Indian public policy often short-circuits because there are too many crossed wires: one agency trying to do another’s work, and arguments being invoked in contexts in which they are inappropriate. There has been much speculation about the Ministry of Home Affairs’ objections to Aadhar in its current form. But it will be a travesty if the project of identification is moved from its current service delivery-oriented paradigm to a security-oriented...

Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia may be okay with a little overlap between the National Population Register exercise and UIDAI's aadhar project, but an earlier note prepared by the Plan Panel had pegged the cost of this duplication at Rs 15,000 crore.  Based on the premise that increased accuracy of iris as a third biometric, as compared to the use of all ten fingerprints, was marginal, the Planning Commission,...

In the initial months of governance by the Trinamool Congress in West Bengal, attempts appear to have been made to begin subverting the positive results of the land reform programme of the Left Front. What is happening appears to be the inevitable outcome of political rivalry, the hegemonic rule of one party giving place to another, with the citadel of power changing its colour, making the “red” one “green”. But...

-The Indian Express Ever since the Unique Identification (UID) project rolled out, it has had to weather hit-and-run attacks. Concerns about privacy and budgets have been mounted from influential staging posts in attempts to derail the project altogether by isolating the UID Authority of India within the government. Yet the promise of the project, aimed at offering every Indian a secure proof of identity, is so powerful that its momentum remains...

The smart card versus Unique Identity number battle between P. Chidambaram and Montek Singh Ahluwalia will hit the ground tomorrow at Porthapur village in Andaman and Nicobar Islands when the home minister hands out the first tranche of 2.56 lakh resident identity cards. The resident cards are a rival to the Unique Identity number conceived by the Planning Commission to establish authentic identification for each resident and cut out corruption in...