When Nandan Nilekani was invited to take up a government assignment, there was considerable scepticism in many quarters, and justifiably so. Our government has what is known as the “reverse-Midas touch” — the ability to convert gold into lead. Think of so many government initiatives in the history of free India. Do you remember the Community Development Project of the fifties? After five decades and the appointment of thousands of BDOs (block development officers), how many parts of rural India have indeed “developed” (whatever that may mean)? Do you remember Garibi Hatao, the magic slogan some forty years ago? At last count India had the maximum number of “garibs” in the world. So will the same fate await the Unique ID Project — good intentions, tall talk and abysmal delivery leading to cynicism all around? This is a legitimate fear and our track record as a country does not lead to much optimism.

And yet, the other day as a couple of dozen of us came away from a meeting with Nandan’s team, we were looking at each other, nodding our heads and saying with a mixture of awe, admiration, hope and tautened expectation something along the following lines: “Their plans are intriguing — modest at one level and therefore eminently do-able, simply breathtaking in its audacity at another level and therefore absolutely desirable from the country’s point of view.” The new Agency is not planning to issue a card as most of us have been thinking. In one utterly brilliant stroke, they have redefined the purpose and the outcome of their endeavour. Each Indian resident is going to be eligible for a single Unique ID Number, not a card. This means that others who issue cards, be it in the state sector (the Election Commission, the passport office, the NREGA authority, the Income Tax Department, etc) or in the private sector (banks, cell phone operators, etc) have nothing to fear and therefore no incentive to resist or sabotage the new approach. On the contrary, they are free (as and when they choose — no compulsion) to leverage the fact that there will be a unique number associated with a unique individual — a symmetric relationship which cannot be violated or subverted as it will be based on non-replicable biometrics. Leveraging this facility can only help various card-issuers and if they choose not to make use of the unique IDs they are no worse off than they are today.

... contd.