Identity Project's List: Economic Times

"To prevent duplication with the National Population Register, Nilekani proposes to have a system of convergence where one gets the number with any registrar and UIDAI will ensure non-duplication.

As the government seeks a radical transformation in how it transmits Rs 3,00,000 crore of annual welfare spends, a lot rests on the shoulders of former Infosys CEO Nandan Nilekani.

As the chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), he has to assign unique identity numbers to Indian residents before a new subsidy regime of direct cash transfers can take off. But the UIDAI ran into rough weather recently when the finance ministry denied it Rs 15,000 crore. "

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NEW DELHI: The Plan panel has supported full functional autonomy for the Unique Identification Development Authority (UIDAI), mandated to issue the national identity cards, indicating end of tug-of-war between the two.

"I am in favour of delegating powers to UIDAI. We have to check with the Finance Ministry whether this is possible. I am hoping this is possible," Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia told reporters here.

"The logic of (creating) UIDAI was that it is an attached office (to the Plan panel), but we want to give it the full autonomy with responsibility," he said.

He further said, "We are trying to sort this out so that we can ensure, whatever task is assigned to them, they are able to perform with adequate due diligence within the organization." "

"NEW DELHI: India plans to provide all public services on mobile devices, make one person IT literate in every household and increase the size of India's IT industry to $300 billion by 2020 from $89 billion this fiscal, as per the draft of government's first policy on information technology, released on Friday.

The government wants the IT industry to flourish in tier II and III towns. It plans to increase software exports from $59 billion at present to $200 billion by 2020.

The plan include diversifying exports to other countries apart from US and Europe to mitigate the impact of recession on India's IT companies. Communications and IT minister Kapil Sibal said the government may also offer tax incentives to local tech companies after the Direct Tax Code comes into place."

"NEW DELHI: The Ministry of Rural Development and the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) are jointly working out a pilot project to ensure that workers under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Gurantee Act (MNREGA) get their wages in time.

Minister for Rural Development Jairam Ramesh said today his department was working out such a project in Bihar, Jharkhand, Assam, Tripura and West Bengal where the state departments of Rural Development are registrars to the UIDAI project for enrolment.

"We will work out a project with UIDAI in the states where the department of Rural Development are the registrars to UIDAI for enrolment of `Aadhar'. It will be a joint inititive with the UIDAI and the Ministry of Rural Development," told Ramesh."

"Nandan Nilekani is the man entrusted with giving every Indian a unique identity number. For some, this project, called Aadhaar, will mark liberation from the tyranny of multiple ID documents. For a majority of Indians, especially the poor and those living in villages, this 12-digit number is a vehicle of empowerment, which would deliver welfare and commercial services they have never received as promised.

An opportunity to bring about this transformation made Nilekani leave the safety net of Infosys, the IT company he co-founded and lifted to great heights, and throw himself into the hurly-burly of government in July 2009."

"NEW DELHI: The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has won a court battle against India's fourth largest technology company, HCL Technologies. The company had taken the authority to court after the latter forfeited a bank guarantee for non-bidding by HCL Technologies.

A stay on forfeiture of 2.5-crore has been vacated in a local court. The technology firm had filed a suit against the government department alleging unfair forfeiture of its bank guarantee worth 2.5 crore in May, this year. The tech firm had expressed an interest to bid for 2,000-crore tender, but opted out after the authority made changes to the tender qualifications during the process."

"Govt has decided to deliver the UID/Aadhaar number in the form of better, polyvinyl Aadhaar cards"

"NEW DELHI: The government is working on a proposal to issue multi-purpose smart identity cards to all adult citizens by the end of 2013, a move that could result in cost savings for the exchequer.

"The proposal has been made under Citizenship Act amendment made in 2003. The Registrar General of India has proposed to issue smart identity cards to all citizens of the country above 18 years, which is under consideration by the Department of Expenditure," a senior official of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner (RGCC) said.

These cards can be also used in the place of ration, toll and election cards, among others, resulting in lower costs for the government, as a single card could serve various purposes rather than a separate ones for each service."

"NEW DELHI: The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) is looking into a complaint of misuse of personal data while issuing unique 'Aadhaar' numbers to individuals, its first case of breach of privacy.

"The contact centre of UIDAI is handling the grievances and complaints of all stakeholders. They have not received any specific complaint related to privacy concerns while collecting individual data. However, a complaint regarding misuse of address proof was received," the authority said in reply to an RTI query.

However, it did not give details of the complaint, received this year, and the complainant.
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"NEW DELHI: The unique identification authority on Thursday said the I-cards issued by it-- known as Aadhaar-- are a valid residence proof for opening a bank account.

Commenting on media reports that Aadhaar is not a valid residence proof, Unique Identification Development Authority of India (UIDAI) Chairman Nandan Nilekani said, "That is not true. That is some report which is misleading. Aadhaar is a valid 'Know Your Customer' (KYC) document for opening a bank account."

"Aadhaar letter has two parts-- identity and address. If the address which a person shows to the bank, is the same address as on the (Aadhaar) letter, then it is also a proof of residence.""

"NEW DELHI: Unique Identity Authority of India (UIDAI) chairman, Nandan Nilekani, vigorously defended his body against criticism from various government departments and dismissed concerns about the lack of checks and balances in its functioning.

Nilekani is expected to meet prime minister Manmohan Singh to set the record straight about the Authority's operations. He will also meet Planning Commission chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia early next week.

"I have worked for 30 years in a company that followed very high corporate governance standards, so you cannot expect me to transcend the norms of good governance," said Nilekani, the former chief executive of Infosys Technologies, at a function organised to mark the first anniversary of the launch of the UID programme, Aadhaar."

"NEW DELHI: The UIDAI chief Nandan Nilekani today asserted that the authority set up for issuing national identity cards was working under the powers delegated by the Prime Minister.

"My powers have been delegated by the Prime minister," Unique Identification Development Authority of India (UIDAI) Chairman Nilekani said when asked whether the authority was on a collision course with the Planning Commission.

"We are an attached office of the Planning Commission and by series of government orders, several authorities have been delegated to us,""

"NEW DELHI: Unique Identity Authority chairman Nandan Nilekani Thursday said that the finance ministry's decision to deny more funds to the authority was not a setback.

The finance ministry has declined the Nilekani-led Unique Identity Authority's (UIDAI) demand to allow it to collect biometric data for the entire population from the earlier mandated 200 million. To meet the task, the UIDAI had asked that its outlay be increased to close to Rs.18,000 crore.

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"NEW DELHI: More than a million people will enroll for unique Aadhaar identity number per day by October which has so far been provided to 37 million people across the country, chairman of Unique Identification Authority of India Nandan Nilekani said today.

"The goal is to give 1.2 billion people unique number and that is well on its way. We have already given unique numbers to 37 million people, another 50 million people enrolled and are waiting to get numbers," Nilekani said at a function here."

"NEW DELHI: The Planning Commission has raised questions about the administrative structure of the Nandan Nilekani-led Unique Identity Authority of India (UIDAI) and called for the appointment of an independent financial advisor to monitor its finances and transactions, days after the finance ministry rejected the authority's Rs 15,000 crore funding proposal.

"The UIDAI's present system represents a major departure from government procedures and removes all inbuilt checks and balances. We need a relook at the UIDAI's administrative structure," the commission wrote in a letter to the finance ministry in the third week of September."

"( These) various pulls and pressures mean that when it comes to policy, the urgent wins over the important, tactic triumphs over strategy, and patronage over public good." -Nandan Nilekani in his 2008 book Imagining India

Nilekani had a ringside view of the workings of the government then, as a member of a few advisory panels . For the last two years, he's been in the ring as the head of a government institution whose work has import for every Indian, mostly sheltered from those pulls and pressures. But, lately, his institution and he might be feeling it more than ever before, more so considering where the opposition is coming from: other parts of the government.
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"AGARTALA: Tripura leads in enrolments for the the ambitious "Aadhaar" scheme, a 12-digit number being issued by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) for all Indian residents, a minister said here Monday.

"In Tripura, 80 percent of the 3.7 million population have so far been enrolled in Aadhaar scheme followed by Andhra Pradesh (25 percent) and Maharashtra (20 percent)," Tripura Rural Development Minister Jitendra Choudhury told reporters."

"A World Bank study released earlier this year enumerated the rot in Indian welfare programmes. About 91% of subsidised grain meant for the poor in Bihar never reached them. Only 32-51 % of the pensions for the elderly, destitute, widows and the disabled reached them.

These are holes that Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee sought to plug in Budget 2011, when he announced that, in the coming years, all welfare benefits would be deposited into the bank accounts of beneficiaries, starting from June 2012.Seven months on, India's journey towards cash transfers is looking muddled. Too many players. Too many approaches. There is confusion and conflict at each of the four steps to cash transfers: identification, opening bank accounts, payments and transactions.
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