08 Dec 2011
This hasn’t been a good week for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. First it was his ill-timed move to introduce FDI in multi-brand retail that had to be shelved in the absence of any political support, including within the UPA and the Congress, for this ill-conceived policy.
Now it is the turn of the much-publicised Unique Identity, or UID, project, pushed by Mr Singh and executed by his hand-picked technocrat Nandan Nilekani, to be rejected by the Parliamentary Standing Committee.
After scrutinising the National Identification Authority of India Bill 2010, the committee is of the view that it is unacceptable and would like a fresh proposal to be made by the Government.
From the very beginning there has been strong opposition to the UID project from within the Union Government as well as from the State Governments. This is primarily because the unique identity, meant to serve as an all-purpose biometric-based identification, merely requires proof of residence as opposed to proof of citizenship. In other words, foreigners can secure the unique identity by merely providing proof of residence; later, they can use it to claim citizenship rights.
The second reason why not many are convinced about the utility of Mr Nilekani’s project is because it replicates the work being done to compile the National Population Register Union by the Union Ministry of Home Affairs.
The UID project is hugely expensive and questions have been repeatedly raised about the judiciousness of spending so much money on it. Current estimates show that the Home Ministry’s NPR will cost Rs 13,438 crore whereas Mr Nilekani’s UID will cost Rs 17,864 crore.
If both the projects are undertaken, the Union Ministry for Finance would have to come up with Rs 31,302. In these troubled times that would be an impossible task to achieve.
There are issues of privacy, too, but those are not relevant to the objections raised by the parliamentary committee.
From its very inception the UID project has lacked credibility. Neither Mr Singh nor Mr Nilekani has been able to convincingly argue the need for a parallel exercise to identify people in India. True, the biometric details will no doubt prove useful, especially in security-related matters, but the Home Ministry’s exercise could have been appropriately tweaked to gather the required information.
Instead of doing so, for some inexplicable reason the UID project was launched, regardless of the funds its completion would require. Nor has any explanation been offered as yet on why the Government, or more specifically the Prime Minister, decided to hand out unique identities to every resident without verifying whether or not the person is indeed a citizen of the country.
Was it then a sly attempt to legalise the illegal presence of foreigners in India? Was it a move to grant de facto citizenship to the tens of thousands of illegal immigrants from Bangladesh?
Was the decision politically-motivated? If yes, who instructed the Prime Minister to undertake this task?
These are only some of the questions that need to be answered by the Government, if not the Prime Minister, to address serious doubts about the intention behind and purpose of the UID project.
The Government also owes an explanation as to why a technocrat was gifted with such a well-endowed project and allowed to go ahead with its implementation without the relevant legislation being adopted by Parliament. Sullen silence will not do.
It’s hugely wasteful and serves no purpose
This hasn’t been a good week for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. First it was his ill-timed move to introduce FDI in multi-brand retail that had to be shelved in the absence of any political support, including within the UPA and the Congress, for this ill-conceived policy.
Now it is the turn of the much-publicised Unique Identity, or UID, project, pushed by Mr Singh and executed by his hand-picked technocrat Nandan Nilekani, to be rejected by the Parliamentary Standing Committee.
After scrutinising the National Identification Authority of India Bill 2010, the committee is of the view that it is unacceptable and would like a fresh proposal to be made by the Government.
From the very beginning there has been strong opposition to the UID project from within the Union Government as well as from the State Governments. This is primarily because the unique identity, meant to serve as an all-purpose biometric-based identification, merely requires proof of residence as opposed to proof of citizenship. In other words, foreigners can secure the unique identity by merely providing proof of residence; later, they can use it to claim citizenship rights.
The second reason why not many are convinced about the utility of Mr Nilekani’s project is because it replicates the work being done to compile the National Population Register Union by the Union Ministry of Home Affairs.
The UID project is hugely expensive and questions have been repeatedly raised about the judiciousness of spending so much money on it. Current estimates show that the Home Ministry’s NPR will cost Rs 13,438 crore whereas Mr Nilekani’s UID will cost Rs 17,864 crore.
If both the projects are undertaken, the Union Ministry for Finance would have to come up with Rs 31,302. In these troubled times that would be an impossible task to achieve.
There are issues of privacy, too, but those are not relevant to the objections raised by the parliamentary committee.
From its very inception the UID project has lacked credibility. Neither Mr Singh nor Mr Nilekani has been able to convincingly argue the need for a parallel exercise to identify people in India. True, the biometric details will no doubt prove useful, especially in security-related matters, but the Home Ministry’s exercise could have been appropriately tweaked to gather the required information.
Instead of doing so, for some inexplicable reason the UID project was launched, regardless of the funds its completion would require. Nor has any explanation been offered as yet on why the Government, or more specifically the Prime Minister, decided to hand out unique identities to every resident without verifying whether or not the person is indeed a citizen of the country.
Was it then a sly attempt to legalise the illegal presence of foreigners in India? Was it a move to grant de facto citizenship to the tens of thousands of illegal immigrants from Bangladesh?
Was the decision politically-motivated? If yes, who instructed the Prime Minister to undertake this task?
These are only some of the questions that need to be answered by the Government, if not the Prime Minister, to address serious doubts about the intention behind and purpose of the UID project.
The Government also owes an explanation as to why a technocrat was gifted with such a well-endowed project and allowed to go ahead with its implementation without the relevant legislation being adopted by Parliament. Sullen silence will not do.