India creating new identity card system for 1.2Bn people

http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13962574

by haasted • 17 years ago

43 35 17 years ago

tokenadult2• 17 years ago

The article includes a good discussion of the governmental issues involved in implementing this plan in India. I'd love to see links to articles about this from the Indian press.

dkarl2• 17 years ago

Wow, they are going to be the first country to self-consciously grapple with all kinds of fascinating privacy issues that emerge from this kind of system. In most countries, as far as I know, privacy depends on the crappiness of government IT and the difficulty of systems integration. It's mostly accidental. In a powerful, well-designed system, you have to decide to have privacy. This is an exciting prospect -- India is by far not the worst country to be investigating these issues. They are democratic and are familiar with the problems of corrupt officials. I think people in countries where corruption is not a problem are too willing to trust the good intentions of their government officials. It's very educational to see how ruthless and venal people are when systems are not in place to stop them.

pmorici• 17 years ago

I'm curious which countries your are thinking of where government corruption is not a problem?

drawkbox• 17 years ago

I concur, it is a natural force. We have an instruction that says, "let's see how far we can take this" until some force or law stops us.

Think of something crazy to do right now... someone has done it. Because they took it too far.

"No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent. " -Abraham Lincoln

dkarl2• 17 years ago

In the US, citizens don't have to pay bribes, perhaps with the exception of getting government business. You don't have to pay bribes to get a marriage license, get a crime investigated, get your garbage collected, get fair treatment in court, or get your child admitted to a good school.

Larger-scale, more obscure corruption thrives. Everybody knows that most political campaign contributions are made with the expectation of a return on investment. If you're an ordinary citizen, though, you don't have to worry about being shaken down by a bureaucrat or a traffic cop.

tokenadult2• 17 years ago

I'm curious which countries your are thinking of where government corruption is not a problem?

It is less of a problem in some countries than others, by more than an order of magnitude. Transparency International is one organization that publishes studies of corruption in different countries.

http://www.transparency.org/news_room/in_focus/2008/gcr2008

jyothi6• 17 years ago

I live in India & I agree - there is horrendous amount of corruption. And the unique identification number project might not change anything when it comes to illegal immigrants, terrorists.

However as the article highlights this would give me one power for which I am okay to bear the grunt of privacy issues: I can (at least proactively) ensure my identity is not misused & if it is, I can at least be aware of it - stop it & probably dig in more.

Right now I have a ration card which is particularly necessary to get a cooking gas connection (which btw is of scarce availability - again corruption). There might be a person living at my native or hometown who is aware I am not availing the facility and probably using a duplicate card or something. There is no system to quickly check if this is happening. With the new initiative I hope it would be difficult to duplicate & easy to track. At the least these processes will get digitized the right way, given Nilekani is heading it & not yet another uneducated/ corrupt politician.

Edit: phrase correction.

anamax4• 17 years ago

> Right now I have a ration card which is particularly necessary to get a cooking gas connection

Let me suggest that your problem is not the lack of an ID card but rationing.

rams• 17 years ago

I had predicted here ( http://cycle-gap.blogspot.com/2009/06/all-honourable-men.htm... ):

"As the good old days of inflated head counts and billing rates comes to an end for Indian outsourcing companies, the big outsourcing companies will bid for, and push for huge local government projects."

It's amazing how uncritically such huge projects are treated by the press in India - privacy issues, potential conflict of interest for the person leading this effort (Nilekani). Public discussion in India in general is very worshipful of proposals like this or the usage of voting machines - there is little to no discussion of the meta issues like privacy, corruption, etc.

GeneralMaximus• 17 years ago

I don't really see how this is a bad thing. The government will not use these cards to track you or anything. It's just a universal ID card. Proving that you exist is a big problem back here, mostly because everyone has their own definition of "proof of identity". If one universal proof of identity exists, you can just show the middle finger to anybody who makes you jump through bureaucratic hoops.

rmanocha• 17 years ago

The ID in and of itself is not a bad thing. However, there needs to be a full and thorough discussion of the issues such as privacy, duplication, theft etc. From what I can see, this scheme seems similar to SSN's in the US, and using them as an example, you can easily see how the aforementioned issues can come into play. IMO, there needs to be a rigorous debate in the media about this scheme and also a detailed explanation from the government on how they plan to address these concerns.

anamax4• 17 years ago

> The government will not use these cards to track you or anything.

While there are some instances where a govt has resisted the temptation to use technology to its fullest for its own interests, the majority are limited only by their competence.

It will be used for tracking because it can be used for tracking and that's one thing that govt folk like to do.

seshagiric5• 17 years ago

Nilekani is the current CEO of Infosys. He has already stated he is going to step down from Infosys before taking up the effort to create an India wide UID. Bidding for this mega project will be an international one, with some Israeli companies already showing interest (in addition to Indian majors like Infosys, TCS, Wipro...).

So the question is not as much as about conflict of interest as it is about the success of the project. This will be the third such attempt - Seshan's voter ID, the PAN card and now the UID.

From anti-corruption point of view, this is really going to be helpful. Any government aid etc can be tracked using the UID (i.e. to see who the beneficiary was). Currently a majority of such funds are eaten up by the politicians and bureaucrats. So perhaps that will get reduced. As a state, India is currently a failure: perhaps the UID will help make some ammends.

The implementation is going to be a challenge - currently there are options that are doing rounds: a smart card approach or using a mobile sim card (a govt reserved security domain in every sim card - the sim ID can act as a proxy for UID).

kailashbadu• 17 years ago

Actually he has long stepped down as a CEO of Infosys. He, however, continued to wield the title of co-chairman until now.

anamax4• 17 years ago

> From anti-corruption point of view, this is really going to be helpful. Any government aid etc can be tracked using the UID (i.e. to see who the beneficiary was). Currently a majority of such funds are eaten up by the politicians and bureaucrats. So perhaps that will get reduced.

"perhaps"? That's your plan? Hope is not a plan.

Unless Indian pols,grifters, and the like are significantly less competent than American ones, an ID card won't have any effect on corruption, waste of govt aid, and so on.

jyothi6• 17 years ago

And you have quoted Nilekani, what more would do you expect. You need to appreciate he is taking this up giving up a definitely more profitable & less frustrating job of heading an IT major.

Given this is not a no-brainer job and involves utilizing technology efficiently whoever would fit the bill would have some past associations which might conflict. And real business people know how to keep them separate.

And for the meta issues I would believe the team responsible are more informed & concerned of it than any of us would be.

Media in India is wrongly influencing us to doubt everything and vehemently debate every issue as if we are the experts in that area. I agree to some extent it is necessary to question to control corruption and such. Doing it just for the sake of TRP is bad for the country than the question being raised.

gaius2• 17 years ago

The notion of profit depends entirely on what you're trying to achieve.

In this case, perhaps it's political power without the tedium of going to the polls... EU style.

swaroop• 17 years ago

There has to be good balance and checks introduced in the system. Perhaps even make it open source, after all it is a public work. This way, there will be no room for problems such as voting machines rigging ( http://news.rediff.com/report/2009/jul/04/was-election-2009-... )

I don't consider open source to be a panacea but w.r.t. government programs, I think it is an option that should be actively considered.

raghus• 17 years ago

Opinion piece in the Times of India: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Opinion/Columnists/SA-Aiy...

known• 17 years ago

Instead of wasting(http://tr.im/pX87) 10,000 crores tax payers money on this UID project they could have issued PASSPORTS to all Indians at a nominal fee of 10 rupees.

seshagiric5• 17 years ago

No the allotment is only 100 crore in the first year.

tungstenfurnace• 17 years ago

ID cards are a bad idea everywhere. Loss of privacy; loss of the presumption of innocence. Being required to produce the card by aggressive cops. Corruption and collusion between fat cats and government.

The cards will be hacked and sold on the black market almost immediately upon being released (if that ever happens -- it probably won't even after billions of rupees have been spent). Hence they'd make ID fraud and terrorism easier, not harder.

The article mentions 20 different forms of ID which are currently recognised. This sounds better to me. Historians, for example, prefer several pieces of evidence which can be cross-referenced to support a story rather than just one piece.

Just as it's not a good idea to allow private companies to collect data on people without their explicit consent, so it's a bad idea to let the government do so. Actually, it's an important check on government power not to let this happen. And I think many politicans involved in such schemes realise that ID projects won't reach completion. They either think it's a neat and simple idea, or in the worst cases they're out to build empires and make profit for their 'friends'.

brc• 17 years ago

1.2 Billion cards? They better not use a smallint as a primary key then

seshagiric5• 17 years ago

For a project of this scale the India Govt. has allocated just above 20 million $ (100 Crore in India). Not sure what to say.

India creating new identity card system for 1.2Bn people

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