Make strategic retreat

The report, “SC to set up Constitution Bench to hear pleas against Aadhaar” (October 31), is a telling commentary on the journey of the Unique Identity Authority of India — from being conceived as an innocuous provider of identity to becoming a tool for duplication of beneficiaries of government subsidy programmes. With every passing day, Aadhaar is acquiring a monstrosity of its own in the public mind space.

Except the days of the Emergency, which witnessed a version of the German concept of Polizeistaat (police state), most of independent India has seen Rechtsstaat (legal or constitutional state). Who would have