December 11, 2011:
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With the Home Ministry and the Finance Ministry playing ping-pong on the issue of Unique Identification (UID) numbers for all citizens, key stakeholders, including public sector bankers, National Payments Corporation of India officials and service providers are a worried lot. While some public sector banks have set up the infrastructure for enrolling citizens for ‘ Aadhaar' (the brand name of the UID number), others have issued Aadhaar-based debit cards to facilitate micropayments, so that the poor can have low-cost access to financial services at a short distance from their homes.
However, with the Home Ministry questioning the reliability of the documents submitted at the time of enrolment for Aadhaar, the Finance Ministry's grand vision of financial inclusion could come a cropper.
(Contributed by K. Ramkumar, S. Shankar, Adith Charlie and K.V. Kurmanath)