December 22, 2011:
B. S. RAGHAVAN
When the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) was launched in 2009 with a lot of fanfare and trumpet, and Mr Nandan Nilekani was appointed its chairman, I had come out with two columns, “Nilekani's problematic debut” (Business Line, June 29, 2009) and “No clarity on unique ID” (Business Line, August 21, 2009) in which I had raised certain fundamental questions about the validity of assumptions behind the project and Mr Nilekani's suitability for the job.
Tall claims had been made about the unique ID that it would rev up the delivery of the flagship schemes of the Centre, reduce harassment and denial of services to the poor, plug leakages in various government programmes, enhance the access of the poor to government services, eliminate fraud identities, and save up to Rs 20,000 crore per year to the State exchequer.
I had expressed my scepticism about connecting all these claims “with the mere existence of not even a card but only a number which, we are told, ‘will not contain intelligence, as loading intelligence into identity numbers makes it susceptible to fraud and theft'.”
I saw no extra proof of identity in UIDAI numbers, when the existing cards for rations, voter identity and tax payment were already good enough for such purposes.
I had also noted: “What Mr Nilekani has taken on is a gamble with odds weighing against him, especially considering that for close to three decades he had attuned himself to one type of organisational behaviour, systems and procedures and work culture….Frustration and blame games are built into the situation…”
GRAVE DOUBTS
My presentiments are turning out to be true. Mr Nilakeni is finding that working within the Government's vast and complex framework is an entirely different cup of tea from the simple and straightforward do's and don'ts of a commercial enterprise.
That apart, till today it is not clear how the aadhaar number is to achieve the sort of miracles claimed for it. Further, the project envisages scanning irises and taking fingerprints of every individual of the entire population of 120 crore, including the children. The mammoth and intricate task may end up as a wasted effort since there is no guarantee that the biometrics will remain unchanged, especially in the case of children.
Now, in the light of the grave doubts raised over the reliability of irises and fingerprints, they have been replaced by stool samples for isolating the DNA which is said to be “100 per cent accurate and foolproof.”
The Home Ministry is not convinced that this frees the operation from unacceptable security risks.
The Home Minister, Mr P.Chidambaram, is quoted as saying in exasperation: “Quite frankly, this is a shitty idea…Where are you going to store the foecal matter of 120 crore people and how are you going to ensure that one man's business doesn't get mixed up in another's? If there's misidentification in even one per cent of the cases, the shit will hit the fan!”
Mr Nilakeni's woes do not end there. There have been both time and cost over-runs. The original timeline of 2012 for completion of the project is, on the face of it, unattainable. The projected outlay has shot up from Rs 3,023 crore to Rs 17,863 crore and the Finance Ministry has naturally ruled out the allocation of such a huge amount, with the prospect of a further steep increase, since it will leave the country's finances in a state of total disarray.
To cap it all, the entire project, involving as it does the privacy of every citizen, lacks legal back-up. The Parliamentary Standing Committee has rejected the draft Bill on the ground of its being “directionless”; it also questioned the legality of empowering the UIDAI to collect biometric data and saw inherent dangers of the misuse of such power. The view of most members of the Parliamentary panel was that there was no need for the UIDAI.
Actually, the Registrar-General and Census Commissioner of India is also engaged in a similar operation, while the Ministry of Rural Development is already issuing its own biometric cards.
Here then is the Government's typical way of doing things: Leaping before looking and acting first and thinking later.