Nandan Nilekani maintains UIDAI is not mandatory, but various institutions of the state are slowly converted to work with a UIDAI based system. Why this double speak? There might be an explanation: In the early days of UIDAI, during press conferences whenever some reporter would raise a question about privacy issues Nandan Nilekani would reply with a smile; ‘But the scheme is not mandatory’, thereby preempting or limiting speculation anchored around privacy. Perhaps not projecting the scheme as mandatory was part of a well thought out strategy to blunt set attacks which could come from the privacy advocacy sector. Such a smart approach may work very well with the corporate sector, but should the state not communicate a new policy with a bit of earnestness? If the scheme is called Aadhar (foundation) how the hell can it not be mandatory? If it is mandatory, who mandates it? The Parliament of India has certainly not mandated UIDAI, so who has?