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However, a perusal of the claims made in favour of the UID project in India would have us believe that the introduction of modern technology can help the state bypass fundamental reforms at social transformation.

I would question the authors common sense if they think that. UID only allows for better understanding of exactly how much falsified data is being used today to hood wink the public and swindle monies by govt employees. Imagine if updated census macro numbers were available via RTI or through open data initiave of Praja every year instead of relying on 2001 census for 2010 relief measures.

Some have argued that ID cards or numbers can be used to profile citizens in a country and initiate a process of racial or ethnic cleansing, as during the genocide of Tutsis in Rwanda in 1995.

THats what happen if you do caste and religion census. Reservation & idiots go together.

For instance, Sweden and Italy have extraordinary regulations regarding the use of data in citizens’ registries.

The author probably doesnt know that in Sweden it is impossible to get government services if you dont quote your Personnummer. You cant open a bank account without a personnummer. You will get credit only after 6 months and the bank checks your transactions and ensures you are credit worthy. 

Social scientists have long argued that the poor state of governance in India, particularly in areas like poverty alleviation, demands a closer look at the nature of the Indian state itself.

Good move. This should happen regardless of what is happening with UID.

Personal information of citizens is rendered all the more vulnerable to misuse in a policy atmosphere that explicitly encourages private participation in social service delivery.

Allow me to rephrase, Personal information of citizens is rendered all the more vulnerable to misuse in a policy atmosphere that explicitly encourages govt employees to maintain information in paper files which are made accessible on the payment of a few rupees to any tom dick or harry without a log of who accessed what data for abuse

At present, the UIDAI has only affirmed a commitment to protection of privacy; no substantial information is yet available on how the database of citizens would be protected from misuse in the future.

At present govt has not committed anywhere in writing that my personal data will remain protected nor has it been able to enforce it. Secondly it continues to remain the responsibility of the govt to protecy personal information which will be  provided by the UIDAI. 

The problems of enumeration in a society like India’s, marked by illegal immigration as well as internal migration, especially of people from poor labour households, are too enormous to be handled effectively by a technocrat. 

UIDAI doesn tackle those issues on the field, it only gives a number. Census dept is feeding them the data. Didnt the census people knock at the authors door???

It is intriguing that the duties of the Census Registrar and the UIDAI Chairman have been demarcated, and that the UIDAI Chairman has been placed in the rank of a Cabinet Minister above the Census Registrar

SO we expect the census department to bring all this technology to bear. Gee, I wonder what they were doing the last 60 years. And I wonder who they have that understand what is required from a technology perspective to get all this done.

In other words, the crucial question is: can the technological infrastructure of the project carry the burden of such massive data storage, networking, live sharing and verification?

Very good question. This is why a technocrat is in charge and not the census bereau. It will take a lot of new technology to get this done and may even lead to a few innovations along the way.

Fears have also been raised on the different ways in which users could bypass the verification process by using methods like “gummy fingers” and “latent finger printing.” In other words, a completely new identity, different from the original, could be created and used consistently over a period of time.

I havent heard of a "gummy iris" or "latent iris scans". Questions are being raised even today how the paper files existing in teh govt offices are susceptible to massive tampering, pilferage, fraud, selling of personal information etc. Wonder how all this doesnt catch the sceptics eye.

In what is a typical case of “functionality creep”, police and security forces, if allowed access into the biometric data base, could extensively use it for regular surveillance and investigative purposes. One, regular use of biometric data in policing can lead to a large number of human rights violations.

Bangalore police has cameras at junctions, its human rights violation I say. Ban them. As a citizen I have the right to mess up the junction and not pay a fine. WHo are the police to identify me and apply the law on me.

Further, there are major problems associated with having a classification of households as BPL or APL based on a survey conducted in one year, and then following the same classification for many years. Incomes of rural households, especially rural labour households, fluctuate considerably. A household may be non-poor in the year of survey, but may become poor the next year due to uncertainties in the labour market. How would UID solve this most important barrier to efficiency in the PDS?

The food & civil supplies ministry is expected to use the UID to collect income data from various authorities like PF & Income Tax department or any other appropriate to keep the data updated as & when it changes and re-classify the person every year. Right now even this is not possible. 

The central issue with the UIDAI initiative is that technology is thought of as a short cut to bypass difficult and more fundamental societal changes

No, it is supposed to provide a technological aid for the govt to network amongst various departments and get more data more often, including financial data. THey shouldnt be waiting 10 years for a census which collects only baisc data and not financial ones.

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One of the biggest criticsm of the UID program (even over the privacy angle), is the unknown nature of costs over time. UID itself has stated that the cost is not known as of now, but should be manageable". In true indian hyperbole there are forums/papers who talk of "lacs of crores" as the outflow for UID.

At another level, with the pop size of India and possibly need of distributed hardware for biometric recognition, maybe the costs are over the top. The UID's overall justifcation is that there are huge leakages /duplications/false identities in the social delivery system(PDS/NREGA etc) and that even if a portion is saved from these monumental governmnet programmes then UID pays for itself. Also that the service to get a UID number can be costed, not diffrent from a passport/DL etc application fee.

There was a article sometime back that the PDS/BPL number in karnataka exceeded the population of karnataka( how true that article was , I do not now). I would like to believe that no feasiblity (cost study) can be done when one ventures into uncharteered areas. Could there be a feasibilty and cost study of any accuracy say for a missle program or the entire space mission? Except to say this "program is needed" and look at costs as the programm unfolds. UID seems to be doing it the "venture capital" /"new concept" way. Proof of concept,demonstartions then next round of funding etc. But the lack of a figure on a quantitative cost benefit analysis does seem to strengthen the hands of those who say "Stop UID".

vijayan menon

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Mr Menon, Thanks for posting this - made interesting reading. Not sure how this will pan out since there are so many question marks & uncertainties. I think the leaders should support & go through with this UID exercise to see for ourselves, if it will be of benefit or not - examples from overseas are of course there as references. I think Mr ramkumar is correct - technology alone is not going to change social disparities. It can only be used as a tool, at best to improve deliverance. In this context, one can say that the costs are too high - even higher than the costs for socially uplifting the poor ! But then, these costs are going to be spread out over a long long period, & I think it would take several decades. This is just a small beginning - I dont think the promises of having cards for 600 million will materialize in 5 years.

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Perhaps you have not encountered some ‘Hi Tech’ harassment desi style.

I receive a traffic ticket from the grandiosely name Enforcement Directorate(ED); for an offence I did not commit; while supposedly using a vehicle that I had sold almost two years earlier. Oh! I know what you are thinking, and I thought so too – the buyer had not registered the vehicle in his name.

No RTO personnel or ED personnel helped me verify anything over the phone. I saw other poor souls at the ED harassed: One old man, had got his RC book corrected ( the RTO clerk’s error in the first place), but was told to go back to the RTO and get them to update their database so that it would show up on some other database.

Of course, we are all adept at the game, anything will be done for a price. None of the databases will be open to you for a legitimate reason (whether within the government or in a private enterprise), but they would not hesitate to sell the information (don’t blame just the government employees, the CEO at my firm did just this).

Meanwhile, I received form letters in Kannada informing me that as long as I was the registered owner, I was responsible in response to every document I sent explaining the situation. Just check the RTO site, the transfer procedure stated there is to just send a completed form by registered post. Yeah! Right. Why change procedures when you can make money off the victims? Now imagine yourself on the terrorist database. As long as your name is in the database you will be shot (Maybe not, if you are named Anderson or Keshub Mahindra).

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Missed reading this menon sir. Will post a detailed note.

Sorry for being tuned out of discussions lately.

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