Abridged from a TOI article:
India's ambitious Unique ID project dubbed "Aadhaar", which aims to give every Indian citizen a unique number mapped to biometrics, was launched today.
The enrollment officer (EO) sits at right angles to you and enters data into a laptop. There's a monitor in front of you, which mirrors the enrolment officer's screen so that you can point out spelling mistakes or other errors. There's a small laser printer behind the EO's laptop and a webcam, fingerprint reader and iris scanner account for the remainder of the hardware setup.
Only Name, Gender (Male/Female/Transgender) and Date of Birth are the compulsory fields.
The UID team acknowledges the fact that a large number of people may not have any supporting documents to prove their identity. In this case, one is allowed to bring another resident who is already in possession of an Aadhaar number to be an "introducer" by vouching for the person seeking to enroll.
A photograph is taken of the person getting enrolled, purely for the purpose of printing it out on the enrolment receipt, so that illiterate residents have some way of knowing that the receipt indeed belongs to them. Beyond that, the photograph serves no biometric or authentication purpose.
First there's an iris scan where you look into a binocular-like device held up to your eyes by the EO. After that it's the four fingers of each hand, followed by both thumbs (a process familiar to those entering the US) for your 10 fingerprints.
The EO makes you review the data entered one final time before giving you a laser-printed receipt. You then have to wait for the actual number to be delivered by India Post!
Article ends...
Now here's an interesting note. I have blogged about this before, but do you know what the major stumbling block for the UID project is? No, it's not logistics or hardware or software. It's the lack of useful biometric information in a large percentage of the target population! From cataracts to roughed hands, India's rural and poor populace will find it difficult to provide quality biometrics!
2 comments:
This is a truly unique challenge and to accomplish it on such an unprecedented scale would be some achievement. Some might even question why do we need to undertake such a project? But the results are well worth the effort. Great work by Nandan Nilekani.
Ray, the Aadhar project aims to provide with the millions of poor Indians something they do not have today - an identity. Ration cards, birth certificates, PAN cards - documents which we use to gain access to countless facilities and schemes including bank accounts are simply out of reach of the vast majority of India's poor, thus depriving them of the right to these services. With the UID, they will finally have an identity to call their own.
Post a Comment