Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) was constituted in January 2009 as an attached office of the Planning Commission. The UID brand was renamed ‘Aadhaar’ meaning foundation in April 2010. The logo of ‘aadhaar’ (finger print within a rising sun) adopted after a nation wide contest, allegedly represents a new dawn of equal opportunity for each individual, a dawn which emerges from the unique identity the number guarantees for each individual.
According to the UIDAI, the UID project would provide unique numbers to all residents of India. Apart from providing identity, the UID will enable better delivery of services and effective governance. In becoming a single source of identity verification, it could enable the easier roll-out of wide number of services such as bank accounts, passports, driving licences, and LPG connections. Proof of identity and greater financial inclusion could lay the basis for checking fraud and corruption, avoiding duplication and targeting intended beneficiaries in a range of programs such as the NREGS and the PDS. The first set of UID numbers will be issued between August 2010 and February 2011. Thereafter, 600 million UID numbers will be issued in the next five years.
The UIDAI proposes to collect the data through various agencies of the Central and the State Governments and others who, in normal course of their activities, interact with the residents. These entities are described as “Registrars” of the UIDAI. Examples of such Registrars at the State level are the Departments of Rural Development (for MNREGA) and Public Distribution and Consumer Affairs (for PDS). At the central level these entities could be Banks, LIC and Oil Marketing Companies. As the NPR exercise is also going on, the Registrar General of India will also be an important Registrar for the purpose of collection of demographic and biometric data for the project.
The UID project has roused widespread concern and debate among intellectuals and civil society groups in India. The debate is focused on the following issues:
First, UID numbers are not mandatory. During an interactive session at the Confederation of Indian Industry, Mr. Nandan Nilekani, Chairman UIDAI, pointed out the difficulties that would crop up if the number was made mandatory by service deliverers. If one did not have the number, one would be excluded from the benefit of that particular programme. If people can continue to access the same benefits with or without the UID, why will they opt for one, especially given the skepticism with regard to hacking and privacy invasion?
Second, there is some theoretical confusion about who is eligible to have an UID. The UIDAI website states that the UID number will be issued to all residents. In an interview Nandan Nilekani said that it was being offered to citizens, almost ruling out the possibility of entertaining the claims of NRIs. This implies that UID is not meant to create or foster a national identity. It is designed to create an aggregate for better governance. According to Nilekani, “Only if they [individuals] have stayed for a requisite time period in India, can they can be given one.” Does this mean that illegal immigrants who are living in India for a particular number of years are eligible to access Government services through the possession of UID? At the same time Indian citizens, residing in countries will not be able to share this privilege with their ‘resident’ Indian counterparts?
Third, Nandan Nilekani’s argument for the success of the UID project is based on the technology argument. He has explained this in an article in the Times of India. The title of the article appears problematic to me. It’s entitled ‘Giving Indians an Identity’. If non resident Indians are excluded from and illegal migrants are included in the project, how can Nilekani claim to implement a project encompassing ‘Indians’? Moreover, what kind of identity is he referring to here? It obviously is not an identity as citizen of a nation-state or as member of specific discursive groups (caste, language, religion) spawning the Indian landscape. Is it identity as politico-commercial aggregates? If you are a resident of India for n number of years with UID it will be easier for you to open a bank account or secure a new LPG connection. UID gives you an identity as a service consumer.
Nilekani’s technology argument is also not entirely convincing. The penetration of ICT in India has indeed been impressive. But to assume the future pervasiveness of technology in India is wishful thinking. The possession of a mobile phone by almost every roadside vendor in India is one thing and the possibility of smart phone in the hands of every Indian (as claimed by Nilekani) is something very different. Nilekani further claims, “We can expect that in less than this time, connectivity will be pervasive. In the near future, we will have unprecedented, universally accessible computing power, which can tap into information flows across a ubiquitous network.” The UID technology can remove the problems of authentication for service providers but can it instill confidence among the Indian population to use technology to access services? In a country where large sections of the population are skeptical of suing ATM cards and several people in metropolitan cities prefer to stand in long queue rather than make online reservations for rail travel, Nilekani’s vision of a technology driven India appears ambitious.
To some extent, the UID Project reminds me of Partha Chatterjee’s distinction between ‘population’ and ‘civil society’. According to Chatterjee, the concept of population is descriptive and empirical, not normative. Indeed, population is assumed to contain large elements of ‘naturalness’ and ‘primordiality’; the internal principles of the constitution of particular population groups is not expected to be rationally explicable since they are not the products of rational contractual association but are, as it were, pre-rational. What the concept of population does, however, is make available for governmental functions (economic policy, bureaucratic administration, law and political mobilization) a set of rationally manipulable instruments for reaching large sections of the inhabitants of a country as the targets of ‘policy.’
Nilekani’s UID project would be a great success if it can re-energize the ‘political society’ as explained by Chatterjee. In a political society, according to Chatterjee, the agencies of the state and of non-governmental organizations deal with these people not as bodies of citizens belonging to a lawfully constituted civil society, but as population groups deserving welfare. However, such artificial attempts are creating a technology driven political society could prove disastrous. It is too early to pronounce a verdict on India’s UID project; nevertheless cautious anticipation awaits its implementation.
