19 December 2011
This hasn’t been the best of months for the Indian UIDAI scheme. A Parliamentary Committee has rejected the bill governing the project to assign unique IDs to all Indian nationals.
Even more worrying, the Standing Committee on Finance last week issued a report advising the government to reconsider and review the UID scheme.
The committee report said the UIDAI scheme lacked clarity on ’even the basic purpose of issuing Aadhaar number’.
The Standing Committee has said: “It is also not clear that the UID scheme would continue beyond the coverage of 200 million of the total population, the mandate given to the UIDAI. In case the government does not give further mandate, the whole exercise would become futile.”
One expert giving evidence to the committee – Dr R Ramakumar – said: "…it has been proven again and again that in the Indian environment, the failure to enrol with fingerprints is as high as 15% due to the prevalence of a huge population dependent on manual labour. These are essentially the poor and marginalised sections of the society. So, while the poor do indeed need identity proofs, aadhaar is not the right way to do that..."
The Ministry in its written reply stated, among other things, that: “While there may be a number of factors contributing to the failure to enrol (like geography, age groups, occupation etc.) and the figures quoted…… may not hold good in all situations, failure to enrol is a reality…. For enrolment purpose, UIDAI has already built in processes to handle biometric exceptions."
The committee also questioned the rationale of expanding the scheme to persons who are not citizens, as it ‘entails numerous benefits proposed by the government’. The Ministry of Planning stated in its written reply that the Aadhaar number is not a proof of citizenship or domicile but only confirms identity.
The Committee was also concerned with the ease with which a person could get an Aadhaar. It noted a news item dated 6th September, 2011, in which it was reported that the Ministry of Home Affairs identified flaws in the enrolment process followed by the UIDAI, citing cases where people have got Aadhaar numbers on the basis of false affidavits.
The committee was interested to hear about experiences of similar schemes across the world, noting the abandoned ID card project in the UK.
The Ministry responded that there are significant differences between the UK‘s ID card project and the UID project and to equate the two would not be appropriate. The main differences were detailed as follows:
The UK system involved issuing a card which stored the information of the individual including their biometrics on the card. UID scheme involves issuing a number. No card containing the biometric information is being issued. UK already has the National insurance number which is used often as a means to verify the identity of the individual.
The statutory framework envisaged made it mandatory to have the UK ID card. Aadhaar number is not mandatory.
In the UK, the legislative framework and structure approached it from a security perspective. The context and need in India is different. The UID scheme is envisaged as a mean to enhance the delivery of welfare benefits and services.
The Committee asked about the high degree of assumptions made into the reliability of biometric technology adopted by the UIDAI and the probability of system failures. In light of those assumptions, the Committee asked, whether the huge costs being incurred (the total cost of the UID scheme may run up to Rs. 1,50,000 crore) were prudent or affordable.
The Ministry stated in a written reply: "UIDAI is cognizant of the fact that biometric matching (which is a patterns matching) by its very nature will suffer from inaccuracy. However, these inaccuracy levels are less than 1%. This cannot be a reason for not attempting to use the technology. It is well acknowledged that there will be failures in authentication for various reasons. After Proof of Concept studies on authentication, appropriate policies and processes will be developed to take care of situations where failure occurs for various reasons.