Friday, December 11, 2009

UID (UIDAI)

UID (Unique Identification Number) is a recently finalized initiative by the Government of India to create and manage a centralized identification system for all the adult citizens and residents of India which can be utilized for a variety of identification purposes. Nandan Nilekani former co-chairman of Infosys has been appointed as the head of Unique Identification Authority of India and will have a ministerial rank. He has decided to step down from the board of Infosys Technologies

The UID system is being considered since last 6 years, but it gained traction only after the 26/11 attacks on Mumbai

The ID system is likely to be a 16 digit numeric string in order to accommodate the count of billion-plus citizens of India and ones that will be born in future. The card is likely to have a 16kb or 64kb storage chip embedded. Adding a photograph and biometric data would be planned progressively

The ID is fundamentally being prepared to identify Indian citizens so that better security can be provided by identifying illegal immigrants and terrorists. However, the real power of the ID is in its ability to provide ease of identity establishment to Indian citizens when accessing a variety of governmental and private-sector services

The likely benefits of the new ID system to the citizens will be as below:
1) Subsidies on food, energy, education, etc to people who are entitled to receive them.
2) Opening bank accounts
3) Getting new telephone, mobile or internet connections,
4) New light or gas connections
5) Getting a passport
6) The same card may act as a driving license and store your traffic violation records
7) It may act as your electoral card
8) Family genealogy may be traced

The Government had allocated Rs 100 crore in the interim Budget which has revised with 120 crors in General Budget to startup this project.[5] The overall cost estimated for the project is likely to be in excess of Rs 10,000 Crors. However if we believe as per ‘Frontline’ magazine the government in India has a guesstimate of somewhere around Rs 1.5 lakh crore for UID project.

In the first phase, the UID will be issued to people living in the coastal villages of Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, West Bengal, Kerala, Goa, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Orissa. The Union Territories of Puducherry, Andaman & Nicobar Islands, Dadar and Nagar Haveli as well as Lakshadweep shall also be covered in the first phase. The first lot of cards is expected to be delivered by early 2010.

However as per Nandan Nilkani Karnataka will be the first state to receive registration and UID cards.

The Unique Identification Number (UID) scheme, which is expected to roll out the first number in 12-18 months, however, will not confer on anyone any rights, including citizenship, Unique Identification Authority of India.
At the begging UID will be voluntary by choice but it will be mandatory by function, because you have to produce this every time when you will want any value added services like
"When you to get a passport, they will say where is your UID number, when you go to get a driving licence, they will say where is your UID number, when you go to tax, they will say where is your UID number, you go to open a bank account, they will say where is your UID number. Sooner or later you will have to get your UID number,"

In the coming years, all the above mentioned documents will start displaying the UID number, which proposes to weed out duplicate identities in the system, and hence the "number will become pervasive and ubiquitous. It will become embedded in all these documents."

"It is not mandatory but more applications will make it a prerequisite. So sooner or later your life becomes simpler if you have the number."
As par UIDAI, talks are already on with various agencies and ministries and that "everybody is ready to partner with us on this and use our UID number in their database.
UID will also help to check black money and result in higher tax collections as it will become difficult to have duplicate accounts.
"Once the bank accounts start having the UID, then you can't keep unaccounted money in the banking system. UID will sort of act as a check on keeping black money and all that. It will also strengthen security,
As per Nandan Nilkani it will take "years and not one day" for the entire process to change. He said about 600 million of the about 1.2 billion population will be covered under the project in the next five years.
However it is not mandatory for anybody either service provider like banks to ask for this details it will depend on the body who manage it to make UID compulsory like in case of Bank it is RBI who will decide when UID will be included in KYC norms.
But it is true that almost all agencies have full support with UIDAI and everyone is in plan to make it compulsory as and when they will see green signal from UIDAI.

1 comment:

Killer said...

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