Aadhaar: Touching 500 Million Indians

Identity has always been a huge concern for the poor living on the edges of life in India. This has been the biggest challenge to bring every Indian into the social fold. Public as well as private sector agencies across the country typically require proof of identity before providing individuals with services. But there remained no nationally accepted verified identity number that both residents and agencies can use with ease and confidence. Initiatives such as providing the election photo ID card and the Multipurpose National Identity Card (MNIC) though helped but fell short of giving every Indian an identity.

Delivering Identity

The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), which is an attached office to the Planning Commission, was constituted under the chairmanship of Nandan Nilekani in 2009. The aim was crystal clear-to offer identity to 600 mn Indians by 2014. Also known as Aadhaar, giving a unique identification number (UID) to every Indian was a massive task which needed professional execution. Nilekani and his team had a well-thought plan to take this mammoth project to the last corner of the country. In 2013, Aadhaar started becoming mainstream with the Union Government and many state governments making it a vehicle to disburse subsidies for various government services directly into their bank accounts linked to Aadhaar. Many experts have seen it as an effective tool for transparency and stop leakages in the PDS (Public Distribution System) and the delivery various government subsidies. So Dataquest has chosen ‘Aadhaar' project for the ‘Pathbreaker of the Year Award' category this year.

"In India, identity has been a huge concern since people migrate from one place to another in search of job or work. Having no identity has been a deterrent for them to be part of government's social inclusion drive. The UIDAI tried to build a common platform in order to enable every Indian with a unique identity number," says Nilekani.

Previously Nilekani was instrumental in making Infosys a leading IT services company and had experience in handling large projects. So with him, it was Government of India's first large experiment to use expertise of a corporate professional to drive a project of this scale. For him to deploy biometrics at such a scale was a far cry since the technology comes with its own merits and demerits. Specifically, team members he picked up from the government departments to help him in the roll out of the project had barely heard of the technology. In one of our conversations with Ram Sewak Sharma, Former Director General of UIDAI, admitted of not knowing anything about biometrics which is at the core of Aadhaar. "Although I have technology background, I barely knew about biometrics which is the base technology for Aadhaar. But a good leadership, timely-execution, and constant support from the government led us to be able to make it successful," then said Sharma.

Undoing the Challenges

In addition, the UID is sometimes seen as the second biggest technology revolution in India after the telecom revolution which touched every life in India in one way or the other. While on its way to success, the project had challenges like the NPR (National Population Register) and biometrics not being able to enroll laborers and farm workers with defaced fingerprints. "The project constantly went ahead overstepping the challenges. The confusion related to NPR is longer there with clear boundaries demarcated for UID and NPR. And we tried to use the best solutions possible to enroll so that if fingerprints is a concern we could capture the retina prints," adds Nilekani.

Sharma too believed that the UID overstepped challenges in order to meet deadline. "Initial challenges like getting people enrolled for Aadhaar and making the system work were over long time back. The real challenge now lies in re-engineering all the existing applications to leverage Aadhaar. But I'm sure that these challenges will be overcome with an active role of various agencies involved in the ecosystem. The UID has tried to provide readymade toolkits so that people become part of this," said Sharma.

Progressive and Futuristic

A good project is always judged by its progressive nature and futuristic stance. Aadhaar is one such which is able to look beyond just identity. The UIDAI has deployed the best in class infrastructure to make this happen and has used big data, analytics, and many other technologies to offer identity to every Indian which could be verified seamlessly by any government agency or bank at any time. However, the scale at which the technology has been deployed, it reserves the power to enable many other things. To shed light on this, Nilekani elaborates, "Aadhaar will not stop being a mere number to be identified. It will go further and we are working on the ‘Online Digital ID Platform' which can be utilized by different stakeholders and technology providers to deliver various applications like in the Apple store or any other app store." The futuristic stance will help to evolve the UIDAI with time and be able to leverage its IT infrastructure to deliver various services. The platform is expected to emerge as a common platform where application providers can seek effective business opportunities.

As of now, the UIDAI has been able to enroll more than 500 mn people across the country and is poised to meet the deadline for 600 mn enrollments by March 2014. The authority has faced no budgetary constraints as it has spent `3,496 crore till September 2013 to enroll citizens. The approved budget for Aadhaar enrollment is `5,469 crore.