Aadhaar scheme of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) currently covers 367 million Indians and continues to have 15-20 million enrollments every month. State governments have been attempting to use Aadhaar for providing efficient delivery of their benefit oriented schemes.
CNBC-TV18’s Latha Venkatesh spoke to RS Sharma, Formerly Director General at the UIDAI's office and now Chief Secretary of Jharkhand and Sanjay Jaju, IT Secretary of Andhra Pradesh. Both of them have been attempting to trim down the leakages in the distribution system via linking Aadhaar with benefit schemes. However, it (linking Aadhaar to data records) also has raised doubts after reports on wrong linkages of numbers to bank accounts and whether maintaining huge records without errors is a possibility.
Sharma believes that the linking has led to substantial savings in schemes of direct benefit transfer (DBT), public distribution system (PDS), and old age pension programmes and so on. It has been due to the reduction of duplicates or fakes from the database systems, he says. "With the same money, one can do a much larger coverage of beneficiaries and it can be the same case in other sectors as well", he says. Jharkhand has also decided to link Aadhaar to land deals from January 2014.
Jaju sees savings already taking place in Andhra Pradesh. The state also has been upgrading their databases from National Rural Employment Guarantee (NREGA) schemes, PDS and others. He says, “We have created a state resident data hub where we have put the entire Aadhaar and demographic information pertaining to the residents of the state.†Bankers in the state have also been asked to validate data to reduce errors in entry, he adds.
Also read: Govt direct benefit transfer scheme starts to bear fruit
Below is the edited transcript of their interview to CNBC-TV18.
Q: You have been Director General in the UIDAI's office. Now you are Chief Secretary of Jharkhand. You just heard our story. We understand that Aadhaar-based LPG cylinder distribution has led to a 3 percent fall in LPG consumption, indicating weeding out of ghost cards and duplicates and maybe even fraudulent cards. Do you think this can be extrapolated into food and fuel subsidy distribution? Can you just draw up the benefits that you think possible?
Sharma: Let me make a general comment. We were absolutely convinced even when we were doing the project that the extent of duplicates and fakes in various beneficiary database systems in the country varies somewhere 10-20-30 percent. It certainly is a substantial percentage.
LPG is just one of the examples of that situation. Almost in every domain; be it the public distribution system (PDS), welfare, scholarships, old age pensions, widow pensions, disability pensions, all the beneficiary programs which aim at benefitting the people either by way of subsidy, wages or by other means, have certain percentage duplicates.
In fact, in my own limited way in Jharkhand, we started the Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) in the pensions and scholarships. Substantial saving in these areas is seen immediately. The idea is that; with the same money, one can do a much larger coverage of beneficiaries. So I am quite convinced that this story is going to be repeated in almost every sector we are going to touch now.
Q: What is the extent of the population that you have covered for Aadhaar? What is the target for the year?
Sharma: Jharkhand has a population of 3.2 crore. We already have about 2.25 or 2.3 crore Aadhaar enrolments done. It means about two-thirds of the population of the state is covered. Now we have about a crore of the population left and we are doing enrolments at the rate of about 80,000 per day. That should take about 120/130 days.
Even if we proceed slowly, by the end of this financial year, we would have completed the Aadhaar enrolment throughout the state completely.
Q: Linking these to banks accounts may have been tougher in a state like yours where electricity and financial inclusion is rather low? What are the statistics in terms of bank accounts linked Aadhaar?
Sharma: No you are right. Basically what has been done is that at the time of enrolment you have enrolled people. But seeding them into either bank accounts or even the beneficiaries' databases is a difficult task. This one time seeding has to be done.
So we have put in place certain tools which can accelerate the seeding work. We have a tool called remote Aadhaar seeding framework, which will accelerate the seeding of Aadhaar numbers into beneficiary databases.
Similarly, we are meeting continuously with banks to link Aadhaar number with the bank account because that is what is required for direct benefit transfer (DBT). So in a sense, yes it is a little tedious and difficult. But the good part of this is that this has to be done only once. So we are proceeding. The figures as of now are not very encouraging, but we are accelerating the seeding pace.
Q: Can you start by delineating the progress of Aadhaar in Andhra Pradesh? I understand you are the only state insisting on online enrolment before you take the biometrics.
Jaju: In terms of the enrolment, we are almost at 90 percent now. Out of the whole population of 8.5 crore, we have enrolled about 8 crore people already in the state. Of course the Aadhaar number generation is still going on. There too we have more than 6 crore 30 lakh people who have been actually given Aadhaar numbers.
We had this system of slot booking especially in the urban towns in Hyderabad and metropolitan area of Hyderabad where we allowed the facility to citizens to book their slots online. But all that is a thing of the past. In the next two-three months, we plan to wrap the entire enrolment.
Of course, now the toughest part would be to do this residual work of mending this 90 percent to become 100 percent. At the same time we are also planning to establish permanent enrolment stations so that this residual population will have the facility to get them enrolled in future.
Q: I want your view as an IT man. We know that Aadhaar cannot help targeting. It is only an identity. But have you been able to marry your databases on social security, or land ownership or education to the Aadhaar numbers and create a socioeconomic profile which may eventually help targeting subsidies?
Jaju: That is the exactly the reason why we went in whole hog for the Aadhaar programme. We wanted to make use of Aadhaar as an essential piece of identity into our welfare programmes and Andhra Pradesh has large number of welfare programmes belonging to both the central as well as the state sector.
As part of this, we have created a state resident data hub where we have put the entire Aadhaar and demographic information pertaining to the residents of the state. We are also pooling in and bringing in all the state welfare department databases like social security, pensions, scholarships, National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) or civil supplies and now the process of seeding these databases with Aadhaar number is currently on.
Once that part is complete, then we would come to know the extent of duplicates and ghost IDs or bogus IDs which are there in these databases and subsequent to this would come in this entire post-Aadhaar world wherein bank accounts and DBTs and other things would follow.
Q: You spoke of errors in the Aadhaar database linked with the banking system. What was the percentage of errors?
Jaju: It is not very significant right now, but we have been noticing that various dealers have been getting complaints with regards to the wrong seeding of Aadhaar numbers. They are not really wrong Aadhaar numbers, but they are not Aadhaar numbers pertaining to that particular consumer. So to that extent that is why we have advised the bankers to validate the Aadhaar numbers before they seed it into their databases.
Q: Is Aadhaar being used in any creative ways in Jharkhand? I hear you guys are using it for land transactions?
Sharma: In Jharkhand, as we know that Aadhaar coverage can become 100 percent by end of December 2013, we have actually taken a policy decision that there are three types of areas in which one can use Aadhaar. One is regulatory area.
Regulatory areas are in terms of driving license or registration of properties and other kinds. Similarly, the other area is benefit delivery area like old age pensions, scholarships and NREGA wages and PDS and others. The other area can be like health, education, midday meals and children other benefits.
All these areas, we have taken a decision that benefit oriented schemes must start riding on Aadhaar. So, December 31, 2013 is the cut off date given to the departments. The cabinet has taken a decision that we should converse towards that situation where every benefit delivery is linked to Aadhaar.
This will ensure (a) elimination of duplicates; (b) it is also very good for monitoring these schemes. For example, if you want to monitor the immunisation program, the same child has to be given those three-four doses of polio. Now if you tie up with a number, then to that extent it becomes very easy to monitor.
So, we are very proactively taking steps to ensure that we fully leverage Aadhaar into benefit delivery systems and other social delivery programmes.
Q: Have you already seen any savings in your entitlement programs because you are distributing them via Aadhaar and are you able to save on leakages?
Sharma: First area where we have done this is the national social assistance programme (NSAP) in a large manner. We have started seeing the substantial savings already. We have not fully implemented it as yet. So, I cannot really say a fixed percentage on that. But we have maybe about a million beneficiaries under the NSAP.
Now the whole issue is by the same money, now I can cover more people. So it is savings in terms of reducing the leakages, but the saving is not really by way of cutting off somebody's benefits. It essentially means covering more people in the same amount.
Q: What about in Andhra Pradesh? Any numbers on how much money you have saved or may save by transferring your social benefits through Aadhaar-based identification? Have you been able to weed out ghosts and duplicates?
Jaju: Because the process of seeding is still continuing, we would come to know about the duplicates only when it is completed. Then, only those who have not been seeded with Aadhaar numbers would come up with fake identities.
Right now it is premature for me to put a number. Of course, we have some pilots in our state. We estimated that because the savings to the range of at least about 20 percent will be there.
Q: Will we be able to get better quality statistics on say unemployment or poverty figures. Do you see that happening as we start linking Aadhaar to the social security benefits that states give?
Jaju: This is the first time in the country that we have done a massive exercise of identifying our residents. I am not talking about citizens because Aadhaar is about the residents. Once this process is done, on top of it we can build layers of databases and programs.
As an IT secretary, I can only talk in terms of systems and software. We can actually build layers on top of it. It would allow lot of these interfaces to be captured. For example, if you are talking in terms of trying to find out the unemployment details, then we need to build our employment database or the employment system around the Aadhaar data that is already around.
What actually would happen is you will get accurate assessment of some of the economic fundamentals. Besides this we will also be in a position to arrive at conclusions with correct information which currently is not the case.
Q: Since you have seen both UIDAI and micro level administration from close quarters, give me your vision of how Aadhaar can change our economy
Sharma: India has taken an extremely innovative step in creating this infrastructure because people don't understand the whole (idea) of it. It is not only giving identity to those who don't have an identity, it's actually creating an ID infrastructure which is online.
We are proceeding from a no ID to an online ID situation. This identity is verifiable online. Using a mobile phone, you can verify your ID. Verification of ID and giving immediate response on the identification of a citizen can be used in all kinds of situations at direct benefit delivery points while proving.
E-KYC is a service which UID has started recently. So essentially wherever you require identity proof, this can be done. Secondly, it is an online ID which means that you can remotely deliver services without the person being present, like coming to the bank branch; you can deliver services to the bank villages.
So, for security purposes, access controls, attendance things, you just name it. This is the largest transformational project taken anywhere in the world. And the way it is being rolled out, I do appreciate that always there is a time lag between the technology and its application.
So it will take a little while, but once it comes up, I can tell you it will have serious transformational impact on the service delivery scenario in the country
