Dear Comrades,
MUMBAI - A key parliamentary body has all but hurled out India's
high-profile national Unique Identification Project, perhaps the most hurried,
if not largest of its kind in human history.
After a two-year life, the biometric identification scheme for 1.2 billion people faces either redesign or death. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh heads a cabinet meeting this week to decide its destiny.
Called "Aadhaar" - meaning "foundation" or "support" - India budgeted US$603 million to give a 12-digit number to each of 600 million residents by March 14, 2014, in the first two phases. It could be big money and effort down the drain.
The central government had asked Unique Identification Authority
After a two-year life, the biometric identification scheme for 1.2 billion people faces either redesign or death. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh heads a cabinet meeting this week to decide its destiny.
Called "Aadhaar" - meaning "foundation" or "support" - India budgeted US$603 million to give a 12-digit number to each of 600 million residents by March 14, 2014, in the first two phases. It could be big money and effort down the drain.
The central government had asked Unique Identification Authority
of India (UIDAI) project chairman Nandan Nilekani to enroll 200 million people
by January 2012, in a first phase. With the target set to be reached by January
end, the project goes effectively into a coma if the government does not give
the go-ahead.
The UID number, set to only prove identity, not citizenship [1], would be supported by biometric devices such as facial recognition systems, eye and fingerprint scanners. But the Parliament Standing Committee on Finance delivered the near knockout punch to the mega mission, with its December 13 report sharply questioning its practicability and credibility.
The Finance Committee, one of 17 such workhorse entities for legislative homework, also challenged the legality, quality of technology and potential misuse of the UID information collected over the past two years. The project had "no clarity of purpose," observed the 48-page report from 53 parliamentarians, "and it is being implemented in a directionless way with a lot of confusion". [2]
The confusion is not surprising, given that India already has one too many national ID cards, unlike the multiple-purpose single devices seen in other countries - the nine-digit Social Security number in the US, for instance, China's 18-digit Resident Identity Card, or the Hong Kong Identity Card.
In contrast, India has the Voters ID card issued by the Election Commission, the Permanent Account Number (PAN) card issued by the Ministry of Finance, the passport issued by the Ministry of External Affairs, the driving license issued by Regional Transport Offices (RTOs) - any one of which serves as the mandatory photo ID proof for uses like opening a new bank account, a cellular phone service and entering airports. And there is also the ration card issued by state governments to any Indian family needing subsidized basic groceries.
But apart from the PAN card for income tax payers, none of these national ID devices are compulsory. Now the UID increases chances of various ministries not just re-inventing the wheel, but studiously reinventing the reinvented wheel.
Adding to any overlap, India has another ongoing mega project in the Ministry of Information Technology's National Population Register (NPR). This mammoth exercise to build a database of Indian citizens includes a listing of residential houses in the country. The UID project was to later merge with the NPR. But differences of opinion have arisen whether that will happen.
Singh's cabinet meeting this week will decide whether to resolve such issues or dissolve the UID. Or perhaps invent a peculiar Ministry for National Identity Cards to avoid turf wars breaking out.
Another tacitly understood reason for the UID was fool-proof identity verification. Yet the "Aadhaar" number apparently has also been doled out to illegal residents, many of whom sneak in through India's eastern borders. The Home Ministry has strongly expressed its security concerns about the UID.
Such concerns are as ancient as Rome, the earliest known country with a concrete citizenship process. Male citizens had to register in the census once every five years, and declare details of family members, wealth and slaves. To free a slave he owned, he could register the slave in the census as a citizen, a procedure called "manumissio censu". The census gave a sense of national identity, and became a foundation of the Roman Empire.
The Roman census was compulsory. If a citizen failed to sign up, Rome was entitled to confiscate his possessions and sell him as a slave. Roman citizenship perks included the right to vote, and not to be tortured or crucified for any crime.
More modern national identity rights though serve more benign reasons. Ashwini Kumar, the Minister of State for Planning and Science and Technology, told parliament that a key objective of the UID was to ensure the economically weaker sections are not get excluded from access to governmental welfare schemes for want of identity documents.
"Aadhaar aims to provide a soft identity infrastructure which can be used to re-engineer public services so that these lead to equitable, efficient and better delivery of services," Kumar said on March 10, 2011.
For this aim, the UID project seems to have modeled itself on the 75-year old US Social Security Services number that entitles United States governmental aid, including for the homeless, disabled and health care for people over age 64. But as a two-year old project, the UID may have attempted too much too soon for too many.
The US Social Security System, for instance, reached out to 53,236 Americans in 1937. By 2008, 50.8 million American residents benefited from US$615.3 billion of governmental welfare programs. It took a journey of over seven decades before now, when one in seven Americans now benefits from the Social Security number. In contrast, the UID project aims to give 600 million people their national ID numbers in four years.
The result is tokenism in welfare rather than substance. In November 2010, for instance, 27 homeless street dwellers in New Delhi like Khaiver Hussain and Tufail Ahmed received their UID cards. Their new ID numbers helped them open bank savings accounts and access old-age pensions. But India has millions of urban homeless, and there is no focused plan to reach out to them. In Mumbai, where over one million live on the streets, the UID has opened a facility for online registering. The Internet and cyber cafes are not exactly favored mode of communication among pavement dwellers in India.
Besides the homeless, the UID project aims to enroll the aged, migrants, leprosy patients and other disadvantaged sections through an "introducer system" - where the vouching "introducer" could be a responsible citizen, from a parliamentarian to the postman.
The postman could have been a bigger fulcrum of the project. The US Social Security Administration used post offices as starting point for registration forms when it started in 1936. It now operates from 1,400 office and US embassies worldwide. India's 150,000-plus post offices - the largest postal network in the world - were not used for distributing UID applications. Where these 20,000 enrollment stations exist has not been made advertised either.
Instead of manageable morsels, the UID project may have bitten off more than it can chew - and the government may have to spit the whole mouthful out.
Doing some good is of course better than doing no good at all, but the UID could have done with a trial run in a state like Maharashtra, or a mega city like Mumbai. Glitches could have been ironed out, before gradually widening its scope on a national scale - glitches like finger prints not showing clearly in the calloused hands of laborers, a section of population the UID is targeting.
The cabinet meeting this week would decide whether the world's largest biometric ID project would solve such problems, or end up creating new ones. The parliamentary report is anyway a severe indictment on the governmental habit of launching grandiose schemes without adequate homework - particularly of the kind to see if it would be wiser to strengthen and fine-tune existing solutions.
Notes
1. "The Unique Identification (UID) number called 'Aadhaar' is a 12-digit random number. It does not contain any intelligence. The number will prove only identity and not citizenship," Ashwini Kumar, India's Minister of State for Planning, Parliamentary Affairs and Science and Technology told the Rajya Sabha (the indirectly elected Upper House of parliament) in response to a question on the UIDAI project. "No demographic or biometric information will be shared in response to requests for authentication of identity. A set of mandatory, conditional and optional demographic data such as name, date of birth, gender, name of parents, residential address and biometric features such as photograph, all 10 finger prints and iris images will together establish and verify the identity of a resident."
2. Standing Committee on Finance Report on the National Identification Authority of India Bill, 2010.
The UID number, set to only prove identity, not citizenship [1], would be supported by biometric devices such as facial recognition systems, eye and fingerprint scanners. But the Parliament Standing Committee on Finance delivered the near knockout punch to the mega mission, with its December 13 report sharply questioning its practicability and credibility.
The Finance Committee, one of 17 such workhorse entities for legislative homework, also challenged the legality, quality of technology and potential misuse of the UID information collected over the past two years. The project had "no clarity of purpose," observed the 48-page report from 53 parliamentarians, "and it is being implemented in a directionless way with a lot of confusion". [2]
The confusion is not surprising, given that India already has one too many national ID cards, unlike the multiple-purpose single devices seen in other countries - the nine-digit Social Security number in the US, for instance, China's 18-digit Resident Identity Card, or the Hong Kong Identity Card.
In contrast, India has the Voters ID card issued by the Election Commission, the Permanent Account Number (PAN) card issued by the Ministry of Finance, the passport issued by the Ministry of External Affairs, the driving license issued by Regional Transport Offices (RTOs) - any one of which serves as the mandatory photo ID proof for uses like opening a new bank account, a cellular phone service and entering airports. And there is also the ration card issued by state governments to any Indian family needing subsidized basic groceries.
But apart from the PAN card for income tax payers, none of these national ID devices are compulsory. Now the UID increases chances of various ministries not just re-inventing the wheel, but studiously reinventing the reinvented wheel.
Adding to any overlap, India has another ongoing mega project in the Ministry of Information Technology's National Population Register (NPR). This mammoth exercise to build a database of Indian citizens includes a listing of residential houses in the country. The UID project was to later merge with the NPR. But differences of opinion have arisen whether that will happen.
Singh's cabinet meeting this week will decide whether to resolve such issues or dissolve the UID. Or perhaps invent a peculiar Ministry for National Identity Cards to avoid turf wars breaking out.
Another tacitly understood reason for the UID was fool-proof identity verification. Yet the "Aadhaar" number apparently has also been doled out to illegal residents, many of whom sneak in through India's eastern borders. The Home Ministry has strongly expressed its security concerns about the UID.
Such concerns are as ancient as Rome, the earliest known country with a concrete citizenship process. Male citizens had to register in the census once every five years, and declare details of family members, wealth and slaves. To free a slave he owned, he could register the slave in the census as a citizen, a procedure called "manumissio censu". The census gave a sense of national identity, and became a foundation of the Roman Empire.
The Roman census was compulsory. If a citizen failed to sign up, Rome was entitled to confiscate his possessions and sell him as a slave. Roman citizenship perks included the right to vote, and not to be tortured or crucified for any crime.
More modern national identity rights though serve more benign reasons. Ashwini Kumar, the Minister of State for Planning and Science and Technology, told parliament that a key objective of the UID was to ensure the economically weaker sections are not get excluded from access to governmental welfare schemes for want of identity documents.
"Aadhaar aims to provide a soft identity infrastructure which can be used to re-engineer public services so that these lead to equitable, efficient and better delivery of services," Kumar said on March 10, 2011.
For this aim, the UID project seems to have modeled itself on the 75-year old US Social Security Services number that entitles United States governmental aid, including for the homeless, disabled and health care for people over age 64. But as a two-year old project, the UID may have attempted too much too soon for too many.
The US Social Security System, for instance, reached out to 53,236 Americans in 1937. By 2008, 50.8 million American residents benefited from US$615.3 billion of governmental welfare programs. It took a journey of over seven decades before now, when one in seven Americans now benefits from the Social Security number. In contrast, the UID project aims to give 600 million people their national ID numbers in four years.
The result is tokenism in welfare rather than substance. In November 2010, for instance, 27 homeless street dwellers in New Delhi like Khaiver Hussain and Tufail Ahmed received their UID cards. Their new ID numbers helped them open bank savings accounts and access old-age pensions. But India has millions of urban homeless, and there is no focused plan to reach out to them. In Mumbai, where over one million live on the streets, the UID has opened a facility for online registering. The Internet and cyber cafes are not exactly favored mode of communication among pavement dwellers in India.
Besides the homeless, the UID project aims to enroll the aged, migrants, leprosy patients and other disadvantaged sections through an "introducer system" - where the vouching "introducer" could be a responsible citizen, from a parliamentarian to the postman.
The postman could have been a bigger fulcrum of the project. The US Social Security Administration used post offices as starting point for registration forms when it started in 1936. It now operates from 1,400 office and US embassies worldwide. India's 150,000-plus post offices - the largest postal network in the world - were not used for distributing UID applications. Where these 20,000 enrollment stations exist has not been made advertised either.
Instead of manageable morsels, the UID project may have bitten off more than it can chew - and the government may have to spit the whole mouthful out.
Doing some good is of course better than doing no good at all, but the UID could have done with a trial run in a state like Maharashtra, or a mega city like Mumbai. Glitches could have been ironed out, before gradually widening its scope on a national scale - glitches like finger prints not showing clearly in the calloused hands of laborers, a section of population the UID is targeting.
The cabinet meeting this week would decide whether the world's largest biometric ID project would solve such problems, or end up creating new ones. The parliamentary report is anyway a severe indictment on the governmental habit of launching grandiose schemes without adequate homework - particularly of the kind to see if it would be wiser to strengthen and fine-tune existing solutions.
Notes
1. "The Unique Identification (UID) number called 'Aadhaar' is a 12-digit random number. It does not contain any intelligence. The number will prove only identity and not citizenship," Ashwini Kumar, India's Minister of State for Planning, Parliamentary Affairs and Science and Technology told the Rajya Sabha (the indirectly elected Upper House of parliament) in response to a question on the UIDAI project. "No demographic or biometric information will be shared in response to requests for authentication of identity. A set of mandatory, conditional and optional demographic data such as name, date of birth, gender, name of parents, residential address and biometric features such as photograph, all 10 finger prints and iris images will together establish and verify the identity of a resident."
2. Standing Committee on Finance Report on the National Identification Authority of India Bill, 2010.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/NA24Df01.html
