2311 - Aadhar is being consumed by turf wars : S.L. Rao - Telegraph India

DIVERSION AHEAD

- Aadhar is being consumed by turf wars
Commentarao: S.L. Rao

Mission unaccomplished

The Indian bureaucracy and political class have repeatedly put roadblocks in the way of important changes because they impinge on their perceived turfs. A glaring example is the home ministry’s objections to the unique identification number project initiated by the Planning Commission. The rejection by the parliamentary standing committee, led by Yashwant Sinha, on superficial reasons is clearly political.

The public distribution system has always had economists, honest administrators and politicians clamour for avoiding physical procurement, handling, storage, transportation and distribution of rationed goods while identifying recipients for ration cards. The corruption in the Food Corporation of India and other procurement agencies, inadequate and sometimes poor storage, bogus ration cards, callous and thieving retailers and inspectors together ensure that at least half the intended grains do not reach the beneficiaries. The United Progressive Alliance government has introduced other entitlement schemes, including the rural employment guarantee scheme. These schemes have also benefited corrupt bureaucrats and politicians, who have stolen a substantial part of the allotted funds. What has reached the poor has made a big difference to millions of lives.

Alternatives to physical procurement and distribution include cash transfers. Another is to transfer the other subsidies (as that on fertilizers) to bank accounts. Cash transfers can be misused, and there are not enough bank branches and bank accounts. People who move in search of gainful employment, and many of the poor and illiterate, are unable to prove their identity. For them, getting a ration card, a job card, opening a bank account, and other such entitlements demand a way of proving identities.

The unique identification number was an innovative idea to deal with the problem. Every resident of India would have a UID number, backed by irrefutable biometric proof of unique identity — all ten fingerprints, eye scans, and other information. This information would be stored in a central processor and retrieved from anywhere to establish identity. Other documents like ration card, job card, bank account, driving licence, passport and so on would be linked to this unique identity, not retrievable from the UID. A UID number can in no way compromise privacy.

The complexity of India, poverty and illiteracy, especially of those who have no proof of their identity and so lose many benefits, have not stopped the Unique Identification Authority of India from enrolling residents, set to reach 400 million in two years. A UID number ensures that only an existing resident will get a ration card, can apply for a driving licence, open a bank account in his name, deposit payments under the employment guarantee scheme in his account, apply for a passport, and do many things which presently require him to give proof of identity, such as a telephone bill, certification by a gazetted officer of government and so on. With a UID number, he only has to give this number and a quick check will confirm whether it is indeed he who has come to apply. A UID number is not proof of citizenship. It might be the starting point to establish that the person is who he says he is. However, he will have to go through all the other usual checks before his citizenship is or is not confirmed. The UID number will help significantly to reduce bribery and corruption in getting these proofs.

The parliamentary standing committee on the bill to create a national identification authority has damned the project. The objections are superficial but have held up the legislation to create the authority. The objections are that there was no feasibility study of the project, that it was approved in haste, that despite its far-reaching consequences for national security, it has no security protection, that there is no clarity of purpose, that it uses unreliable and untested technology, and that there is no coordination between the different sections of the government.

These objections could have been dismissed had they not come from such an august body. The UIDAI has already enrolled millions and hence its feasibility cannot be in doubt. Indian politicians and bureaucrats have their own perceptions of speed in the government and the accusation of hasty approval should, in fact, be praised as an example of quick decision-making and speed in execution by the government. The implications that the listing of all residents will have for national security can only be positive since everyone can now be identified. The purpose of the UID project is clear enough from what has been said earlier. It has pioneered in technology use from many sources, getting them to work in a coordinated fashion, and provides a model for what good management and leadership can achieve even in the public sphere. Coordination between the government departments is an ongoing effort. The objections appear to be politically motivated.

The objections of the home ministry that the UID project duplicates the national population register and does not do it well are serious because they can stop the project. The NPR is a comprehensive identity database to be maintained by the registrar-general and census commissioner of India, ministry of home affairs. Its objectives are almost identical to those of the UID except that it is compulsory, and not voluntary, as in the case of the UID, and is intended to lead to a national register of Indian citizens.

The government of India has initiated the creation of this database by collecting specific information about all usual residents in the country during the house-listing and housing census phase of Census 2011. Information about the usual residents (aged five and above) of 17 states and two Union territories will now be digitized, and biometric data will be collected from these residents for further integration. It is compulsory for every citizen to register in the national register of Indian citizens. The creation of the NPR will lead to the preparation of the national register of Indian citizens.

The UID data can be used for the NPR. The major issue is that it is the ministry that will control the data collection. The UIDAI, under the Planning Commission, has been speedy, innovative and is led by result-oriented bureaucrats and specialists. The NPR is under the home ministry, and despite many years on the drawing board, is yet to make much progress. It is under non-specialist bureaucrats. The interests of the country, the aim of reaching social benefits to the maximum number and reducing bureaucratic theft of such benefits, demand that the UID complete its job in the time-frame it has set. Which ministry must control the effort is just a battle for turf. The data must be used by those who need it.

The author is former director general, National Council for Applied Economic Researc

1988 - NO AADHAAR FOR UID - You Tube

1977 - Aadhaar, NPR mandatory - TOI

Aadhaar, NPR mandatory: Citizens have been requested to enrol under Aadhaar as well as National Population Register (NPR) in the interest of national security. The enrolment for Unique Identification Number through Aadhaar card and enrolment for NPR for issue of identity card are two different things and both are equally important for all the members of the public. Both are mandatory for each and every person states a press release issued by the state department of information and publicity.

1261 - Montek-led panel to recommend headcount-based PDS - Source - Business Standard

Sanjeeb Mukherjee / New Delhi May 3, 2011, 0:23 IST
 

A working group on food and public distribution, headed by Planning Commission Deputy Chairperson Montek Singh Ahluwalia, is likely to recommend distribution of foodgrain under the public distribution system (PDS) to each entitled individual rather than the entire family.

At present, subsidised foodgrains under the public distribution system is distributed to families below and above poverty lines, irrespective of the number of members in those families. This, experts believe, sometimes leads to distorted allocations, as sizes of families vary.

However, if new proposals, likely to come from the group are adopted then grain would be distributed on the basis of individual headcount and not on the basis of identified families.
 

“The shift to per capita entitlement will be a progressive step, since the National Sample Survey (NSS) data show that lower income households have more members per family than higher income,” a draft report of the working group, chaired by the Planning Commission deputy chairman, said.

It also added that by specifying the headcount, states will have more flexibility in extending benefits in accordance with actual ground conditions and will also enable faster adoption of benefits of the unique identification number (UID).

In April last year, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had constituted three working groups on agriculture, food and public distribution and consumer affairs after a meeting with chief ministers. The meeting, held against the backdrop of spiralling food prices, resolved to explore permanent measures to bring down food inflation.

The group on agriculture was chaired by Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, while that on consumer affairs was headed by Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi.

The third group, under the chairmanship of Ahluwalia, is looking into aspects like PDS reforms, strorage and waste minimisation.

The working groups headed by Hooda and Modi have already given their reports to the government.

Officials said the Ahluwalia-chaired panel was also expected to recommend allotment of fair price shops to institutions and groups, sale of non-PDS items through ration shops and proper monitoring and check of fair price shops.

“Measures should be taken by all states and union territories to ensure that the quota of grains for a particular month is available with each ration shop by the end of the previous month for timely distribution to beneficiaries,” officials said.

Items like consumer goods and services could also be considered for distribution through the fair price shops.

Officials said the panel headed by Ahluwalia was also expected to forcefully advocate nationwide adoption of a computerised system of tracking transportation and distribution of PDS items.

“The computerisation of PDS should also move towards synchronisation with the UID system and aadhaar numbers,” officials said.

The group is also expected to recommend distribution of foodgrains through next-gen smart cards which will enable transfer of subsidy directly to beneficiary, so that he can buy any commodity like wheat, rice, eggs, meat and pulses from any fair price shop or designated retail outlets.

The group is likely to suggest directing the task force under UIDAI Chairman Nandan Nilekani to recommend ways to effectively distribute grains and food subsidy.

At present, various studies show 30-40 per cent of the foodgrain allocated for distribution through PDS never reaches the targeted population.

Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh and Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi, along with the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council chairman C Rangarajan, are the other members of the working group.

1253 - Wikileaks: US closely examination a UID program- Source - Live newsIndia

Wikileaks: US closely examination a UID program
Posted By LNI On May 1, 2011 @ 6:53 AM In Indian | Comments Disabled

In a Wikileaks wire that has flush a US State dialect seems to have a specific set of questions that they are meddlesome in meaningful about India’s Unique marker program. Creating a biometric database of a world’s largest democracy is a plan that would seductiveness a lot of general supervision agencies. The questions that a wire lists are utterly general and some information is public.

The information sought [1] by US authorities:

A) (SBU) PLEASE REPORT ON THE PROGRESS OR STATUS OF THE INDIAN BIOMETRIC ID CARD’S DEVELOPMENT AND DEPLOYMENT, TO THE EXTENT THIS INFORMATION IS AVAILABLE.

B) (SBU) WHAT IS INDIA’S STRATEGIC PLAN FOR UTILIZING BIOMETRIC ID CARD TECHNOLOGY IN THE MILITARY, LAW ENFORCEMENT, AND PRIVATE SECTORS?

C) (SBU) WHICH GOVERNMENT AGENCIES WILL BE RESPONSIBLE FOR OVERSEEING THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE NATIONAL ID CARD BIOMETRIC COLLECTION STRATEGY?

D) (SBU) HOW DO AUTHORITIES PLAN TO UTILIZE THE BIOMETRIC ID CARD AT INDIA’S BORDERS, PORTS, AND AIRPORTS?

E) (SBU) WHICH FOREIGN COUNTRIES AND/OR CORPORATIONS ARE ASSISTING IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ID CARD? WHICH BIOMETRIC SYSTEMS (I.E. FINGERPRINTS, FACIAL RECOGNITION, IRIS SCAN, ETC.) WILL BE INCORPORATED INTO THE CARD?

F) (SBU) WHAT PROMPTED DEVELOPMENT OF THE ID CARD?

G) (SBU) WHICH COMPANY IS PROVIDING THE BIOMETRIC COLLECTION DEVICES, STORAGE, AND MATCHING DATABASE EQUIPMENT? PLEASE PROVIDE THE NAME, MODEL, AND VERSION OF THE BIOMETRIC COLLECTION DEVICES USED FOR THE ID CARD, IF AVAILABLE.

H) (SBU) WHICH ORGANIZATIONS/AGENCIES WITHIN INDIA WILL HAVE ACCESS TO INFORMATION GATHERED BY THE BIOMETRIC ID CARD COLLECTION DEVICES?

I) (SBU) WHAT SYSTEMS, DATABASES, OR PORTALS WILL THE NAMED BIOMETRIC ID CARD COLLECTION DEVICES IN INDIA COMMUNICATE WITH?

J) (SBU) WILL THE ID CARD BE ACCEPTED FOR PASSPORT APPLICATIONS?

K) (SBU) WHAT TYPES OF ANTI-FRAUD MEASURES DO INDIAN AUTHORITIES PLAN TO INCORPORATE IN THE ISSUANCE PROCESS?

L) (SBU) WHAT SECURITY FEATURES ARE PLANNED FOR THE ID CARD? WILL THE CARD BE ICAO COMPLIANT AND WILL IT USE ANY ENCRYPTION? PLEASE REPORT ON ANY EFFORTS TO “SPOOF” OR DEFEAT BIOMETRIC ENROLLMENT, SUCH AS FINGERPRINT ALTERATION.

In an earlier post we had minute a companies concerned in a UID project [2] and a apparatus they will be providing.

Article source: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/india/wikileaks-us-closely-watching-the-uid-program/491 [3]

Article printed from LiveNewsIndia.com: http://www.livenewsindia.com

URL to article: http://www.livenewsindia.com/indian/wikileaks-us-closely-watching-the-uid-program/

URLs in this post:

[1] information sought: http://wikileaks.ch/cable/2009/12/09STATE129198.html
[2] earlier post we had minute a companies concerned in a UID project: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/india/companies-processes-and-technology-behind-indias-uid-project-aadhaar/197
[3] http://www.zdnet.com/blog/india/wikileaks-us-closely-watching-the-uid-program/491: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/india/wikileaks-us-closely-watching-the-uid-program/491
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1166 - Govt plan: fuel, farm subsidy as direct cash transfers - Source: Indian Express

Tue Feb 15 2011, 05:05 hrs
New Delhi:

The government plans to provide kerosene, cooking gas and fertiliser subsidy to the poor by direct cash transfers on a pilot basis before the end of the current calendar year, 2011.

For the current year, according to Budget documents, petroleum and fertiliser subsidies add up to Rs. 53,000 crore.

The Finance Ministry today set up a task force under Nandan Nilekani, chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India, to evolve a method for handing out such subsidies straight to individuals, families and farmers.

The direct transfers will also be aligned with the unique identification number that the UIDAI has started issuing. It will submit an interim report within the next four months.

This task force will also design appropriate IT systems and align these with the issuance of UID numbers, and bring about changes in the “administration and supply chain management,” the Ministry said in a statement.

1165 - Visa cards for those registered with UIDAI - Source - Economic Times

16 NOV, 2010, 04.34AM IST,ET BUREAU 

MUMBAI:

Unbanked individuals will soon be able to have payment cards, with card company Visa building a system where an individual who has been registered by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) will be entitled to receive a card from a Visa partner bank, based on UIDAI biometric identification.

Visa is partnering TSYS — a US-based tech company that focuses on credit card transactions — to help it use biometric verification for issue of cards. With this technology in place, the card company can check the applicant’s credentials by verifying his fingerprints or iris impression.

The UIDAI, through the Aadhaar scheme, aims to provide every Indian with a unique identity number which can be ascertained by his fingerprints or iris impression. The authority plans to issue Aadhaar numbers to 600 million residents over the next four years, with a 100 million expected to be enrolled in the first year.

According to Visa, a very small proportion of the Indian population has bank accounts. As a part of the proposed solution, once an individual enrolls into Aadhaar, the partner bank can issue a Visa payment card (linked to his/her Aadhaar).

Visa group executive Elizabeth Buse said: “Many Indians have little or no access to the banking system in India. Now they will be able to benefit from all the security, reliability and convenience that a Visa payments card has to offer. This is a ground-breaking initiative and a great example of a public-private partnership in action. I am delighted that Visa is part of such an important project in India.”

1164 - The cash option by Jayati Ghosh - Source - Frontline

Cash transfers, the latest global development fashion, involve several risks in India, not least the risk of forgetting the need for continuing structural change.

ALTAF QADRI/AP

CASH TRANSFERS THAT allow poor people to buy some food and other essential commodities in private shops will be much less effective in a period of rising prices of such goods. Here, at Pipari village in Uttar Pradesh, a daily-wage labourer feeds her child.

WHEN I was growing up, several decades ago, middle-class society in India was always a little delayed in catching on to Western fashions whether in music or dress or in other aspects. The past decades of globalisation seemed to have changed all that. Modern communications technology has ensured that at least the upper income deciles of the Indian population now have immediate access to knowledge about the latest trends and fashions in most parts of the world. And so there is hardly any time gap in the adoption of such fashion here as well.

Except, it would seem, in the matter of development policy. In this case, for some reason, Indian policymakers and practitioners tend to be behind the curve, taking up the fads emerging in the global development industry only with a lag, sometimes even after the ideas have been discredited in their place of origin.

As it happens, the area of development policy – and within that, specifically of poverty reduction – is hugely characterised by fads. This is also because of the tendency of the international development industry (including not just aid donors and multilateral organisations but also the huge range of researchers, experts and consultants funded by them) to keep searching for the single universal panacea, the magic silver bullet that will finally solve the problems of poverty and backwardness.

Within the span of just the past few decades, we have seen the fads move from an obsession with the “Washington Consensus” combination of macroeconomic and micro policies, to the extolling of microfinance, to the concentration on “governance”. The latest fad is that of cash transfers, which are now being cited everywhere as the solution to the problem of poverty. There has been a veritable tsunami of books and articles hailing cash transfers as the most necessary, obvious and imperative strategy for poverty alleviation.

These cash transfers can be conditional (subject to households meeting certain demands) or unconditional; targeted (given only to households or individuals meeting particular criteria) or universal. But essentially they amount to just what they sound like – the transfer of money to people by governments, rather than the provision of goods and services.

The basic idea sounds so simple and easy that a toddler could think of it: Why are people poor? Because they have no money. So let us give them money – then they will not be poor anymore. The proponents of cash transfers tend to present this as a radically new idea, some even suggesting that this is the recent creation of governments in the South, especially Latin America. In reality, of course, this particular idea has a long history.

IN THE ‘ARTHASASTRA'

Kautilya's Arthasastra specifies a system of taxation payments from the rich in order to enable transfer payments to the poor, including not only financial assistance during calamities but welfare payments to the chronically indigent and those unable to earn their own livelihood. Islamic rulers in the Middle Ages were required to follow the tenets of zakat, using state revenues to provide income transfers for the poor, the elderly, orphans, widows and the disabled. Other historical examples abound, including from Europe.

The basic idea of cash transfers (although not all schemes are identical) is to provide poor people with money and give them the freedom to choose what to do with it, rather than spending the money on what are seen to be cumbersome and inefficient public services.

Of course, this then generates other choices that have to be made: who gets the transfers? And how much? If they are universal, that will usually imply spreading the money around rather thinly, to the point where they account for very little. But if they are targeted, then the familiar problems of targeting (unfair exclusion, unjustified inclusion, large administration costs, possibilities of leakage) all become significant.

It is increasingly recognised that if they are to be effective at all, cash transfers have to be assured, relatively easy to deliver and monitor and large enough to affect household income. But that also means they have to be reasonably significant chunks of public spending. And this begs the question of what expenditures they are replacing.

Several of the more well-known “success stories” that are usually highlighted involve targeting and conditionalities upon recipients that range from light to onerous. Brazil's Bolsa Familia is a grant provided to families with less than a threshold monthly income, with the requirement of attendance at government clinics and 85 per cent school attendance. Another commonly cited example is the Oportunidades programme in Mexico, which is a highly conditional cash transfer system based not only on a complex system of eligibility (age, gender and level of education of each family member, electricity and tap water, household assets) but also requiring family members, especially mothers, to meet various time-intensive conditions such as attending talks about health and meetings and providing “voluntary” community labour.

By contrast, the South African scheme of universal pensions and child support grants is also described as a system of cash transfers, even though it is more akin to standard welfare payments that are common in almost all developed countries.

There is no doubt that progressive redistributive transfers are desirable. Indeed, redistribution is a major, even critical element of any fiscal system of taxation and public expenditure. Minimum income schemes for the destitute, pension payments for the elderly, child support grants, unemployment benefits and other forms of social protection are obviously desirable in themselves and constitute requirements for any civilised society, even the poorest one.

They also contribute in the short term to more effective demand and, therefore, have positive multiplier effects, and in the long term to healthier, better educated and more secure populations.

So the question then is not whether or not to oppose cash transfers in general, but rather what specific importance to give them in an overall strategy of development and poverty reduction. Cash transfer cannot and should not replace the public provision of essential goods and services, but rather supplement them. However, the current tendency is to see this as a further excuse for the reduction of publicly provided services, and replace them with the administratively easier option of doling out money.

In many countries, the argument has become one of encouraging governments to give the poor cash transfers that will allow them to access whatever goods and services they want that are generated by private markets, rather than struggling to ensure public provision.

Such a position completely misses the point. In Brazil, for example, Bolsa Familia can be based on minimum school attendance because there are enough public (and free) schools of reasonable quality that children of poor households can attend, which required prior public investment in quality schooling and teacher education.

Providing small amounts of cash to allow people to visit local private quacks will hardly compensate for the absence of a reasonably well-funded public health system that provides access to preventive and curative services. Cash transfers that allow poor people to buy food and other essential commodities in private shops will be much less effective in a period of rising prices of such goods.

This is important because it is not as if the discussion about cash transfers is operating in a policy vacuum. Ultimately, social and economic policies are all about choices, and this is most starkly evident than in the allocations of public expenditure. Governments typically do not have the luxury of being able to ensure enough spending to provide good quality public services and provide cash transfers that are large enough to be at all meaningful. In most developing countries, the choices to be made are not only about having good quality schools versus transfers that incentivise parents to send their children to school but even more basic choices: road or health clinic; electricity or piped water; schools or higher education institution; one airport or many railway stations; this region or that one?

In India, where much of this basic part of the development project still remains woefully incomplete, the urge to adopt (however belatedly) the latest international development fashion involves several risks. Not least is the risk that we will forget the necessity of putting in place the basic physical and social infrastructure required for a reasonable quality of life for all the people, and ensuring access to productive employment with good conditions of work. The need to provide direct transfers of income to disadvantaged sections of society is obvious and urgent, but it cannot allow us to forget the continuing need for structural transformation.

1162 - Inflation Trade-off - Source Times of India

Feb 28, 2011, 12.00am IST

While current inflation levels certainly need to be brought down, this year's Economic Survey has a radical suggestion - inflation may be here to stay with us if we want a high-growth economy. Using crude instruments to bring down inflation could have unpalatable consequences - such as loss of output and jobs, factories closing down and farms becoming less productive. If that is the case, rather than curbing inflation radically, an alternate course would be to work out ways of shielding the poor from the effects of inflation. Since the bulk of the poor's income is consumed by food, it's food inflation that any insurance policy should seek to cover. Here, the Survey notes that the public distribution system haemorrhages between 40% and 55% of essential commodities that pass through it. It needs to be reformed drastically, or better still bypassed with a system of food coupons or cash transfers.

If we were to move to food coupons or cash transfers, besides cutting wastage an additional advantage would be that they could be indexed easily to the prevailing inflation rate. Similarly, the Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee (APMC) Act needs to be revoked. Having degenerated into a cartel, farmers are paid poorly while middlemen make disproportionate profits by selling dearly. Opening up to organised retail could create a replacement for the APMC by allowing farmers to sell direct to shops. Interlinked with these is the Aadhaar identity card project because it eliminates the need for a PDS.  Aadhaar would also permit the poor to directly access the formal banking system. Combined, these measures would help government keep overall inflation to a bearable 5% to 7% while also permitting the poor to improve their living standards.

Read more: Inflation Trade-off - The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/opinion/edit-page/Inflation-Trade-off/articleshow/7587114.cms#ixzz1FFR0gciK