Shanthi Rajagopal
According to news sources April, 2010, the government’s unique identity project aiming to give a 16-digit number to all citizens of the country renamed ‘AADHAAR’ and its new logo was unveiled. The UID Authority of India will issue the first identity numbers linked to a person’s demographic and biometric information between August and February 2010, and issue about 600 million such IDs over the next five years to help in citizen verification in a timely and inexpensive manner. This is a big advantage to the government and companies. The first set of identity numbers as per the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) will be issued in February 2011.
Benefits:
It would give thousands of Indians the ability to open bank accounts, buy cell phones, and access welfare services easily, while saving companies and government agencies the expensive and time-consuming process of verifying and establishing identities. The Unique Identification Number project of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) ‘AADHAAR’ (foundation) is part of the efforts to reach out to the common man. The chairman for this venture is Nandan Niketan who expressed that he wanted to name this project so that it could effectively communicate its transformational potential and promise to Indian citizens. AADHAR had a national appeal and is easy recognisable and remembered throughout the nation. It’s logo is designed with a sun that has a finger-print in the centre. The logo, selected after a nationwide competition, was unveiled by Dhaneshwar Ram, a resident of Azamgarh in Uttar Pradesh, who was invited by the UIDAI to speak on the hardships faced by the common man in getting an identity at present. The creator of this logo was Atul Sudhakar Rao Pande a designer from Mumbai who was paid a sum of one lakh rupees after his design was selected over 2000 entries.According to journalists he said that he deigned it so even rural people would be able to recognize the sun and the fingerprint.
The project was aimed at the under privileged and the poor who are left out of the government’s social schemes because they lack proof of identity.
UIDAI Director General R S Sharma said the first 16 digit number would be rolled out by February next year 2011.The authority was established by an act of Parliament last year in 2009. The proposed law will give authority to the UID to collect identity information, such as name, gender, date of birth, parents’ name, address and finger prints, from people voluntarily seeking a unique identity number. Previous governments have also considered creating unique ID numbers. The Congress government, which has always been leaning left, with its focus on inclusive growth, has shown innovation by setting up the UIDAI office and allocating $444 million to the UID project.
Challenges of the project:
According to news sources, India gets ready to launch the largest biometric database in the world with the idea of providing most of its 1.2 billion citizens a Unique Identification (UID). The biggest challenge that is faced is smudged fingerprints. The project, which had attracted mobile services firms and technology giants including Tata Consultancy Services, Google, and Microsoft, is expected to address and reduction of waste in India’s multi-billion dollar welfare schemes that include pensions.
According to Samiran Chakraborty research head at Standard Chartered “Aadhar,” is estimated to cost some $2.2-$4.4 billion to implement, but will bring in an equal amount in savings annually from the elimination of duplicate and false identities. He expects the program might have a significantly positive impact on the fiscal and general growth of India.
An estimated 75 million people are homeless and millions others traversing the country as migrant workers with little or no documentation, ensures that the UIDAI has its work cut out.
UIDAI is working with Census 2011 survey, as well as local government bodies and NGOs to reach millions, including an estimated 410 million people living on less than $1.25 a day, an impediment to India’s otherwise staggering growth story. Nandan Nilakeni observed that while it boils down to a lack of proper identity the exclusion can be detrimental.
The average Indian citizen typically has multiple identity cards, including a voter ID, a tax ID, a ration card, passport, driving license and others.Because there is no central database, it has created phantoms on voter lists and welfare schemes. Adding to the complication is the issue of fake ID’s and the fact that the poor have no IDs at all.
Nilekani, Infosys software firm’s former chief was selected by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to spearhead UIDAI after he wrote volubly on the need for a unique ID in his book, ‘Imagining India’, published in 2008.
Nilakeni said that acknowledging the existence of every single citizen automatically compels the state to improve the quality of services, and immediately gives the citizen a fairer, more equitable access to services. He further stated that this recognition can create a better awareness of rights and duties.
Beyond developing the ID cards, the challenge is to make the back-end infrastructure secure and scalable, ensuring privacy and integrating agents who issue the numbers, said Nilekani.Among the biggest challenges is securing clean fingerprints as part of the biometric identification that will also include an image of the face and of the two irises, in rural India. Sreeni Tripuraneni who is chief executive of 4G Identity Solutions which are conducting pilot studies in Andhra Pradesh has said that frequent power failures are another hurdle to the smooth functioning of this venture. Dust is a reason for smudged fingerprints.Generators is required for power.
Operators have also been trained to deal with laborers with deeply calloused hands, for example, or women wearing burqas, according to Tripuraneni, who calls the UID the mother of all databases.
The Aadhaar, earlier known as Unique Identification Number, will be issued after collecting imprints of all ten fingers, iris and face.
This collaboration might pave the way for the delayed biometric PAN cards, an initiative proposed by the then Finance Minister P Chidambaram in 2006 to counter the problem of duplicate PAN cards which were uncovered during IT searches and raids by police and other enforcement agencies.
The IT department had agreed for UID based PAN cards, according to news spources who spoke for Nilekani. The Aadhaar number is expected to come out by February, 2011. Officials are hoping that if the UID is made mandatory for issuing PAN cards in the future, the present cases of certain people having more than one PAN card would be curbed. According to news sources UID will provide lots of benefits to TCS in the form of fiscal remuneration. Extensive consultations with various stake holders-Union& State governments, public sector units, industry and civil society organizations have already been held. Memorandums of Understanding (MoU) with Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka and Union territory of Andaman and Nicobar have been signed and more states have expressed their interest in having similar MoUs. B.B.Nanawati who is the Deputy Director of UIDAI observed that non-identity of the poor was the highest barrier which prevents them from accessing benefits and services provided by the government.
According to reputed sources the government’s UIDAI project would be similar to Social Security Number (SSN) in US and it would serve as identity for each and every individual. Former Infosys chairman Nandan Nilekani is heading the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) project since the last few years on personal request from Dr. Manmohan Singh in the rank of a cabinet minister.
To understand the similarities between the two acts, a brief look at the history of Social Security in the US shows that during the Great Depression in the 1930’s when poverty increased among senior citizens President Roosevelt drafted along with other members of the Congress in the US the Social Security Act.. The act was an attempt to limit what were seen as dangers in the modern American life, including old age, poverty, unemployment, and the burdens of widows and fatherless children. By signing this act on August 14, 1935, President Roosevelt became the first president to advocate the protection of the elderly.
2010, Social Security numbers in the US:
A side effect of the Social Security program in the United States has been the near-universal adaptation of the program’s identification number, SSN (Social Security number) as the national identification number in the United States, and currently a multitude of U.S. entities use the Social Security number as a personal identifier. These include government agencies such as the Internal Revenue Service, the military to identify personnel as well as private agencies such as banks, colleges and universities, health insurance companies, and employers.
The UIDAI projects, according to news sources attempts to create identity verification .There are many advantages but a prime disadvantage could be identity theft. In the US identity theft is a major concern, causing people whose IDs are stolen to have their lives impacted very badly. Protection of governmental agencies against this kind of danger could be helpful towards successful implementation of UIDAI.
Civil society representatives want safeguards against misuse
The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) will finalise the draft legislation on the UID project by the end of the May, 2010 and make it available for public comment. Several civil society representatives are demanding that adequate safeguards against misuse be built into the legislation.
The UIDAI, recently renamed ‘Aadhar,’ invited a group of civil society representatives to a consultation with chairman Nandan Nilekani and his team on 6.5.2010, in part of a series of interactions. Shekhar Singh, founder member of the National Campaign for People’s Right to Information, who chaired one of the discussions at the meeting, said social, economic and technical concerns were voiced.
“There were a lot of concerns about possible misuse, the possibility of using it for racial or religious profiling… [misuse] by commercial interests,” Mr. Singh said. “Then there were those who were worried about privacy, about Big Brother watching.”
Some activists brought up issues of human rights, the threat to privacy and the dangers of “surveillance,” human rights lawyer Vrinda Grover said. “We also asked ‘Where is the legal structure for all this?’” she said.
Mr. Nilekani and his team said the draft legislation was in the process of being finalised and promised that it would be released by the end of May, 2010.
“They said it would be put up for public debate and that an internet discussion group would also be set up,” said Mr. Singh. “There were lots of suggestions about what it should contain, including safeguards against misuse.”
In a meeting of the Empowered Group of Ministers on November 4, 2008, it was decided that the UIDAI would initially be notified as an executive authority, and that “investing it with statutory authority could be taken up for consideration later at an appropriate time.” Subsequently, at a meeting of the Prime Minister’s Council of the UID Authority on August 12, 2009, it was decided that there was a “need for a legislative framework.”
Among the other issues brought up were the technical feasibility of the scheme, the economic costs and actual usefulness in minimising corruption, the overstating of benefits, the need to prevent exclusion of marginal groups, the lack of adequate transparency to prevent manipulation, and the lack of an opt-out mechanism.
Ms. Grover felt that Mr. Nilekani and his team seemed to trivialise the human rights and privacy concerns, dismissing it as a “conspiracy theory.”
Mr. Singh said Mr. Nilekani initially seemed to shrug off responsibility about misuse, saying that the UIDAI was only concerned with providing the number, leaving the applications to others.“I think there needs to be checks and balances,” Mr. Singh added. “I do feel racial profiling and such misuses should be avoided… but I am not that sensitive to privacy issues,” he said, pointing out that India as a society was not very privacy-conscious. However, he also felt that the economic viability of the project and the justification of spending Rs.2,500 crore on a project which may not be successful in preventing corruption should be vigorously debated. “No other country has implemented such a system. There should have been a discussion with the people before it was set up,” Mr. Singh said.
The UIDAI promised to send a detailed response to the concerns raised at the meeting and accepted the suggestion that groups be set up to follow up on technical and economic issues.
Chidambaram takes UID turf war to Manmohan Singh
Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram has taken on Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) boss Nandan Nilekani and Planning Commission Deputy Chairperson Montek Singh Ahluwalia over the controversy-ridden project to give every Indian resident a unique ID number.
On 19.01.2012, Mr. Chidambaram wrote to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, asking him to “instruct” the Planning Commission to bring a note to the Cabinet on the status of the UIDAI, so that there is “clarity” on which agency – the Registrar-General of India (RGI) or the UIDAI – will carry on with the task of capturing the biometric data of the population, as the latter has sought to have its mandate extended.
The UIDAI comes under the nodal authority of the Planning Commission while the RGI functions under the Home Ministry.
The terse one-page letter comes not just in the wake of a Standing Committee of Parliament rejecting the UIDAI Bill, but two articles in the media attacking Mr. Chidambaram for obstructing the progress of the scheme; indeed, in his letter to the Prime Minister, the Home Minister has said: “Some inspired stories have appeared in the media painting the MHA black and presenting distorted facts. I enclose two extracts – one from the Economist and the other from theHindustan Times.”
The work of the RGI, which had been asked to collect biometric data of all usual residents in the country and then send that data to the UIDAI for de-duplication and generation of Aadhar numbers, the Home Minister says in his letter, was “proceeding well and is expected to be completed by mid-2013.” Meanwhile, the UIDAI, Mr. Chidambaram writes, was “also” authorised to collect biometric data first for 100 million people, and subsequently, of up to 200 million people.
Now that the UIDAI wants its mandate extended, the Home Minister has sought clarity on its status: “Since there is no clarity on who will capture the biometric data — the RGI or the UIDAI — a few months ago, I had requested the Planning Commission to bring a paper to the Cabinet or the appropriate Cabinet committee and obtain a decision in the matter,” he has written, adding that he himself had spoken to Mr. Ahluwalia several times on this.
The problem, government sources said, had arisen because the Home Ministry felt that the data collected by the UIDAI was not secure, and had not been verified by a government servant. While the RGI has actually visited households, the UIDAI has invited people to come to designated centres, where the data collection has been done by hired organisations.
Mr. Chidambaram has, therefore, sought “clarity on the issue so that the work of capturing biometrics can go forward.” He ends his letter to the Prime Minister saying: “In my respectful submission, it would not be in the interest of the government to allow the controversy to be played out in the media.”
The problem, sources say, is that the logical order of the UID project has been back to front. First came the assurance of a unique identity, then fund allocation, then feasibility study and the Bill to govern it, which has been rejected by the Standing Committee. And this, after Rs. 672 crores has been spent by the UIDAI till November 2011.
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