Dr Manmohan Singh’s government deserves kudos for appointing Nandan Nilekani as the head of a super-ambitious national project—to implement, within three years, a multi-purpose unique identity card scheme covering all Indian citizens. He will be at the helm of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), which was set up early this year and is attached to the Planning Commission. One of the icons of the Indian IT industry, he is certainly the right choice for the task. After contributing to the phenomenal success of Infosys Technologies, which he co-founded with N.R. Narayana Murthy, he has chosen to sacrifice his corporate position to take up a major responsibility in government.

Nilekani’s transition to public life was presaged by the best-selling book Imagining India, which he wrote last year to explore, what he termed in its sub-title as ‘Ideas for the New Century’. Although the unique identity card scheme was discussed at length in the book, the idea itself is not new, nor can it be uniquely credited to the UPA government. Its first spirited votary was L.K. Advani, who, as Home Minister in the NDA government, made it one of his pet themes and even launched it as a pilot scheme in select districts. Sadly, like many pilot schemes in our country, it remained at the pilot stage for the first five years of the UPA government. Now the Prime Minister has done the right thing by rescuing it in time for the forthcoming 2011 census.

It is not often that governments scout outside talent to spearhead important national programmes. Both our bureaucracy and the political class have perfected the art of filling government bodies with their own people, regardless of whether the appointee is the best person for the job. For bureaucrats it is a way of hopping on to post-retirement perches and for politicians it is a way of accommodating those who cannot be made MLAs, MPs or ministers. It is high time our leaders realised that the country is bigger than the politicians and bureaucrats. There is no dearth of public-spirited, highly capable and deeply committed professionals outside the government system who can, and are willing to, shoulder challenging assignments. Sadly, very few get the opportunity they deserve. Now that the Congress is back with a bigger mandate, can we hope to see more Nilekanis being given leadership positions in governmental programmes in education, healthcare, housing, infrastructure development etc?

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