-The Economist   Opposition to the world’s biggest biometric identity scheme is growing FOR a country that fails to meet its most basic challenges—feeding the hungry, piping clean water, fixing roads—it seems incredible that India is rapidly building the world’s biggest, most advanced, biometric database of personal identities. Launched in 2010, under a genial ex-tycoon, Nandan Nilekani, the “unique identity” (uid) scheme is supposed to roll out trustworthy, unduplicated identity numbers based on...

-The Economist   A huge identity scheme promises to help India’s poor—and to serve as a model for other countries INDIA’S economy might be thriving, but many of its people are not. This week Manmohan Singh, the prime minister, said his compatriots should be ashamed that over two-fifths of their children are underfed. They should be outraged, too, at the infant mortality, illiteracy, lack of clean drinking water and countless other curses that...

The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance finds the uid project to be “conceptualised with no clarity” and “directionless”. THE Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance has dealt a body blow to the Unique Identification (uid) project. The Unique Identification Authority of India (uidAI) was set up under the Planning Commission by an executive order on January 28, 2009. The scheme involves the collection of demographic and biometric information to issue ID numbers to...

-The Financial Express   The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIADI) has launched a micro ATM device that would enable beneficiaries like MG-NREGA workers with Aadhaar to withdraw money near their doors through core banking system. "The beneficiary has to put his finger and Aadhaar number in to the micro ATM wireless device and get the money within 8 to 9 seconds from a business correspondent after verification about the beneficiary having that...

The Planning Commission today said Nandan Nilekani’s unique identification (uid) numbers were a more practical option than P. Chidambaram’s smart cards when it comes to electronic transfer of benefits to the rural poor. Plan panel deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia said the uid numbers could be used even through “mobile telephones while the smart card can only be read by a card-reader”. The commission and the home ministry have both been pushing...