Aadhar & other affiliated cards create confusion & colossal waste of money, writes KAVITA CHOPRA
Sep 24, 2013No Commentsby Kavita_Chopra
The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance’s (PSCF’s) outburst some time ago on duplication of efforts and wasteful expenditure on provision of identity cards of all sorts to the public might open a can of worms.
PSCF has barely scraped the surface of identity cards scam in its report recommending scrapping of The National Identification Authority of India (NIAI) Bill, 2010. The Committee was perhaps not given all the old records that could have led to recommend categorically scrapping of the much-hyped Aadhar/Unique Identification Number (UID). Alternatively, it could have recommended its merger with the one from which it was aped.
While recommending reconsideration of unique identification (UID) scheme, PSCF has only implicitly mooted merger of UID/aadhar scheme of Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) into National Population Register (NPR). (http://164.100.47.134/lsscommittee/Finance/42%20Report.pdf)
NPR is the gateway for issue of Multi-Purpose National Identity Cards (MNICs) to citizens by Office of Registrar General India (ORGI), a statutory authority under the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA). It would also be the different coloured cards to residents who are not Indian citizens.
There is nothing unique about UID. Even the word ‘unique’ is borrowed from the original concept of Rs 10,000-crore Multi-Purpose National Identity Cards (MNICs) project of the Ministry of Home Affairs. (http://censusindia.gov.in/Vital_Statistics/MNIC/MNIC.html)
The objectives for which UIDAI was created in 2009 were already built-in the MNIC project. Had the UIDAI been set up with formal inter-ministerial consultations leading to preparation of Cabinet Note, one Ministry or the other would have questioned the logic of creating UIDAI which had so far spent Rs 672.91 crore out of its approved outlay of Rs.3170.32 crore for phase I and II to be implemented over five years. It has reportedly sought approval for phase III with a budget of Rs 14,000 crore!!
It is still not too late to wind up or merge Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), which is sought to be empowered through the NIAI legislation.
MNIC, which provides a “unique national identification number (NIN)” to citizens, was mooted as a medium for provision of services such as issue of driving licences and entitlements under social welfare schemes. MNICs were conceived as an eventual replacement for the voters identity card/Elector’s photo identify card (EPIC) issued by the Election Commission.
Ideally, EPICs should have been upgraded from conventional physical format to smart cards, which are capable of providing different applications depending on the memory of the chip and the related software.
MNIC project should thus have implemented under Election Commission, which has had the largest database of population. What was needed was weeding out of illegal migrants while upgrading database with biometric information about each voter and prospective voters (14-18 age group).
Had it done that, the Government would have saved thousands of crores of rupees on efforts to issue multiple smart cards that include fishermen’s smart cards in coastal areas issued under MHA’s aegis, ration smart cards issued by States under the public distribution system (PDS), Kisan cards issued by public sector banks and health insurance smart cards issued to below the poverty line (BPL) families under the Union Labour Ministry’s Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY).
If one adds the final, roughly estimated project costs of MNIC, UID and voters identity card, it would easily amount to 40,000 crore, excluding the recurring expenditure on updates and upkeep.
Had the Government decided to have only national identity card to be issued by EC, it would have easily saved Rs 20,000 crore with which it could have opened 20,000 new primary health centres in villages. This is purely a guesstimate as presumptive losses are always very difficult to assess.
According to a proposal mooted several years back by two experts of National Informatics Centre, a multi-purpose smart card named NISANI (National Identification Scheme As Numbers Individually) which could have replaced the 20 types of popular cards like citizenship, succession, ATM cum debit, electoral role, blood group, PAN, religion, caste, date of birth, date of death, education, eye donor, disability, driving license, gender, own home, domicile, Identity, death & birth registration. (http://mirzapur.nic.in/nisani/abstNISANI.pdf)
According to presentation made by ORGI in 2006, MNIC would have two variants, the India basic card (IBC) and the India premium card (IPC).
IBC, which would be offered free to citizens, would contain certain basic personal information. It would have memory slots reserved for additional information such as caste/tribe status.
IPC would have all the features of IBC and would have larger memory to loading data for provision of services such as e-purse as desired by card-holder.
If MNIC cannot be used as one card for all services, it can certainly be used for single card for exercising franchise, certifying citizenship and for E-payment of entitlements available under different schemes.
Had the Government not goofed up and had the MNICs not been delayed for several years, subsidy leakages running into several thousand crore of rupees would have been avoided.
More importantly, the hapless Aam Aadami would not have wasted time and effort in submitting same numerical and biometric information time and again to different agencies. No value is, however, ever attached to time foregone by citizens due to bad governance in the country.
Had PSCF been given access to all official documents on all identity cards, it would have in all probability proposed merger of UID, NIN and EPIC into a single national identity card, thereby breathing life into the concept of one country, one citizen, one card. (http://www.iimahd.ernet.in/sim09/Speakers/Tanmoy_Chakraborty.pdf)
One can cite more information available in the public domain to prove the goof-ups on multiple, statutory identities, resulting wastage of thousands of crores of public money. It remains to be seen whether the Government would muster courage to ask the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) to calculate both the real and presumptive losses underlying the plethora of identity cards planned/doled out by different government entities.
When ORGI was bracing to roll out MNIC pilot project through a consortium of three public enterprises, ITI, BEL and ECIL, in 2006, the seeds of UID were being conceived in the Department of Information Technology (DIT). By the way, none of the three public enterprises come under DIT’s turf.
DIT sought administrative approval for the project –”Unique ID for Below Poverty Line (BPL) families” in March 2006. Later this proposal was developed further by a committee headed by a senior official of the Planning Commission. The Committee plugged for setting up of UIDAI through an executive order under the aegis of the Planning Commission. (http://uidai.gov.in/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=141&Itemid=164)
Later, the Committee’s proposal was referred to an empowered group of ministers to consider, among other things, collating UIDAI with MNIC project. Instead of disapproving UIDAI, EGOM approved setting up of UIDAI in 2008. Thus was born UIDAI in January 2009 without Cabinet approval and without any legal sanctity which is now to be acquired through PSCF-trashed NIAI Bill.
The great mess over national identity cards has happened in spite of administrative reforms and transparency vigorously pursued by the UPA Government.