In 2009, I became extremely concerned with the concept of Unique Identity for various reasons. Connected with many like minded highly educated people who were all concerned.
On 18th May 2010, I started this Blog to capture anything and everything I came across on the topic. This blog with its million hits is a testament to my concerns about loss of privacy and fear of the ID being misused and possible Criminal activities it could lead to.
In 2017 the Supreme Court of India gave its verdict after one of the longest hearings on any issue. I did my bit and appealed to the Supreme Court Judges too through an On Line Petition.
In 2019 the Aadhaar Legislation has been revised and passed by the two houses of the Parliament of India making it Legal. I am no Legal Eagle so my Opinion carries no weight except with people opposed to the very concept.
In 2019, this Blog now just captures on a Daily Basis list of Articles Published on anything to do with Aadhaar as obtained from Daily Google Searches and nothing more. Cannot burn the midnight candle any longer.
"In Matters of Conscience, the Law of Majority has no place"- Mahatma Gandhi
Ram Krishnaswamy
Sydney, Australia.

Aadhaar

The UIDAI has taken two successive governments in India and the entire world for a ride. It identifies nothing. It is not unique. The entire UID data has never been verified and audited. The UID cannot be used for governance, financial databases or anything. It’s use is the biggest threat to national security since independence. – Anupam Saraph 2018

When I opposed Aadhaar in 2010 , I was called a BJP stooge. In 2016 I am still opposing Aadhaar for the same reasons and I am told I am a Congress die hard. No one wants to see why I oppose Aadhaar as it is too difficult. Plus Aadhaar is FREE so why not get one ? Ram Krishnaswamy

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.-Mahatma Gandhi

In matters of conscience, the law of the majority has no place.Mahatma Gandhi

“The invasion of privacy is of no consequence because privacy is not a fundamental right and has no meaning under Article 21. The right to privacy is not a guaranteed under the constitution, because privacy is not a fundamental right.” Article 21 of the Indian constitution refers to the right to life and liberty -Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi

“There is merit in the complaints. You are unwittingly allowing snooping, harassment and commercial exploitation. The information about an individual obtained by the UIDAI while issuing an Aadhaar card shall not be used for any other purpose, save as above, except as may be directed by a court for the purpose of criminal investigation.”-A three judge bench headed by Justice J Chelameswar said in an interim order.

Legal scholar Usha Ramanathan describes UID as an inverse of sunshine laws like the Right to Information. While the RTI makes the state transparent to the citizen, the UID does the inverse: it makes the citizen transparent to the state, she says.

Good idea gone bad
I have written earlier that UID/Aadhaar was a poorly designed, unreliable and expensive solution to the really good idea of providing national identification for over a billion Indians. My petition contends that UID in its current form violates the right to privacy of a citizen, guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution. This is because sensitive biometric and demographic information of citizens are with enrolment agencies, registrars and sub-registrars who have no legal liability for any misuse of this data. This petition has opened up the larger discussion on privacy rights for Indians. The current Article 21 interpretation by the Supreme Court was done decades ago, before the advent of internet and today’s technology and all the new privacy challenges that have arisen as a consequence.

Rajeev Chandrasekhar, MP Rajya Sabha

“What is Aadhaar? There is enormous confusion. That Aadhaar will identify people who are entitled for subsidy. No. Aadhaar doesn’t determine who is eligible and who isn’t,” Jairam Ramesh

But Aadhaar has been mythologised during the previous government by its creators into some technology super force that will transform governance in a miraculous manner. I even read an article recently that compared Aadhaar to some revolution and quoted a 1930s historian, Will Durant.Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Rajya Sabha MP

“I know you will say that it is not mandatory. But, it is compulsorily mandatorily voluntary,” Jairam Ramesh, Rajya Saba April 2017.

August 24, 2017: The nine-judge Constitution Bench rules that right to privacy is “intrinsic to life and liberty”and is inherently protected under the various fundamental freedoms enshrined under Part III of the Indian Constitution

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the World; indeed it's the only thing that ever has"

“Arguing that you don’t care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say.” -Edward Snowden

In the Supreme Court, Meenakshi Arora, one of the senior counsel in the case, compared it to living under a general, perpetual, nation-wide criminal warrant.

Had never thought of it that way, but living in the Aadhaar universe is like living in a prison. All of us are treated like criminals with barely any rights or recourse and gatekeepers have absolute power on you and your life.

Announcing the launch of the # BreakAadhaarChainscampaign, culminating with events in multiple cities on 12th Jan. This is the last opportunity to make your voice heard before the Supreme Court hearings start on 17th Jan 2018. In collaboration with @no2uidand@rozi_roti.

UIDAI's security seems to be founded on four time tested pillars of security idiocy

1) Denial

2) Issue fiats and point finger

3) Shoot messenger

4) Bury head in sand.

God Save India

Monday, February 28, 2011

1161 - Fillip for UID Mission - Source Equity Bulls

Fillip for UID Mission

The Union Budget for 2011-12 which was presented in the Parliament today laid special emphasis on improving governance through Unique ID (UID).

While presenting the Budget Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said that the UID Mission has taken off and Aadhaar numbers are being generated in large numbers. So far 20 lakh Aadhaar numbers have been given and from 1st October 2011, ten lakh numbers will be generated per day.

The stage is now set for realizing the potential of Aadhaar for improving service delivery, accountability and transparency in governance of various schemes.

Source: Equity Bulls

Posted On: 2011-02-28 02:51:56

1160 - Dividend of despair - Wxpressbuzz

Sumit Mitra First Published : 26 Feb 2011 12:05:00 AM ISTLast Updated : 26 Feb 2011 01:29:42 AM IST
 
Is India having a ‘population problem’? While many will agree, some will say that the population scenario, instead of being a spectacle of unrelieved gloom, is actually a cloud with a fairly thick silver lining lying right ahead. It is called the ‘demographic dividend.’ We have to wait a while for an accurate demographic profile to appear from the Census 2011 data, and thus measure this ‘dividend,’ if at all. 

However, the intercensal estimates put the 2009 ratio of persons in the 15 to 64 age group, known as the working age population (though not all of them are necessarily working), at 64.3 per cent. In contrast, their ‘dependents’ are 30.8 per cent among the young (0 to 14 years) and 4.9 per cent old. 

On this basis, every 100 Indians who are fit to work are now supporting 55.5 who are too young or too old to work. So that is the overall ‘dependency ratio’ of India.
 
But dependents are not always bad. The young dependents hold out the future promise, as they come of age, to join the workforce and be an earner. India’s young dependency ratio, at 47.09, is a huge number, comprising 32 crore youngsters. 

It is this population that constitutes the ‘demographic dividend.’ It supposedly gives us an edge over China, where the young dependency ratio has dropped to 24.4 — nearly a half of India’s — thanks to the one-child norm adopted in Mao Zedong’s China in the 1960s. But there are two reasons why we may not celebrate it yet.
 
First, India’s young dependency rate is falling very very slowly, to reach 33.2 as late as 2035. So the ‘dividend’ will be too long to mature. Therefore, Indian parents will have to spend a fortune for many years more in bringing up their children. Besides, those who are less likely to produce workers are multiplying much faster than others. This needs to be explained.
 
Total Fertility Rate (TFR) measures the number of babies a woman is expected to produce in her reproductive years. India has witnessed an admirable, but gradual, drop in TFR, from 3.8 in 1990 to 2.72 in 2009. But TFR is an average with varying figures among different social groups, and even outliers. The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes are an outlier. They are nearly a quarter of the population but their TFR is as high as 2.89. Since the Hindus as a whole (including SC/ST) have a TFR of just 2, it shows how much the TFR of other castes have shrunk below the replacement level of 1.9, which is the benchmark that a community needs to retain its size in the long term. Therefore an increase in the share of SC/ST in the young population (resulting from higher TFR) may not contribute to demographic dividend because of the educational handicaps they carry historically. 

In 2001, India’s overall male literacy was 64.2 per cent more than SC male literacy while women overall were 67.4 per cent more literate than SC women.
 
It implies that the existing and waiting crops of SC (and even more the ST) youngsters may not qualify themselves for gainful employment when the time comes. With the Muslims (TFR 2.4), the problem is of a different nature as their women are kept more at home, dragging the community’s work participation rate to 31.3 per cent (in 2001) against the Hindus’ 40.4 per cent. One need not sound like a neo-Nazi in saying that India will carry a substantial load of idlers, country yokels and sitters-at-home in 2028, when the number of its people in the working age overtakes that of China. India’s population will still be growing though China’s will stop by 2025. But India will still be short of quality workers.
 
What is needed is a preferential family planning. But forcible sterilisation is of course a closed chapter following the lessons of the 1975 Emergency.  But it is clear that if India wants to reap the benefit of a large working age population, it must go in for not just population management but a highly targeted one at that. It is easier said than done. So easy it is to portray it as ethnic cleansing!
 
However, an idea which the government may give a try is to link a family’s entitlement under welfare programmes like the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee (MGNREG) scheme and the Public Distribution System (PDS) to two factors: the number of children per couple; and compliance with the Right to Education, meaning that the children are kept enrolled till age 14. This disincentive of welfare withdrawal might not be of much use for the Muslims, who do not quite have an education deficit. But it may spur the dalits and tribals to treat their children as future assets. It is specially so now, as the Unique Identification (UID) card, when fully unrolled, will enable the state to link multiple aspects of the cardholder’s status.
 
It will still have a political fallout that every party in government will naturally hesitate to accept. Yet it is not a repressive measure like forced sterilisation, and so the political risk may be within reasonable limits. But it is also a fact that in poor households procreation is generally a male imposition. If the women in poor and uneducated homes continue to remain without a voice in a matter so vital to them, there is little hope that fiscal incentives, or even statutory obligations (as under the Right to Education), would be of help. Unwanted babies will keep coming despite the risk of being cut off from the ration list.
 
There is an interesting solution hinted at by popular authors Steven D Levitt and Stephen J Dubner in their 2009 book, ‘SuperFreakonomics’. It cites a study by two American economists, Emily Oster and Robert Jensen, of the effect of satellite colour television on Indian village women. They studied data from a government survey of 2,700 mostly rural households, and obviously their own survey of villages was not connected to satellite television. As it turned out, “the women who recently got cable TV were significantly less willing to tolerate wife-beating, less likely to admit to having a son preference, and more likely to exercise personal autonomy.” The study of course needs to be expanded across a larger universe.
 
But, if even partly correct, it offers a huge ‘freakonomic’ upside in terms of women learning to say ‘no’ on the issue of birth. It is a matter of changing habit. In Ireland, TFR was halved in ten years of the government passing a law to end a religious ban on contraceptives.
 
In the US, it is suspected that the Roe V Wade judgment of the Supreme Court in the 1970s legalising abortion brought down crime rate by lowering sizes of poor families. In India, colour TV may show the way. In that respect, the DMK’s electoral ploy of showering colour  TV on Tamil Nadu voters may be good economics too.
 
onlysumit@gmail.com
 
Topics:working age population, population management
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Sunday, February 27, 2011

1159 - Not smart enough? - The Hindu

Sunday, Feb 27, 2011
SWATI NARAYAN

Smart card technology can be used to streamline India's unwieldy PDS. But it is yet to prove itself under real world challenges.
A shop too far: Carrying PDS supplies of foodgrain for the whole village 
16km from the PDS shop in Orissa.

Smart cards have become the latest buzzword to remedy India's public distribution system (PDS) — one of the largest food grain delivery networks in the world with more than 500,000 ‘ration' shops.

Electronic voting machines have streamlined Indian elections. Credit cards, which can be swiped for payment at any urban store, have transformed banking. Similarly, can the much talked about plastic smart cards reform the corrupt PDS? The PMO's Rangarajan panel has pinned all its hopes on it. But are they silver bullets?

Let's take a step back for just a moment.

What are these plastic smart cards? They have an embedded chip that can store and update varied types of information and are increasingly being used as train tickets, driver's license, health insurance and library cards.

For the PDS, smart cards can store food grain eligibility and, if required, fingerprint details of each household member. Compatible machines placed in ration shops then ‘read' this information and print a receipt for each transaction.

Some states have implemented pilot tests of these cards and my travels in the past three months reveal some of their ground realities.

Pocket-sized pilots

The Agriculture Minister in October 2010 had gone on record to proclaim, “ the smart card pilot has been successfully tested in Haryana and is ready to be rolled out nationwide.”

But, the most surprising revelation on the ground is the miniscule size of these Haryana pilots. Of the four districts selected, two had yet to start in the last quarter of 2010. Across Panchkula city, only three ration shops have been included. In each shop, only 10-35 smart cards have been issued. In neighbouring Chandigarh, too, the pilots are similarly pocket-sized.

More efficient: ‘Contactless' smart card readers used in Andhra Pradesh.

Teething troubles abound. The reader machines use a clearly outmoded software technology, which takes 5-7 minutes to process a single transaction. The batteries in most shops have collapsed, and the machines only work when there is electricity.

In all fairness, adaptation to new technology is always a slow process. The currently fumbling, nascent Haryana pilot will officially take another two years to be competed. Till then isn't it entirely premature to pass a verdict?

Untested

The act of blindly issuing smart cards is also utterly meaningless, unless each transaction has a domino effect on the entire PDS supply chain — end-to-end. But these pilots have failed to explore three crucial aspects.

First, movement of grain across the supply-chain. Andhra's experiments with the superior technology of ‘contactless' smartcards, which transmit data via radio frequency identification waves, is the most promising. They can also potentially track identity tags embedded in every bag of food grain purchased from farmers. But, 3-5 years need to be invested to rollout an integrated pilot across the gigantic network of PDS warehouses even in a single district. This has yet to start.

Second, portability of entitlements. Inter-state migrants, in particular, would greatly benefit if they could use smart cards to purchase food grains from any shop. So far, however, none of these smart card pilots provide portability even between neighbouring shops, let alone across states.

Third, ability to embed the ration subsidy. Smart cards can potentially be used as electronic wallets by loading their chips with the ration subsidy. This could be a potential game-changer. But none of the pilots has tested its implications. How will the funds be uploaded regularly? How will they be automatically indexed to India's high food price inflation, now hovering above 15 per cent? Can Kenya's SMS-based mobile-money transfer system, M-PESA, which is a current rage in international policy circles, provide an alternative?

Since all these crucial features remain untested, it begs the question — as a technology, do smart cards have the potential to streamline the PDS? The short answer — Yes, definitely. Has this been proved? No, not yet.

Smart cards offer a technology of the future. But till they are fully tested, with an eye to real world challenges, can we please suspend judgment on the inherent ‘smartness' of these cards?

Swati Narayan is an independent social policy analyst. Email: swatinarayan@gmail.com

Keeping it simple

It is no secret that India's Public Distribution System (PDS) is plagued with leakages.

At the last mile of the world's largest network of food delivery of 500,000 fair price `ration' shops, an estimated 10-30 per cent of the food grains are pilfered through fake cards.

But the proposed Food Security Bill offers a window of opportunity for change. The National Advisory Council (NAC) has recommended that three-quarters of India's population should be entitled to PDS food grains. It would then make immense logical sense to invest in an exhaustive one-time exercise to ensure the uniqueness of each ration card issued.

Andhra Pradesh, which already has near-universal PDS coverage for 80 per cent of its population, is moving precisely in this direction. The civil supplies department is the lead registrar for Aadhaar's unique identification exercise (UID) and enrolment forms are being distributed at ration shops. This, in turn, proves to be a cost effective method for the department to clean up its centralised databases with each family member's biometric and iris information. Based on these unique numbers, the state government has begun to issue ration `smart' cards.

But, once these unique cards are distributed, is it then essential to again authenticate fingerprints on a biometric sensor at every purchase at ration shops? No, it is especially unnecessary in rural areas where the NAC proposes that 90 percent of the population be made eligible for rations. Besides, biometric authentication of each transaction is largely impractical and cumbersome.

For one, the conditions within ration shops are far from ideal. A pilot across 20 ration shops in Tamil Nadu, for example, revealed that due to high levels of dust, the fingerprint sensors have frequent breakdowns and identification errors. Now, the state government has decided to entirely abandon the use of biometrics in favour of simpler handheld billing devices used by bus conductors to print tamper-proof tickets. Two, regular maintenance remains a challenge. Credit card swipe machines often have service agreements which ensure that a technician checks it at least once a month. This is even more essential for the sensitive biometric sensors with high volume of monthly transactions of 500-1,000 cards in an average ration shop.

But, it is hard to imagine this level of maintenance across rural India.

Lastly, it will unduly inconvenience poor people. For example, in Orissa's remote tribal areas where ration shops are often as far as 16 km away from villages, each month 5-6 able bodied men usually journey in a cavalcade of bicycles to collect food grains for the entire hamlet, including the elderly. The writing is on the wall. Biometrics can be useful to create a unique identification for each eligible household. But their unnecessary overuse for authentication at every purchase at ration shops will only distance poor people even more from their rightful entitlements.

1158 - Open Letter To Government On National Security Projects In India - Techno Legal News and Views

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2011


In this “Open Letter”, Praveen Dalal, Managing Partner of Perry4Law and leading techno legal expert of India, has discussed the importance of maintaining a balance between national security and civil liberties in India. He has also offered his techno legal expertise and a copy of his latest book on cyber forensics to government of India.

National Security, Civil Liberties and Constitutional Aspirations are on “Cross Roads” these days. Projects like Aadhar/UID, National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID), Crime and Criminal Tracking and Systems (CCTNS), Central Monitoring System (CMS), etc are required for National Security but Civil Liberties and Fundamental Rights are also of Prime Importance.

Enacting suitable Techno Legal Laws and Regulations in fields like Cyber Law, Cyber Security, Cyber Forensics, etc is of Paramount Importance. However, these fields are emerging World over and India need to streamline its Techno Legal Jurisprudence.

We have been in the process of “Compiling” and “Formulating” a Techno Legal Framework for India. To start with, we have already written on the topic of Cyber Forensics and Compiled it in the form of a Book.

The First Edition of the Book has been written in September 2010 and we are working towards not only “Improving and Upgrading” the same but also coming up with the Second Edition of the same very soon. The Book carries possible useful information in the field of Cyber Forensics in India and includes International Best Practices in this field.

We are also working in the direction of Compiling Techno Legal Literature in the Fields like Cyber Law, Cyber Security, Cyber Terrorism, Cyber Espionage, Cyber Warfare, etc. We have been trying to “Reconcile” National Security with Fundamental Rights of Indian so that Projects like Aadhar/UID, NATGRID, CCTNS, CMS, can be effectively and “Constitutionally” launched in India.

We look forward for your Active and Constructive Cooperation and Support in this regard. We would be glad to provide you with a “Copy” of our Book on Cyber Forensics somewhere in the month of June/July 2011.

If interested, kindly send us a request in this regard on the official Letterhead of your concerned Ministry/Department.

We look forward for a Cooperative and Collaborative Alliance and Public Private Partnership (PPP) in this regard.


Saturday, February 26, 2011

1157 - Nilekani seeks to allay privacy fears surrounding 'Aadhar' - The Economic Times

25 FEB, 2011, 11.05PM IST,PTI

NEW DELHI: Allaying privacy fears surrounding 'Aadhar', the Unique Identification Authority of India Chairman Nandan Nilekani today said the project would in no way put at risk citizens' security and rights.

Delivering a lecture on 'Analysing and Envisioning India,' Nilekani said having an Aadhar number in no way puts the resident in a security risk or intrudes privacy.

"The data collected of the individual by means of biometric system will only be for the sake of their identification and access to other facilities like availing bank loans, being part of the PDS system and others. There is no way other agencies or non-concerned parties having access to the Aadhar data base," Nilekani said.

He said if anybody wanted to misuse personal information about people then they could do it even now as most information about people are already available with numerous agencies like banks, post offices, internet etc.

He asserted that the 12-digit Aadhar number will not have much personalised information about the resident for anyone to misuse.

He said, nevertheless, the government was looking to put into place a data security law to iron out any privacy issues.

UIDAI has issued close to 2 million Aadhaar numbers and targets to touch the 600 million mark by 2014.

1156 - The UID Project and Welfare Schemes by Reetika Khera - Economic & Political Weekly

By: Reetika Khera PDFPrint
Vol XLVI No.9 February 26, 2011

I would like to thank Jean Drèze, Alok Shukla and Kamal Mali for discussions on some of these issues.
 
Reetika Khera (reetika.khera@gmail.com) teaches at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.
 
This article documents and then examines the various benefits that, it is claimed, will flow from linking the Unique Identity number with the public distribution system and the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. It filters the unfounded claims, which arise from a poor understanding of how the PDS and NREGS function, from the genuine ones. On the latter, there are several demanding conditions that need to be met in order to reap marginal benefits. A hasty linking of the PDS/NREGA with the UID can be very disruptive. Therefore, other cheaper technological innovations currently in use in some parts of the country to fix existing loopholes in a less disruptive manner are explored.
 
The Unique Identification (UID) project is a flagship project of the United Progressive Alliance-II (UPA-II) government. The Unique Identification Authority of India’s (UIDAI) ambitious plan of issuing a unique biometric-enabled number, innocuously called “Aadhaar”, to every Indian resident has also begun to generate a debate on citizen-state relations, privacy, financial implications, and operational practicalities. 1
 
What the debate has largely missed so far, however, is the credibility of the UIDA’s claims in the field of social policy, particularly the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) and public distribution system (PDS). A number of claims (“the project possesses the power to eliminate financial exclusion, enhance accessibility, and uplift living standards for the majority poor”) have been made by the UIDAI, but have not been carefully analysed.
 
In this article, I filter the unfounded claims from the valid ones. The misleading claims with respect to the NREGA and PDS seem to be the result of superficial research into what ails these two programmes. Even with respect to the valid claims, such as helping with de-duplication of PDS cards, there are caveats which have not been adequately discussed so far.
 
Thus in Sections 1 and 2, the focus is on what the UID can and cannot do for the NREGA and PDS. In the next section, the possible fallout of a hasty imposition of UID on the NREGA/PDS is examined briefly. I also examine the scenario in which the existence of the “soft infrastructure” that the UIDAI aims to provide is important – namely, a transition from NREGA and PDS to cash transfers. The government needs to initiate an open discussion on cash transfers (if they are on the cards) rather than attempting to make a surreptitious transition to them. In the final section, I highlight some of the larger concerns related to a project such as the UID, by drawing a few parallels between the now-abandoned United Kingdom Identity Bill and the UID project in India.
 
Before proceeding, it is worth recalling that being enrolled in the Aadhaar database and being given a number in itself carries no welfare benefits. Having an Aadhaar number does not eliminate the need to apply for a bank account, or a ration card or a job card (required to be eligible for work under NREGA). It can only serve as a valid form of identity in the same way that a driver’s licence or passport currently do.
 
1 NREGA: Barking Up the Wrong 2
 
The UIDAI has a four-page document on NREGA. From this document, it is clear that its officials are poorly informed on issues relating to NREGA. Resulting from its poor understanding of the programme are several claims of improving efficiency in government spending. I discuss a few of these claims below: controlling corruption in NREGA, eliminating financial exclusion, preventing exclusion from government programmes due to the lack of identity proof, and so on.
 
One good example of the UIDAI being poorly informed is its statement regarding NREGA wage payments (Government of India 2010a: 2). The UIDAI claims that the UID will enable financial inclusion, but it seems to be unaware that wage payments through banks and post offices became mandatory in 2008. The transition to bank payments is now largely complete. A large majority of NREGA workers already have a bank (or post office) account: more than nine crore NREGA accounts (covering 83% of NREGA job cards) were opened by the end of 2009-10. This is not to say that the opening of bank accounts was a smooth process. The main hurdle was not so much the Know Your Customer (KYC) norms (as claimed by the UIDAI) but that the coverage of banks and post offices in rural areas is inadequate, the ones that exist are under-staffed, and post offices in many parts do not maintain computerised records.3 Tamil Nadu is the only state that still makes cash payments, on the grounds that it is able to control leakages within the cash system and that cash payments help to ensure timely disbursal of wages. Field evidence suggests that there is some truth in this claim of the Tamil Nadu government (Khera and Muthiah 2010).
 
The claim of controlling corruption through the UID is made on the premise that payments are still being made in cash. In the days of cash payments of NREGA wages, the main source of embezzlement was by fudging attendance records – by either adding names of people who had not worked, or inflating the attendance of those who had worked. Payment of wages through banks and post office has made wage corruption quite difficult. However, three potential channels for siphoning off money remain open – extortion, collusion and deception.4 Extortion means that when “inflated” wages are withdrawn by the labourer, the middleman turns extortionist and takes his share from him or her. Collusion means that the labourer and the middleman agree to share the inflated wages that are credited to the labourer’s account. Deception means that middlemen open and operate accounts on behalf of labourers, withdraw the inflated wages from these bank accounts, pay workers their due in cash, and pocket the difference. Biometric-enabled UID to authenticate identity can help to prevent “deception”, but is of little use in preventing collusion or extortion.
 
Facilitating “doorstep banking” through banking correspondents (the “BC model”) is supposed to be another benefit of the UID. At the moment, labourers often have to go long distances to withdraw their wages. Banking correspondents (intermediaries who extend banking services to remote villages) are supposed to enable disbursal of wages at their doorstep. Here again, however, there are issues of practicality and effectiveness, and we need to consider alternatives. Modernising and computerising post offices would also contribute to making banking services accessible. As a long-term measure, the government should consider an expansion of the rural banking network. Appointment of local kirana stores as banking correspondents could be a regressive step, as it would mean routing NREGA wages through the local bania (often a moneylender also). The BC model could end up diluting the sanctity of existing banking practices.
 
At the end of the day, it is not clear from the UIDAI documents exactly how UID is supposed to help NREGA. There is no obvious problem of “identity fraud” in NREGA that UID is waiting to resolve. There is no evidence, for instance, of fake job cards being a major problem. An NREGA job card is not like a PDS ration card, which automatically entitles the holder to subsidised grain. To get benefits under the NREGA, the job cardholder is required to work – so a fake job card is of little use per se. Claiming benefits without working requires collusion between non-working job cardholders and implementing officials. If the two parties collude, some job cardholders can have wages credited to their bank accounts, by getting on muster rolls. UID purports to prevent this through “biometric attendance at the worksite”, but the practicality of this imaginative idea is far from clear – it could easily create more problems than it resolves. And some forms of collusion can persist even with biometric attendance at the worksite.
 
For the NREGA, the UID, if it works, will help to plug some minor loopholes. This does not justify the sweeping claims that are made. In Section 3, I discuss the disruption that it can cause, if the UID and NREGA are linked.
 
2 PDS: Is There a Case for the UID?

2.1 Improving Inclusion
 
Similar claims are made with respect to the PDS. For instance, the UIDAI often claims that the project will improve access to government services. UIDAI officials have said that many Indians are deprived of government benefits because they do not have the required identity proof.5 This claim is based on an incorrect diagnosis of why people are excluded from government schemes.
 
There are two important causes for the exclusion of a large number of people from government programmes – one, poor coverage related to low allocations for these programmes and two, misclassification of people. Social welfare expenditure in the country is not adequate to provide universal benefits (Gupta 2010). In such a situation, the government has r esorted to making many social welfare schemes targeted programmes. When schemes are t argeted, benefits are conditional upon being classified, say, as a below poverty line (BPL) family. The selection of BPL families is based on a census which is conceptually flawed and poorly implemented (Hirway 2003, Swaminathan and Mishra 2001, Khera 2008, Drèze and Khera 2010a).
 
Note that misclassification of families in the “BPL census” has little to do with identity fraud or “duplication”. Misclassification can occur when the criteria used for identification of BPL families are incorrect (e g, in a previous BPL census, the ownership of a fan led to exclusion of families from the BPL list) or when government criteria are not adhered to (e g, families misreport their status, or the surveyor records incorrectly).
 
Yet the UIDAI gives the impression that misclassification of households can be controlled (if not stopped) with the help of unique identity numbers. “The eventual nature of an Aadhaar-linked approach in PDS would depend on the particular benefits the government hopes to gain. Using Aadhaar solely for identification would enable clear targeting of PDS beneficiaries, the inclusion of marginal groups, and expanded coverage of the poor through the elimination of fakes and duplicates” (Government of India 2010b: 3, italics added).
 
2.2 Portability of Benefits
 
The UIDAI also makes a claim of “portability of benefits”, i e, that with a UID, beneficiaries can claim their benefits wherever they are. A PDS that allows beneficiaries to draw their rations from anywhere in the country would indeed be a desirable improvement over the present system. The portability argument is perhaps the most enticing aspect of the UID programme. However, this too is not very well thought through. Though the UID is portable, bene fits may not be, because the latter present operational issues that cannot be solved by the UID. The possibility of making the current form of identity authentication (i e, the ration card) “mobile” has not been explored. A computerised database of cardholders, with holograms and/or barcodes on ration cards, could also make ration cards mobile. Smart cards or food coupons can also serve the purpose of providing a portable identity, which can be easily authenticated anywhere.
 
Returning to operational issues related to portability, if benefits are portable and grain allocations to PDS outlets are based on the previous month’s sales (as recommended by the UIDAI), matching supplies to an unpredictable demand becomes difficult.6 Each state gets a fixed quantity of foodgrains, based on the number of ration cards from the central government. Streamlining supply to cater to a PDS that allows portability of benefits is not a simple matter. Building in portability across states is especially challenging (think of interstate migration).7
 
2.3 Bogus Cards and ‘De-duplication’
 
Another inflated claim relates to the elimination of “bogus” cards in the PDS. There can be three types of bogus cards: (a) “ghost” cards, i e, where cards exist in the names of non-existent or deceased persons; (b) “duplicates” where one person or household, entitled to one card, manages to get more through unfair means; and (c) “misclassified” cards, when ineligible persons/households claim benefits (or, i nclusion errors).
 
The main fallout of “bogus” cards where schemes are targeted (such as the PDS) is that it denies a genuine beneficiary his/her entitlements. Elimination of bogus cards can contribute to improving the e fficiency of government schemes. The UID can help eliminate only the first two types of bogus cards. As discussed earlier, UID can do nothing about inclusion errors.
 
The question then arises, what proportion of all cards is bogus?8 Reliable data on the overall proportion of bogus cards are hard to find. Yet the UIDAI claims that ghost ration cards are the main problem: “a key source of leakage identified in the PDS is subsidised food drawn from the ration shop in the names of eligible families by someone else” (Government of India 2010b: 8). Rough estimates based on newspaper reports (admittedly not the most reliable source for such data) put the proportion of fake cards in the 2-13% range (Clara 2010, IANS 2010 and Radhakrishnan 2010). In Tamil Nadu, only 2% of cards were bogus (Planning Commission 2004). Bogus cards are indeed part of the problem, but there is not enough evidence to say that this is the main source of diversion from the PDS. This is one source of corruption, though quite likely it is not the largest source of diversion of PDS grain today (see more on this below).
 
Second, elimination of “ghost” and “duplicates” by biometric-enabled de-duplication requires that the adhaar number be compulsory (at least for that particular programme). This is best explained by Nandan Nilekani, the chairperson of UIDAI himself: “You can’t make it mandatory in the first instance. Let’s say a particular state decides to issue fresh ration cards from 1 May 2011. Now, they may decide to have Aadhaar numbers on all these cards. For some time, in parallel there will be the earlier cardholders who will not have Aadhaar. We can’t completely eliminate duplication. But over time, as Aadhaar numbers in ration cards become nearly universal, they can then say ‘from now onwards, only Aadhaar-based ration cards will be accepted’. At which point, duplication will cease to exist” (Sebastian 2010). The UIDAI will not make it compulsory to get an Aadhaar number. However, that does not stop them from encouraging various government departments to make it compulsory. There is a tension between voluntary enrolment and achieving de-duplication. Some of the implications are discussed in Section 3.
 
In Chhattisgarh, de-duplication has been attempted by computerising the data base of ration cardholders and distributing new ration cards with holograms which make each ration card unique. The other option is the use of biometrics (say, at the stage of issuing ration cards), which the UIDAI proposes to use. Tamil Nadu keeps constant vigil on the number of r ation cards to eliminate bogus cards.
 
2.4 The Last Mile Problem
 
A major cause of diversion from the PDS is the lack of a functional system of “last mile” authentication. In the current system, the movement of foodgrain is tracked till it leaves the godown for a ration shop.9 Ration dealers maintain a sales register and a monthly stock register, based upon which the next month’s rations are supposed to be released. However, this monthly squaring of records is operational only in a handful of states (including Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh and Tamil Nadu). In other states, dealers fudge information in these registers.
 
This allows dealers to divert grain in two ways: first, cheating cardholders by underselling (e g, he provides only 25 kg out of the 35 kg entitlement of a family) and yet make them sign for their full quota. When villagers are disempowered and forced to buy from the same dealer, with few options of being heard by higher a uthorities, they feel resigned to accept this smaller quantity. Second, illegal sale of PDS grain in the open market, en route to the village ration shop. Dealers then a ppear helpless in the village saying that they have been given less by the authorities (pichhe se kam aya hai).
 
There are several options to fix the “last mile” problem. Introducing food coupons for all entitled households is one way of dealing with this problem. In this coupon system, each household is required to deposit their coupon at the time of purchase. Dealers have to deposit these in order to get more grain released for the next month. The release of grain is tied to the number of coupons deposited back. Swiping smart cards or authenticating biometric information, at the time of purchase, can perform the same function.10 Even s ocial audits (e g, reading out details from the daily sales register maintained by the ration dealer) can be employed to resolve last mile issues. Other cost-effective and technology savvy solutions have been employed elsewhere – e g, in Chhattisgarh grain is delivered to the village (in easily identifiable yellow trucks), so that a dealer cannot pretend that he did not get the grain; further, when trucks leave the g odowns, an SMS alert is sent to a few persons in the village (Drèze and Khera 2010b). The real problem, then, is not so much the lack of options for last mile a­uthentication. Rather it is the lack of p olitical will to crackdown on the corrupt. Political will has been lacking because often politicians are part of the corrupt nexus.
 
Compulsory biometric authentication (with or without UID) at the last mile would require us to consider cases of old or disabled or ill persons, who currently rely on neighbours or relatives to bring home their ration. With biometric authentication, there may not be any scope of buying their rations in the proposed new system. Quite likely, the UIDAIs response would be to say that an “over-ride” facility can be built into the system for such cases. But is this really practical (e g, if a healthy person falls ill, how quickly can the system respond to his need for the override facility) and will it not again open the door to manipulation?
 
Before moving to the next section, note that for de-duplication and last-mile a uthentication, UID is one of at least three distinct options: smart cards, biometrics and the UID. The UID needs biometrics, not the other way round. The UIDAI does not make a clear distinction between the three, thus suggesting that they are same. The relative merits and demerits – cost, technological requirements, possibility of fraud, etc – of each of these options need serious consideration. One can have biometric authentication without building an integrated database as proposed by the UIDAI. The main utility of the integrated database envisaged by the UIDAI is that it would obviate the need for scheme-by-scheme enrolment which can be expensive.11 But how many schemes of the Government of India need bio metrics for purposes of de-duplication and solving the “last mile” problem? In the NREGA, as explained above, neither bogus cards nor last mile authentication are major concerns.
 
3 Implications for PDS and NREGA
 
As noted above, de-duplication can be achieved only by making enrolment compulsory (at least for particular schemes). The UIDAI has set itself a target of covering only half of India’s population in the next four years. The UIDAI is engaging many registrars to meet its targets. In its eagerness to de-duplicate, there is a danger that the UID will be made compulsory in a rushed manner. Even with an ambitious target, the project will then end up excluding large sections of India’s population.
 
Hasty integration of UID with the PDS or NREGA could, in practice, go against the rhetoric on “inclusivity”. In fact, a “re-engineering” of the NREGA is currently underway.12 This involves the engagement of “service providers” who will be responsible for enrolling individuals for UID, and at a later stage, involved in authentication (including at the worksite using hand-held devices) of workers.
 
The consequences of this sort of re-engineering are likely to be disastrous for the NREGA. Job cards issued in 2006 are due to expire next year. If, for example, the Ministry of Rural Development links the provision of new job cards to getting a UID, many workers are likely to be denied work for sometime to come.13 There is a real danger that those who do not enrol will be turned away from the NREGA. We have already learnt this lesson – the hard way – when the transition to bank payments was made. Poorly equipped and understaffed banks and post offices were expected to open millions of NREGA accounts overnight. Those workers who did not have a ccounts began to be denied work.
 
Moving on to the PDS, one of the proposals mooted by the UIDAI is that PDS dealers buy their grain from the open market at the market price but supply it to PDS beneficiaries at a subsidised price fixed by the government. When a beneficiary buys his/her ration, she/he would be required to give the UID number and be authenticated biometrically. Once this is done, the dealer would be reimbursed the difference between the market price and the subsidised price with a small commission (Government of India 2010b: pp 4-5 and p 13). It is expected that since the difference between the market price and the sale price is reimbursed only when the dealer sells to the intended beneficiary, it will ensure that the dealer does not sell on the black market.
 
Interestingly, the origin of this new model for the PDS can be traced to a study commissioned by the India office of the World Bank (Ahasan et al 2008). The consultants (from a software vending company called Cal2Cal) prepared a report where the use of smart cards and biometrics as well as purchase of grain from the market was proposed (Cal2Cal 2008). This proposal was modified slightly by the Planning Commission – instead of dealers buying from the open market at market price, in the Planning Commission proposal the dealers are to be supplied by the Food Corporation of India.14
 
Such a proposal, involving a major overhaul of the current system, would need to be discussed and tested on a pilot basis. Possible abuse needs to be explored and debated in a transparent manner. For instance, informal field visits to Chandigarh to study smart cards revealed that dealers keep the swiping machine inside the shop, and buyers have no way of verifying what is being punched into the machine. This suggests that even the smart card requires adequate safeguards (e g, using automated receipts, voice-overs, etc) against “deception”. In some circumstances smart cards could even facilitate fraud, e g, because people do not understand the whole technology (unlike entries in ration cards).
 
If the benefits of the UID project to two major existing social welfare programmes (NREGA and PDS) are marginal and uncertain, why is the government rushing ahead with it? In fact, the UID project with biometric authentication is very well suited for a particular type of welfare scheme, namely, cash transfers. Nandan Nilekani’s Imagining India refers to such a proposal: “An IT-enabled, accessible national ID system would be nothing less than revolutionary in how we distribute state benefits and welfare handouts” (Nilekani 2008: 372); “The state could instead transfer benefits directly in the form of cash to bank accounts of eligible citizens, based on their income returns or assets” (ibid: 374). Planning Commission documents have also floated this idea.15 Cash transfers as a welfare measure are very different from both the NREGA and PDS. If it is the intention of the government to transition to cash transfers, then the government must be transparent about this proposal and allow a public discussion of it.16
 
4 LSE Identity Project Report
 
A project such as the UID raises a range of concerns.17 Though these are not the subject of this article, it is worth flagging these issues for the interested reader. These concerns have been comprehensively documented by the London School of Economics and Political Science Identity Project report (henceforth LSE 2005). Though not entirely comparable, there are several parallels between the UK Identity Bill and UIDAI.18
 
First, the now-scrapped UK Identity Bill (UK-ID) was envisioned as a project for “combating terrorism, reducing crime and illegal working, reducing fraud and strengthening national security”.19 The UID project also has its origins in a national security project (as admitted by the c hairman of the UIDAI himself).20 Since the formation of the UIDAI, it has been projected as an initiative to promote social inclusion.21
 
Second, in both cases there seems to have been a tendency to make unfounded claims. For instance, as discussed earlier, the UIDAI claims that millions of Indians are without any identity which is the cause of them being excluded from the government’s schemes. In the case of the UK-ID, the LSE (2005) report states “Many of the claims made about the prevalence of identity fraud are without foundation” (p 9). Similarly, in both countries, the concerned authorities seem to have overplayed the incidence of “identity fraud” (or, in the Indian context and UIDAI’s jargon, the need for “de-duplication”) in the social sector.22
 
Third, both projects have raised legal concerns, e g, the LSE (2005) report brought up the question of compromise or conflict with other laws (Disability Discrimination Act, Race Relations Act, Data Protection Act to name a few). Further, the report states “The legislation places requirements on individuals and organisations that are substantial and wide-ranging, and yet no indication has been given relating to how liability would be established, who would assess that liability, or who would police it” (LSE 2005: 13). On the other hand, the draft NIDAI Bill (which was placed on the UIDAI’s website) had similar clauses, whereby individuals had responsibilities but with little obligation on the authority.23 On the question of oversight too there are similar concerns in both projects (LSE 2005: 13, Drèze 2010 and Krishnaswamy 2010).
 
Fourth, the LSE (2005) report questions the project on technological (especially related to the scale of the project) and financial grounds. The LSE (2005) report is also quite circumspect on the question of biometrics (pp 169-86). Two other reports suggest that the science of biometrics is not quite as exact as is commonly b elieved.24 These reports further question the scalability of such an exercise.25
 
Finally, and most surprisingly, in India no serious discussion of the cost of the UID project has taken place. Despite several demands for a cost-benefit analysis, there is no such report so far. Interestingly, one of the main justifications for scrapping the identity project in the UK was its cost.
 
Concluding Remarks

The UID is projected as a “revolutionary” initiative, with unprecedented gains in efficiency and transparency. In this paper, I argued that several claims are unfounded or exaggerated and reflect a superficial understanding of the problems afflicting the implementation of NREGA and the PDS. As discussed earlier, there is little that the UID can do to improve implementation of NREGA. In the PDS, there are two problems to which the UID can contribute: last mile authentication and elimination of bogus cards.

An important caveat to bear in mind is that the UID can contribute to, but is not necessary for, resolving these problems. The UID is one of several technological innovations that is possible. What is not mentioned in the UIDAI’s documents is that many of the proposed technological inputs can be implemented without a costly UID. Other o ptions are available (e g, the use of food coupons or smart cards for last mile authentication). These options may well be cheaper, less disruptive, and more people-friendly (e g, easier to understand), and have the additional advantage of having been tested on some scale in some parts of the country. The tendency to conflate all technology measures with UID creates the impression that it is a necessary condition for reform.
 
Needless to say, technology can contribute to improving the efficiency of these programmes, and is often welcome. Examples of cost-effective technology that enhances transparency and empowers people are readily available – e g, computeri sation of PDS operations in Chhattisgarh and Tamil Nadu, SMS-based alert systems, and so on. Further, other measures for transparency cannot be discounted simply because they do not involve technological inputs. For instance, in Rajasthan, “transparency walls” listing all job cards issued, along with days of employment in a particular financial year allow people to monitor NREGA expenditure just as much as the on-line MIS. However, even techno logy has its limits. One issue related to this that has not been discussed a dequately is the feasibility of maintaining an updated database of close to one billion people.
 
Finally, the possible disruption that the transition to a UID-enabled system can cause must be faced squarely by the government. The UID’s contribution to plugging leakages is likely to be marginal in the case of the PDS, and even less in NREGA. However, these marginal benefits can be realised only by making a wholesale migration to a new, complex and untested system. In the process, there is a real danger that the UID will end up hurting the very people it seeks to help.
 
It is time to go beyond the hyped benefits of UID and to recognise that, if it succeeds, the benefits in NREGA and PDS will be quite modest. If the UID project is to pave the way for cash transfers, the government needs to state this upfront and allow public debate on the issue.
 
Notes
 
1    On these issues see Debroy (2010), Drèze (2010), Gupta (2010), Maringanti (2009), Ramanathan (2010a, 2010b and 2010c), Ramkumar (2010), Sharma (2010) and Shukla (2010).
 
2    This part of the paper elaborates the discussion in an earlier article. See Khera (2010).
 
3    See Adhikari and Bhatia (2009) for details on the problems, advantages and labourer’s perceptions of the transition to bank/post office payments.
 
4    On the issue of corruption and the transition to bank and post office payment of NREGA wages, see Siddharth and Vanaik (2008), Dreze and Khera (2008), and Adhikari and Bhatia (2010).
 
5    “There are 75 million homeless people in the country and a lot of nomadic people – all of them don’t have an ID. We think UID will enhance their access to public services” (Chairperson Nandan Nilekani in Indian Express 2009).
 
6    Intriguingly, the portability claim is repeated in at least four places in their paper on the PDS.
 
7    Since these claims have begun to be debunked, the UIDAI has responded by qualifying its statements. For instance in a recent Tehelka interview, the problem of “no identity” was referred to as a problem of “no mobile identity” (Vats 2010b).
 
8    The third category, i e, inclusion errors (or misclassified cards), is known to be quite large. Since UID cannot fix that, I focus on duplicates and ghosts here.
 
9    Tamil Nadu has actually computerised operations so that it is possible to get real time stocks in each ration shop in the state. (Personal communication, M V S Moni, managing director, Tamil Nadu Civil Supplies Corporation.)
 
10     In these scenario, it is still possible for the dealer to “extort” grain after the coupon is deposited, or the card is swiped, or biometrics are authenticated. Yet it would mark an improvement in those areas where dealers can get away by saying that the grain has not reached him.
 
11     Inter-operability is another claimed benefit, but this benefits the government, not the claimant.
 
12     The Ministry of Rural Development has put out a Rs 2,162 crore tender for this purpose. See documents available online at http://nrega.nic.in/circular/eoi_concept.htm
 
13     In this scenario, the UID becomes mandatory de facto – this is what “demand-driven” UID will translate into. The likelihood of labourers being explained that enrolment is voluntary seem somewhat slim especially in poorly governed parts of the country.
 
14     See Planning Commission (2010a and 2010b). Note again that even this model does not necessitate the use of a UID type database. It only needs biometrics or smart cards.
 
15     See Mehrotra (2010). Several have made this suggestion, e g, “I venture to say that Aadhaar will enable us to put in place a well-functioning social safety net for our citizens by unifying all subsidies into cash-based transfers” (Kelkar 2010).
 
16    While no public statement has been made on transitioning to cash transfers in lieu of “in kind” food transfers (such as PDS grains or mid-day meals), the government has announced the setting up of a committee, headed by Nilekani, to explore cash transfers instead of kerosene, LPG gas and fertilisers. According to newspaper reports, the basis for these cash transfers is a “successful” pilot on smart cards being conducted in a few ration shops of Haryana (on the smart card pilots, see Narayan 2011a and 2011b). The current strategy seems to be to befuddle readers by using “direct cash transfers”, “conditional cash transfers”, “smart cards”, “UID”, “biometrics” interchange ably to create the impression that these are the same or similar.
 
17    In a sense, the UID project seems like a 21st century incarnation of the 20th century projects studied by James Scott (1998) in “Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed”, where he highlights “four conditions common to all planning disasters: administrative ordering of nature and society by the state; a ‘high-modernist ideology’ that places confidence in the ability of science to improve every aspect of human life; a willingness to use authoritarian state power to effect large-scale interventions; and a prostrate civil society that cannot effectively resist such plans.”
 
18     “To give the United Kingdom as an example in relation to India is disingenuous. The stated goal of that scheme was surveillance and immigration control. They already have a number, which they started in 1953. Their ID card was a very different project. So let us not extrapolate randomly. The fact is that most countries have a number” (Nilekani in Vats 2010b).
 
19     “The Identity Cards Bill outlines an identity system that has eight components: the National Identity Register, a National Identity Registration Number, the collection of a range of Biometrics such as fingerprints, the National Identity Card, provision for administrative convergence in the private and public sectors, establishment of legal obligations to disclose personal data, cross notification requirements, and the creation of new crimes and penalties to enforce compliance with the legislation” (LSE 2005: 21).
 
20    In response to the question “Isn’t the main purpose security?”, Nilekani said “You are right, the government in 2003 did modify the Citizenship Act to create the National Citizenship Register, which is now the National Population Register but that’s primarily an initiative by the Registrar General of India. This government took an initiative to have a unique ID for developmental purposes. UIDAI came out of that initiative.” See Indian Express (2009).
 
21    One headline even touts it as the world’s largest social inclusion initiative (Knowledge@Wharton 2010). However, as noted earlier, the unique number itself carries no welfare benefits.
 
22    “Benefit fraud through false identity is relatively rare and we believe the cost of introducing an identity card in the benefits environment would far outweigh any savings that could be made” (LSE 2005: 10).
 
23    “Under the proposed National Identification Authority of India Bill (‘NIDAI Bill’), if someone finds that her ‘identity information’ is wrong, she is supposed to ‘request the authority’ to correct it, upon which the Authority ‘may, if it is satisfied, make such alteration as may be required’. There is a legal obligation to alert the Authority, but no right to correction!” (Drèze 2010).
 
24     See The Economist (2010) and Pato and Millett (2010). See also Shukla (2010) who discusses the reliability of various biometrics, error rates, costs, etc.
 
25     The Chairperson of UIDAI is aware of the unprecedented scale of this project as is evident in this statement “This is a massively complex project as our biometric database will consist of 1.2 billion records which is 10 times larger than the current largest biometric record” (Indian Express 2009).
 
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Vats, Vaibhav (2010a): “Why Nandan Wants to Tag You”, Tehelka, Vol 7, Issue 44, 6 November. Available online at http://www.tehelka.com/story_main47.asp?filename=Ne061110Why_Nandan.asp
 
– (2010b): “We Raised the Issue of Privacy Long b efore Anyone Else”, Tehelka, Vol 7, Issue 44, 6 November. Available online at http://tehelka.com/story_main47.asp?filename=Ne061110We_raised.asp
 


Friday, February 25, 2011

1155 - 16.7 lakh Aadhaar number generated so far: Govt - The Economic Times

24 FEB, 2011, 05.10PM IST,PTI 

NEW DELHI: The government on Thursday said about 16.7 lakh Unique Identification Numbers or 'Aadhaar' have been generated so far across 10 States and Union Territories.

As many as 16,79,549 Aadhaar numbers have been generated in these States and Union Territories, Minister of State for Planning, Ashwini Kumar said in a written reply to Rajya Sabha.

Aadhaar is generated by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) by collecting biometric and demographic details of citizens.

Among States, Karnataka generated 7,25,194 Aadhaar numbers, followed by Andhra Pradesh at 4,03,925, and Tripura at 2,36,723, he said.

Enrollments of residents are conducted by the Registrar of UIDAI, which consists of central and state agencies and public sector banks and financial institutions, he said.

No problems during the enrollment have been reported so far, he added.

Kumar said a number of processes have been put in place to ensure that data collected by UIDAI is not accessed in unauthorised manner.

In another reply, Kumar said the Ministry of Minority Affairs submitted a proposal to the Planning Commission for seeking "in-principle" approval of a scheme for containing population decline among the Parsi community.

"The Planning Commission suggested to the Ministry to withdraw the scheme in the present form as the problem of decline in Parsi community is mostly socio-cultural and rarely medical in nature as established by the Indian Council of Medical Research in their study in 2008 titled Fertility Assessment of Parsi Community in Mumbai," he said.

1154 - Kerala finally Logs on to Aadhaar, The Unique Identification Project

THURSDAY, 24 FEBRUARY 2011 19:37
KERALA IT NEWS

Tvm: Aadhaar, the Unique Identification (UID) project of the Central Government was finally launched in Kerala today by Chief Minister Shri V S Achuthanandan at a function held in Thiruvananthapuram. The enrolment for UID in Kerala was delayed because of the use of proprietary software by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), which has now been resolved.


In her welcome speech, Ishita Roy IAS, Director, Kerala State IT Mission said, “It’s a matter of pride that Kerala is the first State to implement Aadhaar using Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). The launch of Aadhaar is in complete compliance with the Kerala Government’s IT Policy of using FOSS in all aspects of governance”.

Launching the project the Chief Minister said that enrolment for Aadhaar would be voluntary in the State. While expressing his concern on the citizen’s privacy violation by using the UID number, the CM added that the Government would like to enhance efficiency in delivery of government’s benefits and services through accurate identification of beneficiaries and to have uniform standards and processes for verification and identification of beneficiaries.

According to Dr. Ashok Dalwai IAS, Deputy Director General, UIDAI, there are 221 enrolment agencies throughout the country. Bharti Airtel has set up a data centre in Bangalore and MindTree is the application software development, maintenance and support services agency. CMC is the content provider for the 15 training agencies selected. Sify is the training certification agency. STQC is the device certifying agency and India Post is the first mile and last mile partner. 1-800-180-1947 is the toll-free number for the UID project.

In Kerala the IT Department has been designated as nodal department for the UID project and Akshaya, IT@School and Keltron are the enrolment agencies. Adv. K Chandrika, Thiruvananthapuram Mayor was the first person to be enrolled.

Aadhaar is a 12-digit unique number which will be linked to the basic demographics and biometric information based on photograph, fingerprints and iris mapping of each citizen. The UIDAI was established in 2009 by the Government of India, with the developmental mandate of setting up the infrastructure to provide a universal way of uniquely identifying Indian residents.

Anil Philip
Kerala IT News