Delhi isn’t to India what Texas is to the US. Imposing mandatory IDs in Delhi, when we don’t have a pan-India one, has doubtful legal validity. Why did this become an issue in the first place? One isn’t convinced that security was the concern. Recently, a newsmagazine reported how it had driving licenses issued in the names of the president, PM and a former president from UP. These were genuine licenses, not counterfeit ones, with respective claimants never having stepped inside the premises of the concerned RTO. Delhi isn’t remarkably different. Delhi’s RTO isn’t much better, which is perhaps the reason why DDA no longer accepts driving licenses issued in Delhi as valid proof of identity. A TV channel obtained a ration card, PAN card, voter ID, birth certificate and passport for Anand Gupta in 45 days and Anand Gupta was a completely fictitious person, existing on paper. The driving license cost Rs 2,500, ration card Rs 800, income certificate Rs 1,700, birth certificate Rs 3,000, PAN card Rs 79 and tenancy proof (for residence in Delhi) Rs 14,000. For roughly Rs 35,000, one had the whole works of establishing identity. Those who wish to commit breaches of security are rarely impoverished and have the means to establish identity, since the system is rife with corruption. And those who are poor don’t possess legal identity at all.

That’s the reason security was a red herring. At the core of the hair-brained scheme was the hukou concept of keeping out the poor and migrants, since they were the ones who wouldn’t have legal identity. Think of the numbers involved. Out of Delhi’s population of 15 million (all numbers depend on the year and are often estimates), 5 million are migrants and only 6 million have some valid ID. Eighty per cent of Delhi’s income now comes from the tertiary sector and around 80 per cent of this is from the informal economy, where no form of legal identity exists. Sixty-seven per cent of Delhi’s employment originates in the informal economy. The answer to solving Delhi’s (and India’s) urban planning and other policy problems isn’t in keeping the informal economy out, or in legitimising it overnight through the stroke of a legislator’s pen. The legislator’s pen only increases scope for bribery and harassment. Instead, one reduces costs for formalisation and increases incentives. Mandatory IDs would have served no purpose.

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