The ambitious Aadhaar project would meet all expectations, UIDAI deputy director general (regional office and technology centre) Ashok Dalwai exuded confidence while speaking on the first anniversary of the project that was launched from a remote village in Tembhli, Maharashtra.
“The progress we have made is tremendous and beyond expectations. We expected to enroll only 3-4 crore residents in a year, but we have been able to enroll some 10 crore. We had set a target of enrolling 60% of the population by 2014. I think we will be way ahead of this target,” Dalwai said on Thursday. As part of the anniversary celebrations, 15 operators from this UID region (that covers Karnataka, Kerala, Puducherry, Tamil Nadu and Lakshwadeep) were felicitated for their exceptional job.
“At Tembhli, we enrolled about 1000 residents on Day One. Today, our capacity has grown so much that in September we were able to enroll about 10 lakh people a day in the region.” Aadhaar’s objective is to bring technology to the rural poor, he said. “About 13 crore of our population are people who lack identity. They are poor, uneducated and do not possess any certification that gives them an identity.”
Apart from giving people an identity, he said, Aadhaar would also help improve governance. “It will be a common platform for every service provider to reach the Indian population and maintain transparency. It will increase accountability, and in turn, curb corruption,” he said.
On the fear prevailing among various sectors of the population that Aadhaar is an invasion of privacy, Dalwai said: “The information that we ask are minimal: name, gender, date of birth and address, ones that anyone would have to give up even to start a bank account. This is a conscious effort to respect the privacy of individuals.”
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