This itself is going to be major achievement. World has never seen such gigantic data base of an expected 1.2 billion IDs covering the prints of all ten fingers. It will be at least six petabytes. It can check each individual entry for duplication and authentication on mobile phones in three or four seconds. The expectation is that this kind of a massive infrastructure will enable India emerge as an IT super power both in terms of hardware and software. For instance, UID will require largest use of biometrics. Some even expect business contracts once it is proved a success.

But none of these positive factors can conceal the casual manner in which the UID was initially announced in President's address on June 4 last. The move had defied every rule of good governance and disregarded the need to assess the earlier similar experiments before jumping on to such a financially costly project. Thus even before the Nilekani team began working out the details, they had to unceremoniously drop most of the project's widely publicised objectives. Unceremoniously because even the dumping of the most attractive aspects of the project like one single card subsuming the rest was done without any formal announcement.


The official press release on UID had made it look like a remedy for all problems. The UID will meet identity problems of security, personal identification in banking, taxation and even certain kinds of financial transactions. Media went on tom-toming as to how the PAN card, election card, driving licence, BPL and ration cards will all be rolled into a single unique identity card. This was shown as the unique selling pointing of the entire project. The whole sales pitch has now burst. Authorities do not even have the courtesy to put the facts before public. Instead, one has to learn about the changes in bits and pieces from Nilekani's frequent interviews.

Incidentally, even in his earlier interview to Karan Thapar, he had talked of the single-card concept. In later interviews he conceded that UID cannot replace PAN card, driving licence and PDS, NREGS and election cards. Contrary to earlier official claims, there will be no end to multiplicity of cards. It is explained that UIDs are not designed as their substitute. Media had also spread the notion that the UID will, most of all, serve as a proof of citizenship. Nilekani has also described this as false claim, of course, in another interview.

And then came another shock: that there will not be even be a card. Instead, UID will only a digital register of basic data like your name, residence, age and parentage supported by biometric fingerprints. Also, it is now revealed that the UID registration will be purely voluntary, not obligatory. We can, if we choose so, file it and get the number. Like we get an e-mail ID. This means it cannot be of any help to national security or police. For, no terrorist, criminal or white collar offender will voluntarily register themselves to be caught later.

Flagship welfare programmes like NREGS and BPL schemes are areas where UID can aid the delivery system. Use of biometric identity will facilitate direct payment of wages to the beneficiaries. The PM had said that funds saved by plugging the fund leakage to the middlemen will be enough to finance the entire UID scheme. Such broad presumptions apart, experts question the effectiveness of an omnibus UID when a more useful dedicated biometric ATM network is being field-tested for the aam aadmi programmes. Illiterates can better use this voice-based ATM which will perform such functions as seeking information on the nature of jobs and where it is available.

Let's hope this revolutionary model will not be killed just to keep the high-pitched UID alive. Now the World Bank has proposed a biometric system to check absenteeism in India's schools by the teachers and students. Why did UPA's grandiose plan to subsume and replace the cards for citizenship proof, security, PAN, PDS, NREGA job card, election card and now the food security card, by the universal UDI, collapse? Herein lay a grim story of the PMO's poor planning and disregard for inter-ministerial consultations.

Efforts were made during the past two months to hard-sell the UID. But concerned ministries like home, external affairs and even rural development rejected these for practical reasons. They cited the conceptual defects of the project and referred to the failures of so many similar schemes in the past. The idea of citizenship card was first mooted by the Kargil panel which wanted to issue the cards initially in border areas and then extend them nationwide. This could also target illegal Bangladeshis. Before this, T.N. Seshan had threatened to hold up polls to browbeat the states that were slow on election cards.

Watch the plethora of such parallel schemes. Already, the home ministry is going ahead with its National Register of Citizens (NRIC) in 13 states to issue Multi-purpose National Identity Card (MNIC). Simultaneously, home ministry is well ahead with plans to collect data in 2011 census for a National Population Register (NPR) with photographs and biometrics for the purpose of its own UIN data base. After the Mumbai attack, photo-biometric work is in progress in nine maritime states on an emergency basis.

Apparently, the PMO had not factored all such ongoing schemes while presenting it as a spectacular project in the President's address. All said and done, the question now is whether the present shrunken UIADI is worth spending an estimated Rs. 1.50 lakh crore on it. Nilekani says it is too early to fix any figure as cost. Going by the London School of Economics' estimate, it is set to be much higher.

The world over, very few countries have ventured to undertake such a project. US and UK have put the biometric project on the backburner after tremendous public debate. Apart from the problem of cost effectiveness and practical hurdles, the question of privacy has been a major factor. However, that will not be a problem with our UID because Nilekani has explained that the data will include only bare information like address and age. While Australia too has dropped the idea, China is going ahead with it without biometric content. (IPA Service)