Aadhaar, the backbone of big data for the Government of India


 The UPA’s highly ambitious initiative Aadhaar was launched in 2009. It is to assign a unique number to every Indian resident. As part of the unique identity, the initiative captures each resident’s biometric data, and other personally identifiable information such as name, sex and date of birth.

We are a country of 125 crore people, and there is great inherent diversity in our society. Our society’s major attributes are caste, sub-caste, religion, culture and language. In addition, we have political demarcations of regions and states. Another important metric is literacy and level of education. Yet another is employment. We also have a very wide variety of levels of income.

It is expected of a government to provide for society at multiple levels and in multiple directions. Any government needs to provide schools and colleges directly or indirectly as a necessary social and economic investment. We also expect the government to put in place strong and sustained enablers for job creation. With the wide diversity in our society, since long decades, successive governments have provided reservation for some castes in education and employment, the intention being to empower those sections of society and bring them out of poverty. In addition, there are subsidies provided for making it easier for materially deprived sections of society to manage household expenses. Recently, the current government asked Indians to voluntarily surrender the standard subsidy for cooking gas cylinders, to reduce the cost of subsidy to the government and yet retain the subsidy for those sections of society that need it. Education in government run universities too is subsidised.

In addition, we have the problem of illegal immigrants from the neighbourhood, who have been living in India since decades, not to mention, terrorists entering from another border!

Given the size of India’s population and some complex issues associated with our society, Aadhaar is the backbone for the government to measure the benefit of its social investment such as primary and higher education, reservation, economic reforms to generate employment, and more. For any major policy decisions, the government needs big data as an input. Aadhaar is the single initiative to assign key social attributes to each Indian. It’s amazing that no government began such a key initiative till 2009, over 60 years after independence!

Yet the Supreme Court wants enrolment for Aadhaar to be voluntary! This stand disregards all that has been conceived and implemented for Aadhaar so far. Incomplete data will disadvantage the government in key decision making.

Personally, I am very glad to see the government is trying to bring more and more Indians under this unique programme. Hope they are very successful!

In today’s densely networked world, our personal data has found its way on many a server. Data is among the most lucrative resources today and in the future. If in the right hands, it can be used for the benefit of individuals and society. If in the wrong hands, it will play havoc with our lives. It’s incumbent on the government and any other organisation to treat data as sacred and always be a step ahead of hackers. Protect the data at all times and Aadhaar is the blessing long due for India.


http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/aadhaar-cannot-be-mandatory-for-welfare-schemes-supreme-court/article17671381.ece

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