India moves towards uniqueness

Hello friends !!

In India inability to prove identity is one of the most common and serious problems preventing the poor accessing the real benefits and subsidies provided to them. According to National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) study which states that there are close to 2.3 crore ‘ghost’ public which is unnecessary benefited by government and more importantly there are close to 1.21 crore ‘deserving’ poor who are deprived of the government benefits.

To overcome this problem Unique Identification Number (UID) is a recently finalized initiative by the Government of India under the supervision of co-chairman of IT giant Infosys Mr. Nandan Nilekani to create and manage a centralized identification system for all the adult citizens and residents of India. By the help of this initiative every Indian citizen is planed to give a long alphanumeric unique number string which can be used for various purposes.

Studying about this initiative lots of queries generates in ones mind.
1) Why this initiative so necessary?
2) Does India first through out the glob to start this initiative?
3) What other countries have done?
4) Is there no weak point of this project?
5) What can be the alternate of this project?

and so on....
In the following post I am going to discuss all these points.
1) Why this initiative so necessary?

There are several reasons behind this initiative so important.One of them is unique identification.Each and every Indian citizen can be recognised uniquely.Another one is overcome the problem of carrying different identification proves as this can be served for various purposes.Reducing redundancy of data is an another key point supporting this project.Besides this the centralised information hub will create a top level integrity.This can be beneficial in improving national security after 26/11.There is graphic representation of national identity number functions.

2) Does India first through out the glob to start this initiative?

Certainly not India is not the first initiating this project before India Argentina,Austria,Belgium,Brazil,France,Germany and lot of countries successfully following this identification process. Success of this project depends on the 'efficiency' of the project rather than 'effective'.We have recently 1.12 billion population second largest in world and an ‘efficient’ enrolment model would require lining up 1 billion people at least.

3) What other countries have done?

UID is used by the government of several countries to track their citizens for the purposes of taxation, government benefits, health care and other functions. Apparently, most of the countries issued citizen ID numbers for a single purpose, but over time, it has become a de facto national identification number. An example of this would be the Social Security Number (SSN) in United States of America – it was initially issued to track the disbursement of social benefits, but now, SSN is mandatorily required for, among other things, opening bank accounts or obtaining driving license. But still, United States does not officially have a UID.
In Argentina the only nationally issued identification is the DNI, Documento Nacional de Identidad (National Identity Document).This ID is required for most things, for example applying for credit, opening a bank account, and even for voting. Law requires a person to show his DNI when using a credit card. Prior to the DNI the LC (Libreta Cívica, for women), and LE (Libreta de Enrolamiento, for men) were used.

The Austrian Social Security Number (SSN) is a well-established identifier, and would identify in theory every Austrian citizen. Its format is a 3-digit serial number, a check sum digit and the birth date in an DDMMYY-notation.

In Belgium every citizen has a National Number, which is created by using the citizen's date of birth (encoded in six digits), followed by a serial number (three digits) and a check sum (two digits). The serial number is used so that men get the odd numbers, while women get the even numbers; thus, there can be only 500 men or women on each day.

4) Is there no weak point of this project?

In spite of all these benefits of the project there is some weak point of this project as this project is very cost effective.The Government had allocated Rs 100 crore in the interim Budget to start up this project.The overall cost estimated for the project is likely to be in excess of Rs 10,000 Crore . Centralizing a commons server of information is a serious challenge itself.In any case of crashing or any non happening can be caused harmful effects.

5) What can be the alternate of this project?

Since the project is much cost sensitive but beneficial too,to drop the project on the basis of cost is not an intelligent task.Rather we can find some other ways as an alternate of this project. As we know in India RVPP (Ration card,Voter id,PAN card and Passport) are the most used source of identification.We can reuse all these sources in a well maintained and integrated manner which can cut the cost at much lower level.

So concluding the post I feel that every new technology have some bugs or rather we should say everything has its own pros and cons. Might be in early stage this initiative fail (we never hope this) but overall it's a remarkable move of government of India towards a bright future. I wish this project over as soon as possible with its full success.
:)

Google,China and lots of hacks !!!

Hi friends !!

From past few days Google vs China war has been the limelight of every news paper, blog and even technical sites. The famous claim by google that it has been attacked and not only google but also twenty other large companies from worldwide been targeted whereas China's response over this that it was itself been attacked.

From China point of view if we see its censorship is known to everyone. Filtering google.cn result as Chinese government rules is from 2006 when google.cn search engines started in China. China supports this arguing google spreads pornography and citing their "social responsibilities" towards nation but reality is known to everyone.
source

Google still adamant over its decision to pull out of china. There are two sides to debate over this matter as where one appreciating google's decision on other hand other one justifying this as Google done this because it never been a popular search engine in giant C. It's Baidu which is more popular than google. Data itself dipicts this-
source

But all n all God knows what's the reality. Google is superior but it should also known not in communist states. In the era of free net google's this step can be applauded but with China it's really a matter of consideration. Google's threat to pull out of China has ignited debate among Chinese people, divided between a thirst for free-flowing information and nationalist rancour against foreign criticism. Thus in China also google's this step somewhere is been applauded.

From the point of technology it's a dark side of this dispute. As being a reputed search engine Google should consider this matter seriously where as China 'the technocracy' should be commanded over these type of acts and be assure not to be happened again. :)

Best Regards !!

A Movie called 3-Idiots

Hello friends...

A warm hearted welcome to you all. Well that's my second post of this year and thanks to God what a sizzling start of the year. People were celebrating and me kidnapped by the text books. Ahhh.... but now this all is about to over. Again thanks to God !! :)

In the mean while me engaged in exams lots of happening happened. Some of were really nice and some of were unfortunately heart breaking. Say for an example India lost its first Tri series match with Sri-Lanka. As well as a new movie called 3-Idiots released,directed by Mr. Rajkumar Hirani a very well known personalty of India,produced by Mr. Vidhi Vinod Chopra. Really a fantastic movie but unfortunately I watched it yesterday only.

Movie , about three friends and their Engineering life shooted at IIMB campus. As the Engineering life well known for its activities so as depicted through out the movie. The adventures,the friendship,the love at first site and yeah obviously the Chronicles of Engineering. The story is just revolving around all that stuff but why then it's named as 3-idiots?

It's probably named as so because it's the story of three friends who just met first time at campus hostel during ragging and get so fast to each other that no one can forget anyone. The three scholar guys who were pronounced as idiots but were the real champ. Through out a brief summery don't think the story is little bit dull in taste. It has so much laughings that you can probably laugh at your guts. :)

What I personally liked through out the movie was the song lyrics,the cinematography and the friendship among them. The whole story is so weaved that you never get it dull at any turn of the movie. The script which tend us to think for a while plays seriously a vital roll. The ending of the movie proves each and every quotes and thoughts. Teaching from the movie is you should always be confident about you and to chase excellence success will defiantly chase you. :)

So that's all about the movie but wait... have I missed something or someone ?
yeah you are right... the "FIVE POINT SOMEONE". The something is the controversy about this movie script credit and the someone is my all time favourite writer Mr. Chetan Bhagat. The controversy about the script credit has now been solved but the smoke can be seen still now. I want to say one thing about this controversy that I like the comment by Chetan Bhagat that the only who had read FPS and watched the movie has right to comment his/her views.

What I think about this is that it's 100% wrong that the script is purely belongs to movie owners. Anyone who had ever read FPS can see the similarities and one thing is for sure it can't be a co-incident.

Another point I think is that FPS is purely based on Chetan's own life adventures and if any writer makes any amendments to hide those scenes or to make it bit impracticable then it can never purely belongs to them. Yeah in my point of view the story is made a little bit impracticable.
And that was not enough people calling it publicity stunt for Chetan , oh my God. Do they really in this world !!

So lastly it's really surprising and non acceptable thing for me that movie owners claiming the script purely to them.

Happy New Year

Hello friends !!

I wish you all a very happy and prosperous 2010.May God give you joys and happiness through out the coming year.
May God fulfil all of your dreams and give you a full bright future.
I wish to write from a long time but due to my semester exams I can't. Sorry for that.
Exams are still going on that's so amazing that this year I celebrated New year surrounding with books and my notes.
Just forget about that.These are the daily routine life.

So finally we have entered into 2010.That's so exciting, isn't that. So many new year resolutions,gift,parties and obviously new technologies. From now mobile number portability facility. oops !! I am sorry there is a braking news for us number portability facility is postponed for four month.That's really sad but the most bad news might be will this number portability facility be implemented,as some of Telecom operators find this proposal not benefited for them.God knows what will happen. But one thing is sure that these technologies are really awesome.

Sorry friends today I can't write much as I have mentioned above but promise you all after my exams I will come back. So for that time good bye and keep enjoying this new year.

Best Regards !! :)