Aadhaar: India’s ‘Unique

Identification’ System
Aadhaar: Foundation for Identity

•In a world of global flows of wealth, power and images, the search for identity—collective or individual,
ascribed or constructed—becomes the fundamental source of social meaning.
— Nandan Nilekani
• Errors of Inclusion: Multiples and Fakes

• The inability to verify identity led to fraud. For example, examinees impersonated ill-prepared
students for a fee, imposters drew pensions for dead individuals, and bigamists entered into
multiple marriages with impunity. UIDAI thus needed to create an identity system that would
provide identities to all, while ensuring uniqueness to eliminate duplicates and multiples. This
entailed several challenges.
Challenge 1: Building the Organization
• Recognizing that the project required high technical skills, UIDAI created a hiring model to attract talent
from the private sector—people on sabbatical from Intel, McKinsey, and General Electric; interns from
across the world; consultants; and volunteers. Government pay scales were lower than those in the private
sector, so it was the scale and objective of the project that was the draw.

• Nilekani observed, “We synthesized the best of both worlds . . . Government is a different world, but a lot
of principles are similar. In IT consulting, when you call on a customer, you try to understand his business
and provide solutions. When I call upon potential users of Aadhaar, I try to understand how can it make
their activity better . . . That win-win approach to relationship building is what we were able to bring to the
table . . . Rather than build a huge organization, we will be the small organization and partner everyone.”

• Nilekani elaborated, “We have three ecosystems. One is the enrollment ecosystem that allows us to scale
up to a million a day by creating enrollment agencies; second is the application ecosystem that allows us to
build apps; third is the device ecosystem, where we have created application programming interface (API)-
based approaches.”
Challenge 2: Building the Technology

• Aadhaar was the government’s largest and most technology-savvy initiative, and the GoI envisaged
development of a technology backbone to support three aspects—enrollment, de- duplication, and online
authentication—while ensuring information security

• Enrollment Equipment
• The enrollment equipment, packed in a briefcase, comprised a laptop (with enrollment software, fingerprint
reader, and iris scanner), webcam, laser printer, and monitor.
• Meanwhile, the cost of an iris camera had decreased from $2541 to $782 An officer said, “Enrollment occurs in
two languages—English and the regional language.
• As transliteration occurs simultaneously, the enrollee can check data accuracy.”
• After enrollment, the enrollee received an Enrollment ID (EID) that could be used as a tracker until the Aadhaar
was received.
• Data from laptops was sent in encrypted form to data centers with high levels of security.
• For de-duplication, all biometric data was compared to existing IDs. To ensure privacy protection, responses to
authentication queries could only be “yes” or “no.”
Challenge 2: Building the Technology
• Enrollment Process
• To enroll, one had to produce proof of identity, address, and date of birth. For those who could not verify
their date of birth, the date they chose was considered the final date.
• Designated introducers could introduce those who did not have proof of identity or address; children below
15 had their number issued based on their parents, and had to re-register their data and renew the number
after age 15.
• It was envisaged that Aadhaar would be inserted into birth certificates.
• De-Duplication in the Database System
• Before a fresh Aadhaar was issued, the biometrics were compared across all prior records, and only when
there was no match were the details inserted into the database and a unique number generated.
• One commentator wrote, “[UIDAI] will photograph 600 million Indians, scan 1.2 billion irises, collect six
billion fingerprints and record 600 million addresses . . .
• No system in the world has handled anything on this scale . . . When the 600 millionth person is assigned a
UID, the system will have to compare it against 599,999,999 photographs, 1,199,999,998 irises and
12,999,999,990 fingerprints . . . When in full flow, it will add a million names to its database every day
Challenge 2: Building the Technology
• Online Authentication—Anytime, Anywhere, Any Way
•A member of the PMU explained, “When a resident visits a ration shop, the information
containing his Aadhaar and biometric-fingerprint will come to the Central Identity Data Repository
(CIDR). The CIDR will say, yes this person is who he claims to be. That is authentication.
•De- duplication is a 1:n match, is process-intensive, but happens only once for every resident.
•Authentication is a 1:1 match, access to every service requires authentication, so it is transaction-
intensive.”
•Existing authentication systems operated by Visa and MasterCard, while massive, were not
strictly comparable, since they were card-based. MasterCard processed 23 billion transactions a
year, while Visa processed 47 billion a year.
•That meant that Visa processed 130 million transactions a day, or 20,000 transactions per second.
At even the interim goal of 600 million residents, and assuming only one-third performed a
transaction every day, the UIDAI authentication system would be handling more transactions per
day than the world’s most sophisticated payment system.
Challenge 3: Changing Behavior,
Dealing with Resistance
• Mandatory versus Voluntary
• Demand-led and voluntary is the only sustainable way. Making it mandatory does not mean it will
happen. Partner agencies can make their own use of Aadhaar mandatory
• They took steps to improve the process, signed up more registrars, entered into agreements with
National Skills Development Corporation (NSDC) to train more operators, published advertisements
making it clear the application was free, and introduced an appointment system to remove wait times.
• Service Providers and Their Concerns
• The concept of being in control of one’s own data was so ingrained in most organizations that they
could not fathom alternatives.
• A member of the PMU said that signing up service providers was not about explaining the concept; it
required process re-engineering to enable their databases to accept Aadhaar.
• That was another hurdle, since “anytime you ask people to modify their application, they say, ‘that’s a
big task,’ whereas it’s not that big a deal.
• So we are creating implementation models to convince others to replicate the same.”
Challenge 3: Changing Behavior,
Dealing with Resistance
• Migrants, Homeless, and Illegals
• Aadhaar was likely to be the first form of identification that the poor, underprivileged, migrants,
street dwellers, and homeless would access.
• UIDAI did not want any barriers in enrolling them. UIDAI borrowed the concept of an introducer
from banks’ account-opening procedures and created Know Your Resident (KYR) standards with
an introducer system.
• Authorized individuals (“introducers”) who had Aadhaar could introduce residents who did not
have any documents
Collecting Information: Privacy Concerns
• The UIDAI team recognized that if it had collected more data, applications would have been easier
to create.
• However, team members believed that the cost of updating and maintaining the data would have
been enormous, and would have distracted them from their core purpose of proving identity.
• Dr. R S Sharma argued, “My job is to say X is X. So we decided that UIDAI will not own and
maintain this data, and that the entities who collected the biometrics and data for us could keep the
additional information if they needed it.”
Execution and Implementation

• Enrollment Ecosystem: Reach, Accuracy, and Delivery

• An IAS officer now at UIDAI, commented on the partnering philosophy: “We had to lay down standards
so that different partners—state governments, banks, private sector players—acted in consonance.” UIDAI
was structured into eight regions, each region covering a population of around 160 million.
• The Bangalore office, for example, represented one such region covering Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala,
Pondicherry, and Lakshadweep.
• The regions were responsible for front-end enrollment, signing a Memorandum of Understanding
(MoU) with the state government and the registrars, and appointing enrollment agencies via a bidding
process.
• The enrollment ecosystem was like a three-legged stool requiring registrars, enrollment agencies, and
operators who enrolled residents by collecting data. UIDAI signed MoUs with 69 registrars, impaneled over
200 enrollment agencies and 15 training agencies, trained 70 master trainers, and created training material
and a certification process for operators.
• Registrars could appoint any of the impaneled enrollment agencies.
• Hiring operators was the enrollment agency’s responsibility.
Application Ecosystem: Usage and
Impact
• Building on the acceptance by banking and telecom authorities that a resident with Aadhar fulfilled KYC
norms, pilot projects to test authentication service using the data centers in Grater Noida and Bangalore
began in late September 2011. By 2012, regulators agreed to accept Aadhaar as proof of both identity and
address, enabling investors to, for example, buy mutual funds.

• UIDAI prepared reports on Aadhaar-enabled service delivery and applications for government schemes that
subsidized education, public health, food, fuel, and rural work.

• The prime minister, finance minister, and the president of India endorsed the role of Aadhaar in reducing
leakages and improving delivery of services to the poor while presenting the budget to Parliament in
conferences and speeches.
• The experiment to integrate Aadhaar with MGNREGA in three districts of the state of Jharkhand in January
2012 was more controversial.
• The objective was to make access to banking easier for rural workers, bypassing post offices, where identity
fraud was endemic.
• Banking correspondents (BCs), who were bank-appointed agents, paid MGNREGA workers their dues. BCs
identified workers through Aadhaar-based biometric authentication using a handheld device called a
micro-ATM.
Conclusion
•The journalist talking to Nilekani persisted, “How will you know you have succeeded?”
Nilekani responded, “Five years from the day I [began], you would be able to say I succeeded if
people got numbers, and you’d know I screwed up if people didn’t get numbers.
•So it was a zero or a one.”61 The journalist paused, then said, “UIDAI needs to . . . collect 12
billion fingerprints, using the 17 languages on a Rs 10 note.
•And you plan to do this while creating a better-than-ordinary experience for every resident?
It’s an epic project . . . not unlike the challenge of governing the world’s largest democracy.
•And it’s not easy—Indians are losing patience.”
Conclusion
•“What UIDAI is creating is a road,” responded Nilekani. “A road that connects every
individual to the state. How each one of us uses that road, how far we travel along it, is up to
each one of us. We have to look forward.”
•He added, “The best way to deal with (opposition) is to show its usefulness . . . to give
unmatched benefits . . . that is what will win the debate. “
Conclusion
•The journalist, all of 25, stood up and said, “Yes, there are concerns; such projects can so easily
be derailed. The question remains: How can UIDAI de-risk the project so that Aadhaar—Aam
Aadmi ka Adhikaar [right of the common man] is made available to every resident of India by
2020?”
Q&A