Everyone Is Numbered

It's certainly not a new idea. Successive regimes since 1996 have sought to map India's citizenry but no one perhaps has quite picked up the gauntlet like the UPA government when it issued a notification earlier this year to set up a Unique Identification Authority. And to underline the seriousness of its effort, the re-elected UPA roped in Infosys co-chairman Nandan Nilekani to head the project. "When the one-and-a-half-page cabinet note was prepared for setting up the authority," an official involved with the process told Outlook, "the only change Prime Minister Manmohan Singh made was to insert Nilekani's name as the chairman with cabinet rank authority."

Creating a billion smart cards was never going to be easy. It would entail breaking through an obstinate bureaucracy at various levels, creating several databases and connecting multiple government departments used to working in splendid isolation. The Union home ministry, which had dealt with the project in fits and starts, ran into severe problems when issues of citizenship arose. Which is why the present effort will make a significant departure from previous exertions by giving citizenship a go-by for the moment and issuing a card to every "resident" of India, including "illegal immigrants". Border states like Assam might protest, but the Union government is keen to make a beginning by registering everyone living within the territorial boundaries of India before establishing who is actually a citizen and who is not.

Sceptics, however, fear that it will take years of sifting through the database to figure out who is a citizen. It's also likely to raise the hackles of the BJP which has been crying hoarse about illegal migrants in Assam and other border states posing a security threat to India. However, such a database will be the only way to actually begin the work of identifying the legal from the illegal, even if it takes a decade or more.

How can one expect Nilekani to succeed where others have failed? "You probably think I am mad to have accepted this offer," Nilekani told Outlook, "but the benefits of the project to citizens are tremendous." He plans to set up a system that is "inter-operable" so that "everyone can tap into it". Nilekani is also clear that unlike other similar projects where the government went to the people, here people will come to the government. "It should have a common verification system, almost like an ecosystem where we do things horizontally unlike government departments which approach issues vertically." Nilekani's plan therefore is to start several simultaneous projects with tight deadlines.

Obviously, technology will be a major factor, with Information Communication Technology (ICT) playing a lead role. This is why the PM chose Nilekani, given his extensive participation in issues of governance such as the National Knowledge Commission and the Bangalore task force. Needless to say, the benefits to citizens and governance will be immense. Imparting a basic right to all citizens by giving them an identity will be a revolutionary step toward "inclusive growth", which Nilekani has discussed at length in his book, Imagining India.

On the flip side, the cards might raise issues of privacy since everything a citizen will do would be mapped. While this would have enormous import for monitoring financial transactions, cracking down on black money, income tax violations and other illegalities, it will also leave scope for harassment of individuals since the government would be armed with personal data.

Initially, the project will get under way with a budget of Rs 100 crore but will increase exponentially, with some estimates pegging costs at Rs 15,000 crore. Databases from the Election Commission of India, the department of rural development (which holds data on BPL families), the public distribution system, and citizen data through passports will be tapped to populate the database that Nilekani and his team will create. Although PMO officials have said the project will take three years, Pranab Mukherjee has said the first card will roll out in one-and-a-half years. The unique ID project is indeed a mammoth challenge. A task that Nilekani, with his growing interest in affairs of governance, is only too happy to take on.