36 -  Thu, 22 Jul 2010

Just mentioning a small incident I had few days back to demonstrate how "IT literate" our Govt. babus are. I was travelling from Delhi to home town in Sriganganagar Rajasthan 2 weeks back. I had booked an e-ticket on IRCTC site but could not take a printout, thanks to the Nation Bandh that day. So i thought that I will just go without the ticket print out because I was liable for a Rs 50 penalty in case I didn't carry the e-ticket print.When I reached to the train, the TTE didn't allow me to board the train saying there is no such rule.He didn't even know that you could book a ticket online! I tried convincing him, failed. I went to the station master and he sent a fellow to explain to the TTE but he failed. Finally the Dy. Station Master walked all the way with me to ask this guy to allow me to board the train.

Finally I boarded, but this incident clearly shows how well versed our govt. employees are with the IT system and you really expect them to manage a Rs 45000 Crore project based on sophisticated biometrics and IT databases and what not?

Few more points:

We all know the simple Voter ID card program was a miserable failure. Despite repeated attempts, my name is mentioned wrong on my ID card!

- You can easily get a fake ration card for few bucks

If you really want an accurate ID in India, you need to put in place the controls similar to process of obtaining a passport, which would be even more expensive and impractical. Even then it is not 100% foolproof.

Even if we assume that the ID numbers are in place, how exactly do we plan to improve PDS (public distribution system) using ID numbers alone.

Are we expecting all the finger print scanners etc to be in place in all the cities and villages? Is it practical given that we could not implement much simpler Voter ID card project?

The leakage in PDS happens because people don't know what their entitlements are and how much grains they should get. So the distributors get their thumb impressions on false quantities. Not sure how UID will address this issue.

Same with Nation rural emp. guarantee scheme. Biggest issue is not lack of IDs (we on an average have more than one ID per type per person in India :D) but the illeteracy and the lack of awareness about entitlements.

The UID is liable to be used in more than one unintended ways. It can act as tool in the hands of few powerful individuals to use the numbers to their benefits commercially and politically.

Regards,
Gajendra Sidana, IITM