11 - Wed, 5 May 2010

Harwant /  Joshy / Rambo Et Al:

All of you have put forward strong and valid points in both ends of the spectrum.

Some of you have pointed out that in a society with low literacy rates (65% official rate and 20% if one considers that a grade 8 education is what defines a literate person), a significant % of politicians either convicted criminals or have serious criminal charges pending, an extremely corrupt bureaucracy, a corrupt judiciary (except for the Supreme Court and some High Courts) a politicized police force that kow tows to the party in power, porous borders as in the East, and a teaming populace of 1.2 billion - to attempt such a gargutan task is both costly and is a recipe a failure.

Some others who are more optimistic, envision a fully developed India (2020 if you believe the former President's book), with extremely high real literacy rates, a robust economy, vastly reduced corruption insofar as the common populace is concerned (due to rapid economic growth), and requiring a universal ID system that provides the appropriate entitlements to the common populace.

The US and Canada (and possibly others) have universal ID systems termed the Social Security and Social Insurance cards that are provided even to legal aliens temporarily residing in these nations. Without a SS or SIN card, one cannot work and pay taxes, in addition to other uses.

In the context of India, we already have a PAN (personal account #) as one of you already pointed out, and we could expand this and issue them to all, irrespective of whether one pays tax or not, just as in the US and Canada. This expansion could be done in stages and thereby avoid the huge cost of reinventing the wheel as it were by the Manmohan administration.

Ved Vedamanikam, IITM