Unique facility, or recipe for trouble?
| Many questions remain about the Unique Identity Number system that is being rolled out by the Central government. |
It is quite likely that a few weeks from now someone will be knocking at your doors and asking for your fingerprints. If you agree, your fingerprints will enter a national database, along with personal characteristics (age, sex, occupation, and so on) that have already been collected from you, unless you were missed in the “Census household listing” earlier this year.
The purpose of this exercise is to build the National Population Register (NPR). In due course, your UID (Unique Identity Number, or “Aadhaar”) will be added to it. This will make it possible to link the NPR with other Aadhaar-enabled databases, from tax returns to bank records and SIM (subscriber identity module) registers. This includes the Home Ministry's National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID), smoothly linking 21 national databases.
For the intelligence agencies, this will be a dream-come-true. Imagine, everyone's fingerprints at the click of a mouse, that too with demographic information and all the rest. Should any suspicious person book a flight, or use a cybercafé, or any of the services that will soon require an Aadhaar number, she will be on their radar. If, say, Arundhati Roy makes another trip to Dantewada, she will be picked up on arrival like a ripe plum. Fantastic!
‘A half-truth'
So, when the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) tells us that the UID data (the “Central Identities Data Repository”) will be safe and confidential, it is a half-truth. The confidentiality of the Repository itself is not a minor issue, considering that UIDAI can authorise “any entity” to maintain it, and that it can be accessed not only by intelligence agencies but also by any Ministry. But more important, the UID will help integrate vast amounts of personal data, that are available to government agencies with few restrictions.
Confidentiality is not the only half-truth propagated by UIDAI. Another one is that Aadhaar is not compulsory — it is just a voluntary “facility.” UIDAI's concept note stresses that “enrolment will not be mandated.” But there is a catch: “... benefits and services that are linked to the UID will ensure demand for the number.” This is like selling bottled water in a village after poisoning the well, and claiming that people are buying water voluntarily. The next sentence is also ominous: “This will not, however, preclude governments or Registrars from mandating enrolment.”
That UID is, in effect, going to be compulsory is clear from many other documents. For instance, the Planning Commission's proposal for the National Food Security Act argues for “mandatory use of UID numbers which are expected to become operational by the end of 2010” (note the optimistic time-frame). No UID, no food. Similarly, UIDAI's concept note on the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) assumes that “each citizen needs to provide his UID before claiming employment.” Thus, Aadhaar will also be a condition for the right to work — so much for its voluntary nature.
Now, if the UID is compulsory, then everyone should have a right to free, convenient and reliable enrolment. The enrolment process, however, is all set to be a hit-or-miss affair, with no guarantee of timely and hassle-free inclusion. UIDAI hopes to enrol 600 million people in the next four years. That is about half of India's population in the next four years. What about the other half?
Nor is there any guarantee of reliability. Anyone familiar with the way things work in rural India would expect the UID database to be full of errors. There is a sobering lesson here from the Below Poverty Line (BPL) Census. A recent World Bank study found rampant anomalies in the BPL list: “A common problem was erroneous information entered for household members. In one district of Rajasthan, more than 50 per cent of the household members were listed as sisters-in-law.”
Will the UID database be more reliable? Don't bet on it. And it is not clear how the errors will be corrected as and when they emerge.
Under the proposed National Identification Authority of India Bill (“NIDAI Bill”), if someone finds that her “identity information” is wrong, she is supposed to “request the Authority” to correct it, upon which the Authority “may, if it is satisfied, make such alteration as may be required.” There is a legal obligation to alert the Authority, but no right to correction.
The Aadhaar juggernaut is rolling on regardless (and without any legal safeguards in place), fuelled by mesmerising claims about the social applications of UID. A prime example is UID's invasion of the NREGA. NREGA workers are barely recovering from the chaotic rush to payments of wages through banks. Aadhaar is likely to be the next ordeal. The local administration is going to be hijacked by enrolment drives. NREGA works or payments will come to a standstill where workers are waiting for their Aadhaar number. Others will be the victims of unreliable technology, inadequate information technology facilities, or data errors. And for what? Gradual, people-friendly introduction of innovative technologies would serve the NREGA better than the UID tamasha.
The real game plan, for social policy, seems to be a massive transition to “conditional cash transfers” (CCTs). There is more than a hint of this “revolutionary” plan in Nandan Nilekani's book, Imagining India. Since then, CCTs have become the rage in policy circles. A recent Planning Commission document argues that successful CCTs require “a biometric identification system,” now made possible by “the initiation of a Unique Identification System (UID) for the entire population …” The same document recommends a string of mega CCTs, including cash transfers to replace the Public Distribution System.
If the backroom boys have their way, India's public services as we know them will soon be history, and every citizen will just have a Smart Card — food stamps, health insurance, school vouchers, conditional maternity entitlements and all that rolled into one. This approach may or may not work (that is incidental), but business at least will prosper. As the Wall Street Journal says about the Rashtriya Swasthya Bhima Yojana (which is a pioneering CCT project, for health insurance), “the plan presents a way for insurance companies to market themselves and develop brand awareness.”
The danger
The biggest danger of UID, however, lies in a restriction of civil liberties. As one observer aptly put it, Aadhaar is creating “the infrastructure of authoritarianism” — an unprecedented degree of state surveillance (and potential control) of citizens. This infrastructure may or may not be used for sinister designs. But can we take a chance, in a country where state agencies have such an awful record of arbitrariness, brutality and impunity?
In fact, I suspect that the drive towards permanent state surveillance of all residents has already begun. UIDAI is no Big Brother, but could others be on the job? Take for instance Captain Raghu Raman (of the Mahindra Special Services Group), who is quietly building NATGRID on behalf of the Home Ministry. His columns in the business media make for chilling reading. Captain Raman believes that growing inequality is a “powder keg waiting for a spark,” and advocates corporate takeover of internal security (including a “private territorial army”), to enable the “commercial czars” to “protect their empires.” The Maoists sound like choir boys in comparison.
There are equally troubling questions about the “NIDAI Bill,” starting with why it was drafted by UIDAI itself. Not surprisingly, the draft Bill gives enormous powers to UIDAI's successor, NIDAI — and with minimal safeguards. To illustrate, the Bill empowers NIDAI to decide the biometric and demographic information required for an Aadhaar number (Section 23); “specify the usage and applicability of the Aadhaar number for delivery of various benefits and services” (Section 23); authorise whoever it wishes to “maintain the Central Identities Data Repository” (Section 7) or even to exercise any of its own “powers and functions” (Section 51); and dictate all the relevant “regulations” (Section 54).
Ordinary citizens, for their part, are powerless: they have no right to a UID number except on NIDAI's terms, no right to correction of inaccurate data, and — last but not least — no specific means to redress grievances. In fact, believe it or not, the Bill states (in Section 46) that “no court shall take cognisance of any offence punishable under this Act” except based on a complaint authorised by NIDAI.
So, is UID a facility or a calamity? It depends for whom. For the intelligence agencies, bank managers, the corporate sector, and NIDAI, it will be a facility and a blessing. For ordinary citizens, especially the poor and marginalised, it could well be a calamity.
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The Aadhaar project, just as its failed counterpart in the U.K., stands on a platform of myths. India needs a mass campaign to expose these myths.
Two countries. Two pet projects of the respective Prime Ministers. Unmistakable parallels in the discourse. “The case for ID cards is a case not about liberty, but about the modern world,” wrote Tony Blair in November 2006, as he was mobilising support for his Identity Cards Bill, 2004. “Aadhaar…is symbolic of the new and modern India,” said Manmohan Singh in September 2010, as he distributed the first Aadhaar number in Nandurbar. “What we are trying to do with identity cards is make use of the modern technology,” said Mr. Blair. “Aadhaar project would use today's latest and modern technology,” said Dr. Singh. The similarities are endless.
Mr. Blair's celebrated push for identity cards ended in a political disaster for Labour. The British people resisted the project for over five years. Finally, the Cameron government scrapped the Identity Cards Act in 2010, thus abolishing identity cards and plans for a National Identity Register. On the other hand, India is enthusiastically pushing the Aadhaar, or unique identity (UID), project. The UID project has been integrated with the Home Ministry's National Population Register (NPR). The “National Identification Authority of India Bill” has been tabled in Parliament. Globally, observers of identity policies are watching if India learns anything from the “modern” world.
The experience with identity cards in the United Kingdom tells us that Mr. Blair's marketing of the scheme was from a platform of myths. First, he stated that enrolment for cards would be “voluntary”. Second, he argued that the card would reduce leakages from the National Health System and other entitlement programmes; David Blunkett even called it not an “identity card,” but an “entitlement card.” Third, Mr. Blair argued that the card would protect citizens from “terrorism” and “identity fraud.” For this, the biometric technology was projected as infallible.
All these claims were questioned by scholarly and public opinion. A meticulous report from the London School of Economics examined each claim and rejected them (see “High-cost, High-risk,” Frontline, August 14, 2009). This report argued that the government was making the card compulsory across such a wide range of schemes that it would, de facto, become compulsory. It also argued that the card would not end identity fraud in entitlement schemes. The reason: biometrics was not a reliable method of de-duplication.
The Indian discourse around Aadhaar is remarkably similar. Almost identical arguments are forwarded in support of the project to provide a population of over one billion people with UID numbers. I argue that Aadhaar, just as its failed counterpart in the U.K., is promoted from a platform of myths. Here, there is space for three big myths only.
Myth 1: Aadhaar number is not mandatory.
This is wrong; Aadhaar has stealthily been made mandatory. Aadhaar is explicitly linked to the preparation of the NPR. The Census of India website notes that “data collected in the NPR will be subjected to de-duplication by the UIDAI [Unique Identification Authority of India]. After de-duplication, the UIDAI will issue a UID Number. This UID Number will be part of the NPR and the NPR Cards will bear this UID Number.”
The NPR is the creation of an amendment in 2003 to the Citizenship Act of 1955. As per Rule 3(3) in the Citizenship Rules of 2003, information on every citizen in the National Register of Indian Citizens should compulsorily have his/her “National Identity Number.” Again, Rule 7(3) states that “it shall be the responsibility of every Citizen to register once with the Local Registrar of Citizen Registration and to provide correct individual particulars.” Still further, Rule 17 states that “any violation of provisions of rules 5, 7, 8, 10, 11 and 14 shall be punishable with fine which may extend to one thousand rupees.”
The conclusion is simple: Aadhaar has been made compulsory, even before passing the Bill concerned in Parliament. Under the project's guise, the State is coercing individuals to part with personal information; this coercion comes with a threat of punishment.
Myth 2: Aadhaar is just like the social security number (SSN) in the United States.
There is a world of difference between the SSN and Aadhaar. The SSN was introduced in the U.S. in 1936 to facilitate provision of social security benefits. A defining feature of SSN is that it is circumscribed by the Privacy Act of 1974. This Act states that “it shall be unlawful for any…government agency to deny to any individual any right, benefit, or privilege provided by law because of such individual's refusal to disclose his social security account number.” Further, federal agencies have to provide notice to, and obtain consent from, individuals before disclosing their SSNs to third parties.
The SSN was never conceived as an identity document. However, in the 2000s, SSN began to be used widely for proving one's identity at different delivery/access points. As a result, SSNs of individuals were exposed to a wide array of private players, which identity thieves used to access bank accounts, credit accounts, utilities records and other sources of personal information. In 2006, the Government Accountability Office noted that “over a 1-year period, nearly 10 million people — or 4.6 per cent of the adult U.S. population — discovered that they were victims of some form of identity theft, translating into estimated losses exceeding $50 billion.”
Following public outcry, the President appointed a Task Force on Identity Theft in 2007. Acting on its report, the President notified a plan: “Combating Identity Theft: A Strategic Plan.” This plan directed all government offices to “eliminate unnecessary uses of SSNs” and reduction and, where possible, elimination of the need to use SSN to identify individuals. It's quite the contrary in India. According to Nandan Nilekani, Aadhaar number would become “ubiquitous”; he has even advised people to “tattoo it somewhere,” lest they forget it!
Myth 3: Identity theft can be eliminated using biometrics.
There is consensus among scientists and legal experts regarding the limitations of biometrics in proving identity. First, no accurate information exists on whether the errors of matching fingerprints are negligible or non-existent. A small percentage of users would always be either falsely matched or not matched at all against the database.
Second, errors of matching would stand significantly amplified in countries like India. A report from 4G Identity Solutions, contracted by UIDAI for supply of biometric devices, notes that:
“It is estimated that approximately five per cent of any population has unreadable fingerprints, either due to scars or aging or illegible prints. In the Indian environment, experience has shown that the failure to enrol is as high as 15 per cent due to the prevalence of a huge population dependent on manual labour.”
A 15 per cent failure rate would mean the exclusion of over 200 million people. If fingerprint readers are installed at Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGS) work sites and ration shops, and employment or purchases made contingent on correct authentication, about 200 million persons would remain permanently excluded from accessing such schemes.
The report of the UIDAI's “Biometrics Standards Committee” actually accepts these concerns as real. Its report notes that “fingerprint quality, the most important variable for determining de-duplication accuracy, has not been studied in depth in the Indian context.” However, this critical limitation of the technology has not prevented the government from leaping into the dark with this project, one whose cost would exceed Rs.50,000 crore.
It is said that the greatest enemy of truth is not the lie, but the myth. A democratic government should not undertake a project of the magnitude of Aadhaar from a platform of myths. The lesson from the U.K. experience is that myths perpetrated by governments can be exposed through consistent public campaigns. India direly needs a mass campaign that would expose the myths behind the Aadhaar project.
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Several top companies are hitched to the project in one way or the other
Aadhar, the Unique Identification Authority of India's (UIDAI) flagship project, is better known for its promise to prevent “leakages” from the Indian welfare system. However, irrespective of whether it will provide deliverance to the masses, it is clear that India's biggest e-governance initiative also offers a lot for Indian companies, particularly those working in the information technology (IT) space.
The Aadhar project, running into thousands of crores, offers many opportunities for IT companies, both in terms of hardware as well as software that will run the system on a perpetual basis. The equipment at each enrolment centres costs about Rs. 3 lakh, according to senior sources in the authority. Multiply this by about 350-400 and you get a sense of what it costs for a single district. In effect, enrolment in a single district will cost between Rs. 10 crore and Rs. 12 crore. This does not include the cost borne by the State machinery in actually getting people to enrol, the logistics or the administrative expenses.
Information available from the UIDAI shows that many of the top Indian IT firms have logged on to the Aadhar project in one way or the other. Satyam Computer Services Ltd., the once venerable IT company that now functions from the Mahindra stable, is supplying “biometric solutions” for the authority. The biometric readers are themselves supplied by L1 Identity Solutions, an American company, which has been supplying similar equipment to the U.S. Department for Homeland Security. Accenture, the global outsourcing solutions major, has also won a contract to implement biometric solutions for the Authority.
Incidentally, advertising company, Percept, is among the entities that have won contracts from the UIDAI for developing “creative content”. Bharti Airtel is to supply space for the authority's data centre in Bangalore. Companies such as Tata Consultancy Services have won multiple contracts. The firm has won a contract to provide “biometric solutions” as well as for “redesigning, development, maintenance and support of the UIDAI's Web portal”. In February 2010, Ernst and Young Consultancy Services won the contract to assist the UIDAI in setting up its Central ID Data Repository and as a provider of managed services.
The list mentioned is not exhaustive. It is only meant to illustrate that many of the leading IT companies are hitched to the massive project in some way or the other. The massive expenditure on the project provides some kind of insurance from the capricious ways of the global market. Aadhar, is in effect a stimulus by another name.
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Interesting isn't, when you have people asking for your identity or rather say you are supposed to present your proof of existence. Doesn't it sound like breaching into someone's personal life? A 12-digit number will decide whether you remain a person or an unperson. Oh, I am not hinting at a sci-fi movie, but a biometric reality. Let me welcome you to the ‘Biometric Prison Planet.'
Before I get into the aadhar of ‘Aadhar', I would like to present a fact that this whole idea has faced heat all around the world. But Aadhar is not just another ID card; it is a number, a number to tell you that you are in fact you. With this article I would like to bring to light some of the jokes that Aadhar is bringing to the fore. Well, let's start with the biggest joke – the much hyped bill was thankfully presented in Parliament in December 2010 and is yet to face the standing committee. Further, the strongest resistance to Aadhar is coming from two eminent members of the National Advisory Council, Jean Dreze and Aruna Roy. A mammoth project that would lead to millions flowing out of the exchequer definitely needs to be debated at the national level. It is a pity that though we are striving on to move towards e-governance, we are missing on the aspect of e-consultation.
The sad part is that sooner or later we all will have a 12-digit identification number pinned on our chests at a cost of our privacy. One bold statement that has always been presented in the defence of UID (Unique Identification Number) is that it is not mandatory; but ironically it is ubiquitous. So far in India about 15 different types of ID work, but UID is projected to have the entire database of information of Indians. The real fear is access to such a data would give the government a free hand to profiling, segmenting and targeting a sect, group or religion. This could lead to dangerous consequences. This data, if slipped into the hands of corporates, could be used to serve various purposes.
UID promises to give the poor his/her identity, it is a tool for profiling the beneficiary in PDS, streamlining payments to be made under MGNREGS and enabling the achievement of targets under right to education or any such government scheme. Service delivery is what it guarantees. But serious doubts have been raised about its being able to rationalise the PDS. Going on the same line, UID has been advocated as a tool for the poor to avail themselves of the services of the PDS from any part of the country. The distinct reality is that every PDS has a limited amount of ration with it and will in no case be able to answer the numerous calls of the migrants. Another aspect being voiced in favour of the UID is its efficacy in streamlining the direct cash transfer to the poor by effectively segmenting the poor and the needy. But can it really fill the lacunae of governance is the real question.
Apart from that, there is exactly no strong edifice of biometrics on which this mega-structure is to be constructed. Patterns of iris change with age, disease and health; fingerprints can easily be tapped and copied.
Moreover, the problem will come in reduplication of the structure. A register of more than 100 million identities sounds a distant dream. It's a herculean task to build such a colossal database. It is a critical piece of information infrastructure that has to come in place. So far, the project has seen less of IT and infrastructure building and more of politics. Advocated as the biggest step towards social development, the project requires efficient planning at the granule level.
UID is about convergence of silos of information. The biggest concern, however, at my end is about human ethics — India is a home to more than eight million people with corneal blindness and many more have corneal scars and many more suffer from cataract. Authentification of fingerprints is questionable — there are thousands born without or have lost their hands; or even the workforce involved in manual labour or agriculture have their fingerprints marred. The entire framework is not in place and fails to answer how much of the data collected from fingerprints will be authentic. We can suffer from huge technology risks. No question has been raised about the millions of homeless people or the persons who come under the category of third sex, who may not opt to or may not be able to give the information. The project fails to answer many such questions. Questions can always be raised on the government regarding the abuse of information available with it.
Many developed countries have retraced their path on the project owing to the issues of citizen privacy. The U.K had to repeal an Act of national identity register owing to large scale protests from the citizens. Countries like Hungary and Germany look upon the project as a violation of privacy. Political pundits in these countries have termed it as the “national e-surveillance act.”
The government has shown sheer urgency in going for the UID project. If the project fails to confront the various questions and doubts being raised, it would hurt democracy. This is a dark joke making its round in the political corridors with the idea of investing an identity to every citizen of the country. It is prudent at this stage for the government to have a frank debate over the matter and to put in public the entire structure before it goes into investing this enormous amount of money which could otherwise be used to lift millions out of poverty.
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What the UID conceals
R. Ramakumar| The UID project has both ‘security' and ‘developmental' dimensions. The former leads to an invasive state; the latter leaves us with a retreating state. |
Is identity the “missing link” in India's efforts to rise as an “inclusive” economic superpower? Can an identity-linked and technology-based solution change the face of governance in India? Given the euphoria around the Unique Identification (UID) project, one is tempted to believe so. However, a careful look at the project would show that the euphoria is just hyperbole; only the politically naïve can afford to ignore the far-reaching implications of this Orwellian project.
One can summarise the criticisms of the UID project under four heads. First, the project would necessarily entail the violation of privacy and civil liberties of people. Second, it remains unclear whether biometric technology — the cornerstone of the project – is capable of the gigantic task of de-duplication. The Unique Identification Authority of India's (UIDAI) “Biometrics Standards Committee” has noted that retaining biometric efficiency for a database of more than one billion persons “has not been adequately analysed” and the problem of fingerprint quality in India “has not been studied in depth”. Third, there has been no cost-benefit analysis or feasibility report for the project till now. Finally, the purported benefits of the project in the social sector, such as in the Public Distribution System (PDS), are largely illusive. The problem of duplicate ration cards is often hugely exaggerated. Even so, some States have largely eliminated duplicate ration cards using “lower” technologies like hologram-enabled ration cards.
In this larger context, the UID project has two distinct political dimensions. The first dimension is that the project is fundamentally linked to “national security” concerns rather than “developmental” concerns. In fact, the marketing team of the UIDAI has always been on an overdrive to hush up the security angle, and play up the developmental angle, to render it more appealing.
The first phase of today's UID project was initiated in 1999 by the NDA government in the wake of the Kargil War. Following the reports of the “Kargil Review Committee” in 2000, and a Group of Ministers in 2001, the NDA government decided to compulsorily register all citizens into a “National Population Register” (NPR) and issue a Multi-purpose National Identity Card (MNIC) to each citizen. To ease this process, clauses related to individual privacy in the Citizenship Act of 1955 were weakened through an amendment in 2003. In sum, the ground work for a national ID project was completed by 2003 itself.
The parallels between the UPA's UID and the NDA's MNIC are too evident to be missed, even as the UPA sells UID as a purely “developmental” initiative. The former chief of the Intelligence Bureau, A.K. Doval, almost gave it away recently, when he said that UID, originally, “was intended to wash out the aliens and unauthorised people. But the focus appears to be shifting. Now, it is being projected as more development-oriented, lest it ruffle any feathers”.
The potential of the project to unleash a security frenzy is the reason why privacy concerns have to be taken seriously. The government and the UIDAI have made it appear as if the purported, and unsubstantiated, benefits of “good governance” from the project eclipse the concerns regarding privacy and civil liberties. This is where the problem lies. A foundational understanding in the study of individual freedoms, pioneered by scholars like Amartya Sen, is that consequence-independent absolute rights are rather hard to defend. Hence, the demand to trade-off one freedom for another (here, the “invasive loss” of privacy for “development”) is an untenable demand. Each freedom, independently, has an instrumental value, and the loss of one freedom undermines the individual's overall capability to expand up on other freedoms. No wonder then that Sen himself has voiced the privacy concern regarding the UID project.
There is a related concern: police and security forces, if allowed access to the biometric database, could extensively use it for regular surveillance and investigative purposes, leading to a number of human rights violations. As Amartya Sen has argued elsewhere, forced disclosure and loss of privacy always entailed “the social costs of the associated programmes of investigation and policing”. According to him, “some of these investigations can be particularly nasty, treating each applicant as a potential criminal.”
The second dimension of the UID project is the following: it would qualitatively restructure the role of the state in the social sector. Contrary to claims, the UID project is not an instrument to expand India's social security system, for whatever it is worth. Instead, the aim is to keep benefits restricted to the so-called “targeted” sections, ensure targeting with precision and thereby, limit the government's expenditure commitments. None other than the Prime Minister has made this amply clear. Addressing the National Development Council (NDC) on July 24, 2010, he noted: “to reduce our fiscal deficit in the coming years, … we must [be] … reducing the scale of untargeted subsidies. The operationalisation of the Unique Identification Number Scheme … provides an opportunity to target subsidies effectively.”
The UIDAI claims that UID would help the government shift from a number of indirect benefits into direct benefits. In reality, such a shift would represent the opposite: a transformation of the role of the state from a direct provider to an indirect provider. For the UIDAI, the UID is a tool of empowerment. In reality, the UID would be an alibi for the state to leave the citizen unmarked in the market for social services. Nowhere is the illustration more telling than in the case of the PDS.
Let me state the argument upfront. The UID project is part of a larger effort to dismantle the PDS in India. The aim is to ensure a back-door entry of food stamps in the place of PDS, and later graduate it to a cash transfer scheme, thereby completing the state's withdrawal from the sphere of food procurement and distribution.
According to the UIDAI, the most important benefit from the UID could be that you could have a “portable” PDS. In other words, you could have a system where you (say, a migrant worker) could buy your PDS quota from anywhere in India. The claim, of course, has a deceptive appeal. One would have to dig deeper to grasp the real intent.
If we take the present fair price shop (FPS) system, each FPS has a specified number of households registered to it. The FPS stores grains only for the registered households. The FPS owner would not know how many migrants, and for what periods, would come in and demand their quota. Hence, for lack of stock, he would turn away migrant workers who demand grains. Hence, the FPS system is incompatible with the UID-linked portability of PDS. There is only one way out: do away with the FPS system, accredit grocery shops to sell grains, allow them to compete with each other and allow the shop owners to get the subsidy reimbursed. This is precisely what food stamps are all about; no FPS, you get food stamps worth an amount, go to any shop and buy grains (on why food stamps are deeply problematic, see Madhura Swaminathan, “Targeted Food Stamps”, The Hindu, August 3, 2004).
What is interesting is that everyone, except those enamoured by the UID glitter, appears to know this. On its part, UIDAI officially accepts that food stamps become easier to implement with the UID. So does the Planning Commission, which sees the UID as the fulcrum around which its plans to “reform” the PDS revolve. It turns out that an opposition to the dismantling of PDS, and to food stamps, also involves an opposition to the UID.
On his part, Nandan Nilekani has been showcasing his extraordinarily poor understanding of India's developmental priorities. According to him, “in the Indira years, the slogan was garibi hatao. Then it was roti, kapda, makaan. In the last few years, it was bijli, sadak, pani.” However, these slogans are “passé”; the in-thing is the slogan “UID number, bank account, mobile phone.” Such an inverted world view, totally divorced from the grim realities of poverty, has prompted critics to call AADHAAR as just NIRAADHAAR!
In conclusion, the UID project is marked by both “security” and “developmental” dimensions. The former leads to an invasive state; the latter leaves us with a retreating state. Either way, the “citizen” is worse off.
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The retirement fund manager EPFO plans to replace PF account number with unique identification number, a move which will help in speedy transfer of a subscribers’ funds in case of job change and allow them to track their accounts online.
