How is the UID going, Mr Nilekani?

India's technological giant Infosys has already established its keen interest in the area of corporate social responsibilities. It has set standards for other business houses to follow with its exemplary work in areas of literacy, mid-day meal scheme for government schools and uplifting women.

Yet, one of the biggest sacrifices Infosys made a couple of months ago to the cause of social development was when Nandan Nilekani stepped down of its co-chairman to head the Unique Identification (UID) Authority of India.

The UID card is India's gigantic plan to codify and officially register its one billion people, besides having additional multitude benefits of checking leakage in the public subsidy system and to emphasise the gains of poverty alleviation projections such as the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA). An additional goal is to check illegal immigrants and thereby keep a check on terrorist threats.

The budget of the project is Rs120 crore. Given that India already has multiple agencies issuing cards such as ration cards, PAN cards issued by the income tax department, election voting cards, and now NREGA cards, consolidating all these into one UID card is an impending task ahead for the project.

This undertaking of registering all Indians, especially villagers from rural and the remotest corners of the nation for the cost of Re1 per citizen is as challenging as any assignment can get.

Similar to the social security number in the United States, the UIDs will have the basic information such as date of birth, permanent address, name of parents, photographs and biometrics. With increasing terrorism in the world, the American security system has begun to record four finger prints rather than just thumb nail prints.

It remains to be seen if the UID will use the biometrics for more than the thumbprint.
Since the project is working on a demand based process, which essentially means that each citizen will have to apply for the registration of the UID, one can only hope that villagers living in secluded locations see the benefits of this process.

For instance, if a villager travels to any city, the UID number will identify him, there will not be any further need for him to prove his identity and the benefits of child immunisation, ration subsidies and a job guarantee through NREGA - all this is proposed to be streamlined through the UID.

The existing corruption levels in India, where a ration card can be bought for Rs500, puts additional load for the UID to verify for authentic data. Another challenge is to ensure that the information of the citizens captured in UID is not misused and that complete privacy is maintained.

While we are eagerly looking forward for the first phase of the project to roll out the first lot of UID, Nikelani is kick starting his project by setting up offices, recruiting a team of experts and creating the architecture for the design of the project. Heading the UID gives Nilekani a cabinet rank, but in his own words in an interview to India Abroad, he says that he still misses the Infosys, where he spent over 30 years. He misses the camaraderie, his colleagues, the ambience and the Infosys work culture.

The writer is  an entrepreneur and educationist