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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | UID Aadhaar as if People Matter by SG Vombatkere

UID Aadhaar as if People Matter by SG Vombatkere

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published Published on Sep 27, 2011   modified Modified on Sep 27, 2011

Media Reports

The UID Aadhaar project planning and system design shortcomings and security risks at the national (or macro) level have been discussed elsewhere.1 The present article views the Aadhaar project at the system operational level, with practical considerations based on observed and probable functioning at the service delivery end.

Consider the following report in a local daily, The Mysore Bugle:

Food riots: PDS outlet vandalised

Mysore: August 2, 2015—The PDS outlet in Ashokpuram was vandalised by persons who were waiting in the queue for over four hours for ration. The equipment for verifying fingerprints and iris scan was damaged and the shopkeeper was beaten. The police came on the scene just in time to prevent the PDS outlet from being burned down. Police arrested four persons alleged to have started the violence, and cases have been registered against them for criminal assault and attempted arson. The reporter spoke with some of the people there. Manjula (name changed), aged 66, lamented, “Earlier we showed our ration card and that was sufficient for each person to be issued ration. Now fingerprints are to be checked and this takes a long time for each person. If the machine does not accept the fingerprint, the person is asked to wait until others are served. Today, after four hours waiting, only forty people were issued ration. People have to leave their homes and their work to stand in long queues, especially difficult in the monsoon. The Aadhaar scheme has made the problems of ration drawal worse. I am dissappointed.”

Enquiries from other PDS outlets revealed that authentication of fingerprints is time-consuming sometimes because of no electric power or system not responding or fingerprint machine accepting the fingerprint only after repeated trials. Similar delays and problems were reported in RTO Office and other government offices where Aadhaar identity had to be established. When this was brought to his notice, the Deputy Commissioner promised to approach the UID authorities to solve the problems.

Now consider another report in a national daily, Modern India:

Secretary level official indicted by Lokayukta in Aadhaar scam

Bangalore: August 4, 2015—According to a leaked Lokayukta report, a senior State Government official was indicted for procuring 56,000 allegedly sub-standard fingerprint and iris-scan machines at a cost of Rs 450 crores for two districts of Karnataka to enable the Aadhaar system to operate. Such large-scale procurement results from the need to provide all static outlets for food, banks, etc., and also mobile equipment as, for example, for LPG delivery men to authenticate the recipient of the LPG refill. Consumers have claimed that LPG delivery men are making them pay upto Rs.50 more because their “fingerprints do not match” the data stored on his portable machine. Whether this is due to machine defects or a means to extort money may be established when the results of tests on sample machines are received from a national laboratory.

Are these news reports unrealistic? Rewind to 2011. It is common knowledge that bank or ATM transactions sometimes take very long because the “system is not responding” due to system access overload or the “network is down” due to system or sub-system malfunction. This also happens at railway reservation counters and other places, but these offices never stop functioning due to power failure because they have standby battery-inverter power. However, Aadhaar systems at the service provider level, for example, PDS rations, NREGA payments, LPG delivery, public hospitals, etc., will be vulnerable to power failure besides local equipment malfunction, system shortcomings and authentication failure. Simultaneous access by many tens of thousands of service providers from all over India into the UID system for authentication of data can cause system overload because of insufficient band-width (system inadequacy) or sub-system (local, regional or state level) failure.

People in the System

PEOPLE in the Aadhaar system range from highly qualified high-income people at government and corporate level who plan and design, to unlettered “infra-poor” BPL people, with variously qualified middle class people in between to do the implementation, operation and run-and-fetch jobs.

Thus, even if the entire hardware-software system from the UID central data repository to the service provider at the consumer end is fully functional, system design is incomplete if it does not take people and society (“skinware” in systems language would include recipients and governmental and non-governmental providers of public benefits) into account. It has been argued that the UID Aadhaar system at the macro level has been inadequately planned and designed.1 But further, it has not considered the people whom it is expected to benefit and the people who will dispense those benefits. Skinware is very much a part of the system, and the manner in which people will avail of benefits that the system may provide should be considered when designing the overall system. This sugges-tion is not something new or revolutionary; it is simply part of well-established methods of system study, analysis and design. Let us therefore consider on-the-ground situations.

Practical Considerations

THE experience when registering identity for obtaining the Aadhaar card is that it takes each individual around five minutes to place his/her fingers on the machine repeatedly until the system accepts the fingerprints and also carry out the iris scan. Although this time is large considering the population to be registered, it may still be justified as it is a one-time process. This writer’s personal experience for medical treatment at an ECHS Polyclinic is that the system often requires several applications of the thumb on the machine, taking three to four minutes to match one thumb print before medical treatment can be availed. [The operator knows the identity of this writer and hence asks for repeated pressing of the thumb if it does not work the first time, while others in the small queue wait their turn]. In a dozens-long queue of common people for NREGA payment or at a ration shop or public hospital, such delays will not be treated with patience. It will surely take similar time for each person’s 10 fingerprints to be recorded and electronically compared with the local record or master record in the central UID data repository. (Note 1) With scores of people in queue, a mismatch will have people in line shouting for their turn and can well create a law and order situation. And the “mismatched” person would possibly get her turn again after hours or be asked to “come tomorrow”. Of course, there is the time-tested way out of such problems—for a consideration the ration shop owner could “admit” the matching at his discretion.] Even without accounting for power failure or machine malfunction or system slowdown, how much time would be taken to match fingerprints of one person on an average at a ration shop or on a LPG delivery man’s portable machine, is anybody’s guess. These glitches will inevitably provide avenues of opportunity for corrupt providers who may or may not be government servants. All this would be a part of the overall system performance, and affect the delivery of benefits that are the stated basis of the Aadhaar scheme. Only a system study of such conditions will indicate whether the Aadhaar scheme will be more efficient or public-friendly than the current systems that deliver public benefits.

Aadhaar Beneficiaries

THE foregoing is not to deny the assured benefits of the Aadhaar project. It will surely provide enormous but really enormous IT hardware and software business opportunity for manufacture, operation and servicing of base station and mobile instruments and accessories in their many millions for fingerprint and iris-matching. Such business will also generate low-paid jobs at the operational levels. Resorting to more technological solutions to overcome technical problems (like providing battery-inverters to ration shops) will merely raise the capital and operational costs without addressing the “people” end of the problem. Moreover, they will not solve or even address the food security problem of the “infra-poor”, most of whom will in all likelihood not benefit by the Aadhaar system in terms of better access to food or other targetted BPL benefits. Since Aadhaar is a national scheme, the capital and running expenditures will fall on the public exchequer, and the cash benefits will flow to the IT sector.

Taking an overall systems view of the Aadhaar project at BPL beneficiary levels, it would appear that public expenditure in creating, operating and maintaining the scheme would far exceed the gains. This is apart from the social downside of delay, non-delivery or denial of essential services and benefits to the BPL infra-poor, who are the stated Aadhaar beneficiaries.

REFERENCE

1. Vombatkere, S.G.; “The UID Aadhaar Project: System Design and Security Considerations”, Mainstream, Vol. XLIX, No. 33, August 6, 2011.

NOTE

Note 1. The reliability of fingerprints for foolproof matching has not been proved. Further, the fingerprints of dirty hands or sweaty hands (as BPL persons are apt to have) are not easily accepted by the hardware or can lead to mismatch and consequent delay or denial of service.

S.G.Vombatkere retired as a Major General after 35 years in the Indian military. He is engaged in voluntary social work, and is member of the National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM) and People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL). As Adjunct Associate Professor of the University of Iowa, USA, he coordinates and lectures a course on Science, Technology and Sustainable Development for under-graduate students from the USA and Canada. He holds a Master of Engineering degree in structural engineering from the University of Poona and a PhD in civil structural dynamics from the IIT, Madras.

Mainstream, VOL XLIX, No 39, 17 September, 2011, http://www.mainstreamweekly.net/article3011.html

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