It was an interesting article. There is a critical aspect which is missing in the article.
The real benefit is “ACCOUNTABILITY”. With a UID every individual will have a credit and criminal history.

Once you have that in place corporations and government agencies will have a very critical database to review individuals.

“Every one will be accountable for their bad and wrong actions” .

Frankly india has abundant cheat’s and thugs who now can be traced.

UID is the need of the hour. EMR and millions of other project will embark on it.

If I understand correctly, you make two points – 1) UID can be used to persecute ethnic, religious and others minorities given the frailty of our democracy (read as Emergency provisions in our Constitution) and 2) UID does not really aid development and you use the skewed definition of BPL drive home your point.

While there is some substance in your concerns, it does not warrant a complete rejecting the idea of UID. To take the first point, the mere possibility of abuse of a technology is no ground to not have it at all. Email accounts can be hacked and private information stolen by anti-social elements. So, should be not have email accounts at all? [This is just an example] Similarly, one can give hundreds of examples where tools (technologies) can be put to wrong use but that does not mean that we don’t have those enabling tools at all. In such cases, we should guard against throwing the baby out with the bath water. In fact, history teaches us that authoritarian governments have existed even without intruding technologies. The solution would be to change provisions in the Constitution to make the imposition of Emergency more difficult and also create sufficient accountability mechanisms to eliminate the risk of authoritarian behaviour. Empower people. That is the real answer to any threat of ‘state of exception’ and not banning of or giving up on useful technologies.

Second, you use a valid example of skewed definition of BPL to explain how futile UID can be in ensuring food security. Good point but again the problem is not UID. It is the problematic definition of BPL (poverty). We need to change the definition of the targeted group for ensuring food security. UID does not target vulnerable groups – it is only a tool to identify these targeted groups. The utility of this tool in development depends on how well you define the targeted group. There is no denying that there are many poor who get left out of the PDS because they cannot prove that they fall within the targeted group. In such a scenario, a tool like UID can be immensely helpful for such groups to assert their identity.

So far, I have not said anything about the benefits of UID. There is ample literature on that front. I make only one simple point on this. UID is not a panacea for India’s developmental problems. It is only a tool which can get the poor better access to development programmes. How is that so? It does this by giving the vulnerable groups an assurance of their identity by incorporating their demographic and biographic information which no babu in a government office can deny.

Another good concern that you raised was about how people can be forced to adopt UID. That is a real concern. Many have already argued that forcing the poor to adopt UID might adversely affect them in accessing governmental programmes in the short run. I have also read documents available on UIDAI website. Mr. Nilekani and his team are aware of this problem [please read some of those documents and his interviews] and have therefore not made UID mandatory but only voluntary to start off. To guard against this problem, a provision in the NIA Bill to the effect that no person shall be denied a service or benefit due to the absence of UID is a good starting point.

Varun

For if one is convinced in the idea, the second should not be much of a concern anyways.

About the idea:
a) See not the UIDAI project as another in the line of policies aimed at addressing issues marred by abstractions at every level. For years if one thing everyone, who has given a thought on Indian state, has agreed upon is it’s not the lack of apt policies – it is the inefficient implementation.
And this is where UIDAI fits in. It is a tool towards addressing this core deficiency in our system – that of inefficient implementation.

b) Any person who is in the ‘business’ of execution/implementation of a given set of untested ideas aimed at addressing specific issues (which largely what our policies are), would be able to tell you one thing upfront – and that is to put in place a monitoring mechanism. A mechanism which allows for Measurable, Reportable and Verifiable results (MRV).

So if a centralised databases can help analysts ascertain complex issues of weather and outer space – I need a concrete reason to say why can it not help us in addressing the issues of social upliftment by providing us a clearer picture of impact assessment.

In my humble view – the first step towards inclusion is identification / acceptance.

If the rural/urban poor are not benefiting from PDS, then it’s the fault of the official definition of poverty. In no way can UID harm the reach of the PDS. If PDS can make use of the data provided by UID then PDS functioning can be improved. The question here is whether this data can be trusted or not. It can very well be the case that data collection system is flawed and corruption leads to incorrect data (for example the rich and powerful manipulating the data to appear poor and weak). However, if the data is accurate I see no reason why the UID should not be welcome.

2. As far as I know, the UIDs will be given to people free of cost. Has it been announced that it will be bought and sold in the market? If so, I agree with you and the system makes no sense if it is traded in the market because only those people would be interested in buying the IDs who are competing in the job market or looking to go abroad etc. The poor won’t be interested at all unless it’s made mandatory to have a UID to get food from PDS – in which case it’s highly unlikely that they will be forced to pay. This point needs to be cleared Ruchira.

3. The question of buying/ selling of information to make profits or suit political motives/ cause genocides seems valid. In India, where cyber crime laws are not strict (and anyway the judiciary never punishes the rich and famous) this seems a valid fear. The extent of damage this can cause is tremendous.

4. There is the question of invasion of privacy too. What if I don’t want to reveal my information and I already pay taxes and abide by law? Can the state force me to reveal my details which I might not be comfortable in revealing? These questions are even more valid in a country like India which has a highly corrupt bureaucracy. If data collected from me is being used to target me or harm me then why should I reveal my true details? And if UID data is filled up by using census data then it makes no sense to incur this highly expensive project.

The above questions have not been addressed in the article which appears to be a misdirected personal attack on the very talented Nilekani who probably is the first of his kind – leaving the top job job in a major IT company to work for the country. Maybe we should be more respectful here.

Also could you please provide a proper rebuttal of Ram Kumar’s work on this issue? (Since I am too ludicrous.)

It’s no point writing scathing comments unless you say something useful in them.

I’m sure the millions of Indians who otherwise struggle to establish their identity to avail of the most basic services from the State would greatly appreciate one. Something as simple as address proof, which most of India’s middle class and above take for granted, is simply beyond a significant section of the people of this country because of our ridiculously kafka-esque bureaucracy and their hidebound rules.

What I think is that a lot of the fears being expressed are a classic case of the social sciences being utterly suspicious of the hard sciences and technocrats. The basic argument of most opponents of the UIDAI (including such eminent scholars like Jean Dreze) seems to be: technology = bad; UIDAI = technology; therefore UIDAI = bad. Having read through multiple pieces on the same issue, I am still unable to understand if the problem is with the mere fact that there exists a database this size or the possibility of its misuse or the possibility that technology may sometimes, just sometimes provide answers to intractable social problems.

Some of the fears mentioned in this post are too ludicrous to respond to, but seeing as to how the argument is made without reference to the UIDAI Bill or the way in which the Authority works, I don’t think they need to be addressed.

Also, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin‘s_law prevents me from seriously taking up the fears sought to be put forth.