Is it a card? Is it a confirmation of citizenship? Will it replace the voter ID card? Will it get you a ration card? Will the tax department accept it as valid identity for issuing you a permanent account number (PAN)?
Questions abound on what the unique identity project of Nandan Nilekani, former chief of Infosys, is really about. The answers to the questions above are: No, No, Not really, Unlikely, and Probably not. At least not initially. But once the project is seen as successful, and the information required for various purposes is similar, the unique ID can replace some of the tedious procedures in obtaining a ration card or a driving licence.
Ask the man himself, and he says simply: “The unique ID is about establishing identity, not anything else. The unique ID will just confirm that the person is who he claims he is.” In an interaction with Dainik Bhaskar and DNA on Wednesday, Nilekani said that the ID number will be unique to a particular set of biometric information — eyes (irises) and all 10 fingerprints.
Once recorded, your ID can be established electronically. For example, if you are buying something at a mall with your credit card, and you have a unique ID number, the shopkeeper will merely ask you to place your thumb (or any finger) on the fingerprint reader and the remote database will authenticate your identity. Goodbye credit card frauds, goodbye impersonations.
The unique ID is not a card. It may just be a simple letter arriving at your doorstep informing you that your unique ID has been registered with the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), and this is your number. You can store it anywhere, and no one can rob it, for the whole purpose is to match the number with the real you. The number is useless without the biometric confirmation.
So when will the process begin, and how do you get your unique ID? Don’t expect anything before the first quarter of 2011. By February 2011, the infrastructure will be in place, and you will have to show up at any of the key partners of the UIDAI. These partners could be banks, the ration offices, or mobile services companies — in fact, almost any institution that currently has the infrastructure for gathering customer information.
If your bank is one of the partners, you can go to the designated branch and get all your 10 fingerprints and irises recorded or photographically captured. Your name, age, sex, and permanent and temporary addresses will be recorded based on documents already accepted for age and address proof. No caste, religious or other information will be recorded.
In due course, it should be possible for the unique ID to replace your income-tax PAN number, for the information required is more or less similar. It should also be enough to establish your ID for buying a mobile service or opening a bank account. It may still not be enough proof to get you a passport. Children can also get unique IDs, but the biometric info will pertain to their mothers/fathers. Reason: babies do not have perfectly recordable fingerprints or other biometric info.
The logistics of recording biometric information is formidable.As Nilekani says, “a project on this scale, involving over a billion people, has never been attempted anywhere in the world.” But he is confident of building success brick by brick.
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