  

Courtesy: September 26 issue of Andhimazhai's upcoming print version, https://www.andhimazhai.com/special-section/special-pages/avatrukku-aanmaa-illai