National ID Card

Providing an Unique Identitiy Card (UIC)to all Indians above the age of 18 is a massive project taken up by the Unique Identification of Authority of India(UIDAI).The project is headed by Nandan Nilekani former chairman and Co-founder of Infosys.Never before any agency has attempted such a complex and massive project in India.The project has an estimated budget of Rs 150,000 crores.The project becomes all the more complex because biometric identification will also be done to make it unique and fool proof.Biometric identification could be finger prints and retinal scan or face recogonition.The National census work started form 1st April this time will include biometric identification.UIDAI would use this data for its UIC project.The project assumes enormity not merely by the number but also becuase of its sheer complexity and scale.Approximatley 1.2 billion Indians are to be issued UIC .This is by no means an easy task.Nilekani says this UIC will not replace existing cards like ration card,passport,pan card,voter ID card and driving license and a host of other cards serving for identification.But it would serve as the basis for many other e-service governance.This card will facilitate online verification of a person's identity.It will be a permanent identifier of a person from birth to death.More importantly a single trigger would change address in all relevant agency records.Nilekani is also very clear in stating that the UIDAI's role is only confined to allotment of an unique identification number to each idividual.The identification would be through boiometrical charecteristics.It is not clear who would then issue the cards? The UIDAIwill only be responsible for alloting the unique number,update and maintain the database as an ongoing process. Nilekani says one can only verify the identitiy of an individual from the database.Database can not be used to get secure private informations of a person.

But government authoritites believe this UIC would be useful to prevent illegal migrations and curb terrorism.It would also ensure that benefits from government's flagship schemes like NREG reaches the right person without midle men taking a slice.Government intends to credit to the bank account of the benificiary directly in schemes like NREG.It can also be used to track vaccinations,school entry,age at marriage and nutrition status.This means that UID will be considered as the base identity authentication for many other related schemes including EPF,Insurance and Pension schemes.This means access to the database is shared between various ministries and a perfect co-ordination between various other databases are required.The apprehension among some people is that this would facilitate hacking and there is the risk of revealing personal informations of an individual.This could lead to identity theft and resultanat frauds.It is not clear how this card could be used to track terrorists.In UK civil liberty groups have protested about using RFid chip in the proposed national ID card in UK.It is said the Radio Frequency chipset would indicate the movement of a person.Abuse of civil rights could be one area of great concern in this mega project.There is plenty of scope for this.How would the government counter this threat is very important for the success of this mammoth project.The UID database would be versatile and many agencies would have access to the information in the database.The intelligence,law enforcement,criminal Tracking agencies and counter terrorism centres would have access to the UID database.With access to crucial personal informations there are great probabilities for misuse.Government should ensure some legal safeguards and the UID project should come under some legal framework.Our experience in PDS ration cards in the country is not very satisfactory.A huge number of ghost cards are in circulation throughout the country.One hopes UIDAI would take all steps to ensure UIC is not vulnerable on this score.

Countries like Australia, Canada, Denmark, Ireland, Japan, New Zealand, Norway and the United States do not have National ID cards. There is great opposition to introduction of National ID card in US and UK from a great number of civil liberty organisations.Another apprehension in our country is politicians would use the information in database for profiling the votebank.Many countries are changing to machine readable passports.A digitised readable National ID card would become a prerequisite for the issue of a machine readable passport.Nilekani has gone on record that the data would be encrypted in the database for data integrity and safety.All said and done assigning an unique number to over a billion people is a very difficult task.The success of this most difficult project would depend on the strength of technologies Nilekani is going to use for mapping biometric charecteristics and data integrity.The success of the first biometric census lanuched in April will form the base data for the UID database.Every citizen over the age of 18 will be photographed and finger printed for the first time.For the first time the census would count bank account holders, cell phone users,computers, internet connections and treated or untreated water supply.Other routine informations collected in a census would be demography, economic activity, literacy and education, housing and household amenities, urbanisation, fertility and mortality, language, religion, migration and disability. For the first time, the count will also compile a National Population Register (NPR) with data on every resident.This would be used as primary data by government for formulating policies and facilitate planning. Once the database is ready UDIAI will allot an unique number to every citizen of India above the age of 18. It will include basic details such as name, mother’s/father’s name, sex, date and place of birth, and a photograph and the biometric identification. These details will be stored in a chip.Let us wish Nilekani and UIDAI success in this mammoth project.