New Delhi, May 3: While Aadhaar privacy and its pros and cons are being debated for quite some time in India, China is mulling to soon come out with a system that would track the database of its 1.4 billion citizens. The Chinese, best known for their technical expertise, have termed the identification system as a 'social credit system'. With this, the Chinese government envisages a sweeping programme that will "rate" every citizen by 2020, a report by India Today informed.

The report further informs that citizens will primarily be rated based on their financial behaviour. With the identification system, the Chinese government is also planning to reward the good performers and punish the defaulters.

While all this happens in China, the Indian government is making all efforts to enrol all its citizens in the world’s largest domestic biometric identification system. Aadhar was started as a voluntary programme aimed to help Indians get food subsidies and welfare benefits. Over the time, the 12-digit biometric has become one of the must-have documents in India.

While it has been made mandatory by the government to link Aadhaar details with PAN, Bank accounts and welfare schemes, critics have repeatedly warned that the scheme puts personal information at risk due to reported data leaks and have criticised government efforts to compulsorily link it to bank accounts and mobile phone numbers.

Reports state that the Aadhaar was rolled out in 2014 when the government started the credit blacklist and since then about 9 million people with "poor" ratings have been punished and barred from purchasing air tickets.  Moreover, 3 million have been prohibited from train travel in India.  In 2014, the total number of people having Aadhaar number was 63.22 crore. In the two years, Aadhaar generation has crossed over 111 crore. According to a Census 2011 report, over 99% adult population above the age of 18 have been assigned Aadhaar numbers.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on May 03, 2018 04:43 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).