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.
:)
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