20 SEP, 2011, 04.39AM IST, ET BUREAU
Ram Sewak Sharma, number two in the government organisation overseeing the national identity drive, cites a family incident to assert the importance of an ID. He comes from a village near Firozabad in Uttar Pradesh, whose government gives Rs 40,000 to a family in the event of its breadwinner's death.
When his cousin passed away, Sharma's sister-in-law received a cheque. But she could not encash it because she did not have a bank account. And she could not open one because she did not have any paper ID-no voter ID, no PAN, no ration card, nothing. "People feel the need for some identity document that is also valid across the country," he says.
The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), headed by Nandan Nilekani, was conceived to service this need. It would give every Indian a unique number called Aadhaar, which would supercede all existing numbers and forms of identification. After Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, in Budget 2011, announced cash transfers as the eventual model to distribute welfare benefits, the UID became the anchor point for this movement of cash: for money to go into the correct person's account, he or she, to start with, had to be identified correctly.
However, increasingly, other arms of the government, both at the Centre and in the states, want their own anchors. The ministry of rural development is planning pilots to test its biometric ID cards for National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) workers. Orissa and Kerala are using smart cards of the national health programme to identify beneficiaries for other schemes.
The plan to allot UIDs to all Indians is showing scatter, putting under threat its adoption for all cash transfers.
UID OR NPR?
The original plan called for the UIDAI and the National Population Registry to work in tandem. The NPR, which conducts the National Census, would capture biometrics of every Indian: fingerprint and iris. It would issue an NPR card and transfer this data to the UIDAI, which would issue an Aadhaar.
So, every Indian would have an NPR card and an Aadhaar. But since the UIDAI was ready before NPR, it asked the government to let it capture biometrics till the NPR was ready. In June 2010, the government allowed it to cover 100 million people by March 2011, which it increased to 200 million by March 2012 and a budget of Rs 3,023 crore; the NPR would do biometrics for 1 billion.
The agreement was that, once the NPR was ready, the UIDAI would stop; and the NPR would not go to the people the UIDAI had covered. The NPR started capturing biometrics in June. A month earlier, the UIDAI proposed to cover the entire population by March 2017. Total cost: Rs 17,864 crore. "We will complete our 200 million target by March 2012...we should be allowed to keep enrolling even after 200 million," says Sharma. But the UIDAI is behind schedule. As of August 24, it had issued 28.7 million numbers-about one-fourth its target. Himanshu, a professor of economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, says cash transfers can't be rolled out for part of the population. "How can you arbitrarily decide that some people will receive cash, while others will get grain," he asks. "Those who do not want cash will simply baulk at signing up for Aadhaar."
The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), headed by Nandan Nilekani, was conceived to service this need. It would give every Indian a unique number called Aadhaar, which would supercede all existing numbers and forms of identification. After Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, in Budget 2011, announced cash transfers as the eventual model to distribute welfare benefits, the UID became the anchor point for this movement of cash: for money to go into the correct person's account, he or she, to start with, had to be identified correctly.
However, increasingly, other arms of the government, both at the Centre and in the states, want their own anchors. The ministry of rural development is planning pilots to test its biometric ID cards for National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) workers. Orissa and Kerala are using smart cards of the national health programme to identify beneficiaries for other schemes.
The plan to allot UIDs to all Indians is showing scatter, putting under threat its adoption for all cash transfers.
UID OR NPR?
The original plan called for the UIDAI and the National Population Registry to work in tandem. The NPR, which conducts the National Census, would capture biometrics of every Indian: fingerprint and iris. It would issue an NPR card and transfer this data to the UIDAI, which would issue an Aadhaar.
So, every Indian would have an NPR card and an Aadhaar. But since the UIDAI was ready before NPR, it asked the government to let it capture biometrics till the NPR was ready. In June 2010, the government allowed it to cover 100 million people by March 2011, which it increased to 200 million by March 2012 and a budget of Rs 3,023 crore; the NPR would do biometrics for 1 billion.
The agreement was that, once the NPR was ready, the UIDAI would stop; and the NPR would not go to the people the UIDAI had covered. The NPR started capturing biometrics in June. A month earlier, the UIDAI proposed to cover the entire population by March 2017. Total cost: Rs 17,864 crore. "We will complete our 200 million target by March 2012...we should be allowed to keep enrolling even after 200 million," says Sharma. But the UIDAI is behind schedule. As of August 24, it had issued 28.7 million numbers-about one-fourth its target. Himanshu, a professor of economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, says cash transfers can't be rolled out for part of the population. "How can you arbitrarily decide that some people will receive cash, while others will get grain," he asks. "Those who do not want cash will simply baulk at signing up for Aadhaar."
