UNIQUE ID cards; will it be the last one?

REAL TEST OF SKILL

The government of India came out with a very innovative and bold decision of establishing an authority namely National Authority for Unique identity (ID) headed by Nandan Nilkeni, one of the best ITbrains in the country, to issue unique ID cards to Indian citizens.

Nikeni, the Infosys boss did a right and commendable job of quitting the corporate world and under take this huge challenge of utmost national interest.

120 crore has been allocated in the budget for this job also and stage is all set for this work to formally begin. Nilkeni himself has said that first batch of such cards will be made available for distribution sometimes in the last month of this year. Secretarial infrastructure for this enormous task is being set up and personnel necessary for secretarial back up is being provided. One R.S.Sharma IAS of jharkahnd cadre has been made second man in this authority. In nutshell we can hope that things are likely to move with great pace.

Nilkeni has hinted that each citizen will be allotted a unique number on the card and shall be tampered proof. Preparation of such cards for Indian Nationals has been on cards for many years and in fact on many forums, by many organizations and by many experts demand and suggestions has been being made for preparation of such ID cards. Thus it is a belated step in right direction because existence of such citizen cards has become very necessary in view of growing problem of illegal immigration especially from courtiers like Bangladesh and Nepal and terrorism.

Task of such huge magnitude and sensitive nature cannot go without ruckus especially when vote banks politics is the harsh reality in this nation. Nilkeni will have to encounter this problem hitherto not experienced in corporate world.

WILL IT BE MASTER CARD OF ALL CARDS- Coming to the technicalities of this card, he said that issuance of this Unique ID will not replace existing ID cards or numbers which Indians have been issued in documents like Passport, Ration cards, PAN cards etc. This means that these cards shall remain in existence and in vogue in addition to the proposed Unique ID. Nilkeni clarified that the Unique ID numbers may be used in other numbers or cards issued by various authorities for specific purposes. Nilkeni’s clarification has cleared doubts from minds of billions of common people who thought that this proposed Unique ID shall relieve them of carrying and preserving dozens of other cards in their shelves or lockers.

CARDS, CARDS AND CARDS- In our countries it is difficult to even count that how many documents one citizen is required to keep for getting their day to day problems solved or keeping problems away. For people living below poverty line (BPL) poor are issued ‘job cards’ for getting employment under NREGS. Government is committed to provide them with essential commodities like rice, wheat, K.Oil etc either at subsidized rate or free of cost, therefore BPL families are issue cards like WHITE CARDS, RED CARDS, YELLOW CARDS, etc. the color of these cards go on changing with changing in government or sometimes change of collectors also. People living above poverty line (APL) are also entitled to food grains from Public distribution system (PDS) shops, therefore they have also been provided with some colorful cards.

Apart from these social security cards, almost every department issue cards or number to the citizens for specific purpose. For instance IT department issue PAN cards, Sales tax department of provincial governments issue various numbers to the businessman to carry out their business. Apart from this a common citizen has to furnish host of other ID proofs when one has to open a Bank account or prepare driving license. In nutshell a law abiding citizen has been asked to keep innumerable documents with him.

WILL IT BE THE LAST CARD- When T.N. Seshan became Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) of election commission of India (ECI), he came out with an idea of providing Voting ID cards to check bogus voting and cleanse electoral system. That point of time, it was conceived that this ID cards will be of multiple purpose and will replace all other cards which are being used for identification and establishing citizenship claims. Initially this idea was widely appreciated and people thought that perhaps preparation of these cards would put to an end all the hardships that they face in this regard. The campaign began with huge fanfare and enthusiasm. Some states did magnificently well with regards to percentage of ID cards preparation. Unfortunately, even after elapse of two decades, the process in not complete and it is going in and unending direction. Needless to say that large scale irregularities regarding enrollment of illegal and bogus voters, mistakes in entries like names, date of birth, father’s or husbands name etc have been a common place in these cards.

We however need not be pessimist about this programme and hope that all would go well but Nilkeni also will have to depend on those data which are not perfect. Now only time will tell what modus operandi Nilkeni would resort and adopt in order to make this Unique ID free of all errors, so that it puts end to all future problems in this regard. Everyone’s mind is boggling with the question that will it be the last such exercise? Hopefully yes.