Unique Identity Card for every Indian…..
Well these are great times !
World is evolving…
….and India is fast emerging as a global power !!!
Technology has to be used….if we have to grow….so bio-metric identity cards for each Indian…is well….on the cards !!
( But how about a unique predisposition towards positive humanness first ????)
Ex-Infosys chairman Nandan Nilekani has taken over as head of an authority that will work on the project of giving unique identification numbers and cards to all citizensof India.
“The predicted cost is £3 billion for 1.2 billion citizens and will replace what right now is 20 different proofs of identity that are available and require in the words of the gentleman who’s been appointed to head up this project a ubiquitous online database, and that will have to be impregnable to protect against loss of information.”
The challenge for chairman Nandan Nilekani will be to provide these cards to a billion plus people in three years.
Speaking on the project, Nilekani said: "It is huge challenge both technologically as well as at the co-ordination level." He added that the unique number will become a unifier instead of adding one more card for the citizen.
One Reaction from USA :
“So they (India) are taking on a humongous scale something that we have been struggling with for 20 years,” John Cornyn, the Republican Senator from Texas, said this week during a Congressional hearing on the country’s employment verification system.
Some facts about Unique citizen identity:
• Compulsory national identity cards are used in about 100 countries including Germany, France, Belgium, Greece, Luxembourg, Portugal and Spain
• ID cards are not used in the US, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, the Irish Republic or Nordic countries
• German police can detain people who are not carrying their ID card for up to 24 hours
• The Bush Administration resisted calls for an identity card in the US after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001
• In Australia street protests in the 1980s forced the Government to abandon its plans for a card
Card Trivia….
If the cards were piled on top of each other they would be 150 times as high as Mount Everest — 1,200 kilometres.
Some perceived problems :
Mr Nilekani will also have to mastermind a way of collecting trustworthy data. Only about 75 million people — or less than 7 per cent of the population of India — are registered to pay income tax. The Electoral Commission’s voter lists are thought to be largely inaccurate, not least because of manipulation by corrupt politicians.
He will also have to persuade as many as 60 government departments to co-operate. The Government has said that the first cards will be issued within 18 months. Analysts feel that it will take at least four years for the project to reach “critical mass”.
The danger, experts say, is that as one of the world’s largest stores of personal information, it will prove an irresistible target for identity thieves. “The database will be one of the largest that ever gets built,” Guru Malladi, a partner at Ernst & Young who was involved in an earlier pilot scheme, said. “It will have to be impregnable.”
( courtesy: Information from internet)
