Nilekani embarks on Mission Impossible
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Nilekani embarks on Mission Impossible
Bangalore: Nandan Nilekani has taken up a task that has only been dreamt of by the Indian administration. Nilekani will be in charge of setting up a single nationally accepted identification card and identity number, which will help government to better manage internal security and also enable direct contact between the state and the citizen. This ambitious project may face many problems, as issuing an identity card for every Indian will be a herculean task. All the ration cards, PAN cards, voter cards and job cards issued so far by government agencies have been full of leakages and gaps. Many were issued to people, who do not exist and there are many who have never received them. According to Times of India the government has issued 223 million ration cards so far, but India has only 200 million households. It has issued 80 million BPL (below poverty line) ration cards although the number of poor households is under 65 million. There are many people who have multiple PAN card and many have not felt the need to acquire one. Even with voter ID cards, a similar scenario exists in India. Thousands enroll themselves to vote every year, but find their name missing from the voting list. On the other hand, many dead voters still continue to live on the voters list. Similarly, driving licenses were imposed to improve driving standards. Things have changed now, once you enter a RTO office you have agents lurking around like vultures, who will guarantee you that you will get driver's license without giving the test, just by giving some extra money. Situation in RTOs have become so bad that one can find more agents roaming around freely, than the number government officials. Implementing a smart card will also require legal clearance from many government departments. This will make one integrated database. The room for error should be minimum to carry out operation of this magnitude. Even a five percent error will mean almost 50 million records being matched incorrectly. The biggest problem that Nilekani will face is corruption. Even after training the staff and ensuring that there is no technical glitch, the temptation of earning a little extra will always be there in the implementers of this scheme. Even if a smart card is created to deliver cash to the poor, politicians will still try to get their cut in every single subsidy or anti-poverty scheme. If proper measures are not taken then smart cards may become just one more scheme, with its own loopholes.

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