Inclusion project that excludes the poor
- The Statesman
- 04 Jul 2013
USHA RAMANATHAN
There are claims, and ambitions, that surround the UID project. The claims first.
The UID, it is claimed, will be an identity that will bring down the barriers that prevent the poor from accessing benefits and subsidies. Unfortunately for the UIDAI, this claim is already being severely eroded. What was projected as a project of inclusion is already turning into a threat of exclusion. So, the poor have been told that if they do not enrol for a UID, if they do not have bank accounts, if those bank accounts are not embedded with the UID number, then they will become ineligible for the subsidies that they have been getting so far. That is the first obstacle that has been set up by the project.
Then, a person needs to produce a pre-existing document to be able to enrol; a voter ID, a PAN card a driving licence or one of the many cards that are listed. Those who do not have a document to establish their identity or those whose documents are not accepted by the enrolment agency - and this is invariably the poor and the less privileged - will need an "introducer" to help them get enrolled. The introducer, as was explained by the Demographic Data Standards Committee that reported to the UIDAI in December 2009, would be akin to a bank introducer - with one significant difference: while a bank introducer would be expected to know the person he or she is introducing, it is different with UID enrolment.
The state government or other agency acting as Registrar would have to appoint an "approved introducer" to do the task. That is, introducers must be known to the Registrar, but do not need to know the persons they are introducing! The accuracy of the data can be imagined. No wonder, then, that in January 2012 the Home Ministry protested that they could not accept UID data because it was insecure and unreliable.
A second stated ambition is that of reducing leakage in the system. Mr Nilekani refers to himself as a plumber, plugging the leaks. The savings will be huge, it is said. No one would deny the pervasive corruption that has blighted many systems of distribution. The RTI, "transparency walls", public hearings, the use of technology to computerise, communicate and monitor the movement of goods and grain, the opening of post office and bank accounts for payment of NREGA wages, the use of mobile phones to let people know when their rations are to reach so that they may watch and collect their entitlements, the use of GPS to track the movement of vehicles carrying grain to the shops - these have already greatly improved systems.
The UIDAI, however, suggests that salvation lies elsewhere - in a centralised system of identification.
That, it believes, would do away with duplicates and ghost beneficiaries. There is, of course, no evidence about the extent of the leakage, and what the saving would therefore be. In fact, the first paper attempting to explain that the UID would reduce leakage appeared only a few months ago, done by the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy.
The paper is littered with assumptions for, as they admit, there isn't any data in some areas and, in others, the data is outdated.
In addition, contrary to Mr Nilekani's assertion at the talk in April 2013 that this was an `independent study', scholars at the NIPFP have admitted to "the group's research affiliations with the UIDAI (which) should preferably have been made (clear) in the study itself".
How many us know of the One Time Passwords which are to be used to "manual(ly) override" when the biometric identification fails? When fingerprints or iris fail in recognising the person, for whatever reason, a request can be sent to the UIDAI to send a One Time Password to any mobile phone that is on hand.
That OTP can then be used in place of the biometric.
The potential for `leakage' and identity fraud and corruption in this, and the problem this poses for the `last mile' is undeniable, although it is not being acknowledged.
No wonder everyone including the UIDAI is shrinking from taking on liability where there is "false accept", or "false reject", or where identity fraud occurs is a telling circumstance.
The risk, till things change dramatically, rests heavily on the individual, while the system carries on experimenting.
Is this too harsh a way to read the UID? Fact is, the UID project has been attempting to derive its legitimacy from the failures and corruption and non-performance of the system as it now is.
Yet, since it is the excitement of technology, and not an intimate understanding of the poor and marginalised, that informs the project, the gap between its claims and how it is playing out on the ground is huge.
And how much the bureaucracy and the political establishment have understood is moot; they have spoken too little for us to tell.
With the claims not quite holding up, what ambitions are these that drive the project?
(The writer is an academic activist. She has been researching the UID and its ramifications since 2009.)
STRAIN ON BANKS
In the early stages of the project, UID was held out as the answer to the problems in the PDS and NREGA; but the credibility of these claims was severely challenged by researchers and activists. The focus was then shifted to "financial inclusion". UID is to be the KYC for opening bank accounts, more particularly "no-frills" accounts. The problem with this claim is that KYC in banking was brought in in the context of money laundering, and terrorist funding. No-frills accounts have had no KYC requirement; the amounts are too small to matter. Now, with the UID, KYC is being introduced for no-frills accounts! That so many people are unbanked has a great deal to do with banks not being interested in low value customers, not having branches where it is needed, and with the banking correspondent (BC) system not working for reasons some of which were set out in an RBI report in 2009. The banking system is totally unprepared for these changes. All it does is help the UIDAI get more enrolments from people panicked by the threat of exclusion.
BIOMETRICS
Then again, the biometrics on which this whole system hinges is still in an experimental stage. For the poor, manual workers and the old, authentication of who they are is more than likely to be a problem. This is what the DG and Mission Director of the UIDAI said in November 2011: "The other challenge we face is the quality of fingerprints. Capturing fingerprints, especially of manual labourers, is a challenge. The quality of fingerprints is bad because of the rough exterior of fingers caused by hard work, and this poses a challenge for later authentication.... Issuing a unique identity will not be a major problem. But authentication will be, because fingerprint is the basic mode of authentication." So, it seems, the idea is to expand to iris authentication - increasing cost through the introduction of a mode in which pilots are yet being run.
There are claims, and ambitions, that surround the UID project. The claims first.
The UID, it is claimed, will be an identity that will bring down the barriers that prevent the poor from accessing benefits and subsidies. Unfortunately for the UIDAI, this claim is already being severely eroded. What was projected as a project of inclusion is already turning into a threat of exclusion. So, the poor have been told that if they do not enrol for a UID, if they do not have bank accounts, if those bank accounts are not embedded with the UID number, then they will become ineligible for the subsidies that they have been getting so far. That is the first obstacle that has been set up by the project.
Then, a person needs to produce a pre-existing document to be able to enrol; a voter ID, a PAN card a driving licence or one of the many cards that are listed. Those who do not have a document to establish their identity or those whose documents are not accepted by the enrolment agency - and this is invariably the poor and the less privileged - will need an "introducer" to help them get enrolled. The introducer, as was explained by the Demographic Data Standards Committee that reported to the UIDAI in December 2009, would be akin to a bank introducer - with one significant difference: while a bank introducer would be expected to know the person he or she is introducing, it is different with UID enrolment.
The state government or other agency acting as Registrar would have to appoint an "approved introducer" to do the task. That is, introducers must be known to the Registrar, but do not need to know the persons they are introducing! The accuracy of the data can be imagined. No wonder, then, that in January 2012 the Home Ministry protested that they could not accept UID data because it was insecure and unreliable.
A second stated ambition is that of reducing leakage in the system. Mr Nilekani refers to himself as a plumber, plugging the leaks. The savings will be huge, it is said. No one would deny the pervasive corruption that has blighted many systems of distribution. The RTI, "transparency walls", public hearings, the use of technology to computerise, communicate and monitor the movement of goods and grain, the opening of post office and bank accounts for payment of NREGA wages, the use of mobile phones to let people know when their rations are to reach so that they may watch and collect their entitlements, the use of GPS to track the movement of vehicles carrying grain to the shops - these have already greatly improved systems.
The UIDAI, however, suggests that salvation lies elsewhere - in a centralised system of identification.
That, it believes, would do away with duplicates and ghost beneficiaries. There is, of course, no evidence about the extent of the leakage, and what the saving would therefore be. In fact, the first paper attempting to explain that the UID would reduce leakage appeared only a few months ago, done by the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy.
The paper is littered with assumptions for, as they admit, there isn't any data in some areas and, in others, the data is outdated.
In addition, contrary to Mr Nilekani's assertion at the talk in April 2013 that this was an `independent study', scholars at the NIPFP have admitted to "the group's research affiliations with the UIDAI (which) should preferably have been made (clear) in the study itself".
How many us know of the One Time Passwords which are to be used to "manual(ly) override" when the biometric identification fails? When fingerprints or iris fail in recognising the person, for whatever reason, a request can be sent to the UIDAI to send a One Time Password to any mobile phone that is on hand.
That OTP can then be used in place of the biometric.
The potential for `leakage' and identity fraud and corruption in this, and the problem this poses for the `last mile' is undeniable, although it is not being acknowledged.
No wonder everyone including the UIDAI is shrinking from taking on liability where there is "false accept", or "false reject", or where identity fraud occurs is a telling circumstance.
The risk, till things change dramatically, rests heavily on the individual, while the system carries on experimenting.
Is this too harsh a way to read the UID? Fact is, the UID project has been attempting to derive its legitimacy from the failures and corruption and non-performance of the system as it now is.
Yet, since it is the excitement of technology, and not an intimate understanding of the poor and marginalised, that informs the project, the gap between its claims and how it is playing out on the ground is huge.
And how much the bureaucracy and the political establishment have understood is moot; they have spoken too little for us to tell.
With the claims not quite holding up, what ambitions are these that drive the project?
(The writer is an academic activist. She has been researching the UID and its ramifications since 2009.)
STRAIN ON BANKS
In the early stages of the project, UID was held out as the answer to the problems in the PDS and NREGA; but the credibility of these claims was severely challenged by researchers and activists. The focus was then shifted to "financial inclusion". UID is to be the KYC for opening bank accounts, more particularly "no-frills" accounts. The problem with this claim is that KYC in banking was brought in in the context of money laundering, and terrorist funding. No-frills accounts have had no KYC requirement; the amounts are too small to matter. Now, with the UID, KYC is being introduced for no-frills accounts! That so many people are unbanked has a great deal to do with banks not being interested in low value customers, not having branches where it is needed, and with the banking correspondent (BC) system not working for reasons some of which were set out in an RBI report in 2009. The banking system is totally unprepared for these changes. All it does is help the UIDAI get more enrolments from people panicked by the threat of exclusion.
BIOMETRICS
Then again, the biometrics on which this whole system hinges is still in an experimental stage. For the poor, manual workers and the old, authentication of who they are is more than likely to be a problem. This is what the DG and Mission Director of the UIDAI said in November 2011: "The other challenge we face is the quality of fingerprints. Capturing fingerprints, especially of manual labourers, is a challenge. The quality of fingerprints is bad because of the rough exterior of fingers caused by hard work, and this poses a challenge for later authentication.... Issuing a unique identity will not be a major problem. But authentication will be, because fingerprint is the basic mode of authentication." So, it seems, the idea is to expand to iris authentication - increasing cost through the introduction of a mode in which pilots are yet being run.
-------------------------------------------------------
Comments
- R.SRINIVASA MURTHY •
- Thank you Dr.Usha Ramanathan for a brilliant and incisive analysis of the nuts and bolts of the UIDAI initiative.
The following statements of the third article nails the fallacies and false hopes.
"Is this too harsh a way to read the UID? Fact is, the UID project has been attempting to derive its legitimacy from the failures and corruption and non-performance of the system as it now is……Yet, since it is the excitement of technology, and not an intimate understanding of the poor and marginalised, that informs the project, the gap between its claims and how it is playing out on the ground is huge." The danger is the fear expressed-"With the claims not quite holding up, what ambitions are these that drive the project?" I recall reading an 0p ed article in the 1970's The Times of India by ShamLal, the then Editor, about 'blowing bubbles of hope' by politicians to keep the masses happy. The current UIDAI is one such bubble of hope. The possibility that there could be greater sinister motives is frightening. - Professor R.Srinivasa Murthy, Bangalore.
- TS Raman •
- As I commented under the first part of this article ("A virtual monster in the cloud", 03 Jul 2013; http://thestatesman.net/news/3... a large number of people are at risk of being excluded — not just the "poor", or those without a pre-existing ID document. There is also a possible paradox that UID will be required for being able to open a bank account, PAN, "driving licence or one of the many cards that are listed". That is, we are presented with a "which came first, chicken or egg" puzzle.
Apart from these and other problems, it would appear that all "beneficiaries" of UID will have to have access to computers or other devices with internet connection, and also be able to use such devices. On the whole, "UID" is terrifying.
Thank you Ms Ramanathan for your lucid articles (I hope to see more), and thank you, Statesman.
