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Why we decided to make Aadhaar just a number

When I joined UIDAI, the design of its management structure was on my mind. Coincidentally, soon after UIDAI’s ship took to the sea, Professor Hayagreeva Rao of Stanford Graduate School of Business wrote in the Harvard Business Review: “When I ask MBA students and executives to design the job of a pirate ship captain, they […]

Aadhar
Aadhar

When I joined UIDAI, the design of its management structure was on my mind. Coincidentally, soon after UIDAI’s ship took to the sea, Professor Hayagreeva Rao of Stanford Graduate School of Business wrote in the Harvard Business Review: “When I ask MBA students and executives to design the job of a pirate ship captain, they invariably lump together two areas of responsibility: Star tasks—strategic work such as target identification, command during battle and negotiating alliances to form fleets—and guardian tasks, which are operational work such as allocating arms, adjudicating conflict, punishing indiscipline, distributing loot and organising care for the sick and injured.”

He said this was a mistake because candidates who can do both tasks exceptionally well are rare. The pirate ship, therefore, had a captain and a quartermaster general, each independent and non-interfering in the other’s role. ‘How do we divide our duties?’ I asked Nandan. This question is normally never asked as the Rules of Executive Business clearly define the roles of the minister and the departmental secretary.

However, this outfit did not fit clearly into a ministry or a department. There was nothing except the notification of 28 January 2009! Nandan’s response was clear: ‘I will do the environmental management; evangelization and you work on implementation of the project.’ He also assured me that he would provide me full independence in doing my job.

The notification constituting UIDAI described its composition, structure and mandate and stipulated a core team of 115 officials. The broad distribution was one DG in the rank of Additional Secretary, 36 DDGs at the Joint Secretary level; with one in the headquarters and 35 in the states and Union Territories. For complete staffing, as per usual norms of deputy secretaries, section officers, assistants, etc, the total sanctioned strength came to 1,331 personnel.

As the only two persons on the project, the first thing Nandan and I agreed upon was that we did not need so many posts. We could do with less and didn’t need them in every state. One regional office to cater to a number of states or Union Territories could work well. Nandan wanted to reduce the sanctioned strength to about 200. I told him: ‘We can, but you will not get a Param Vir Chakra for this act’.

Having so many posts already sanctioned is a great asset because one struggles for many years in the government to get the sanction for even a single post. I reminded him that along the way, there would be parliamentary questions, references from VIPs, state governments, NGOs, civil society, privacy advocates and countless others. We would need staff, as UIDAI would be a pan-departmental organisation and there would be paperwork and correspondence that would not contribute directly to our work, but would nevertheless need to be attended to. In the end, we decided to keep this number at about 400, but did not fill up all the posts as a strategy. The unfilled posts in the book of sanctions could do no harm, but were available should the need arise.

A RANDOM NUMBER BY CHOICE

India issued the first Aadhaar number on 29 September 2010 to Ranjana Sonawane in Tembhli village of Maharashtra, in the presence of Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi. Today, Aadhaar has achieved almost universal coverage with more than 1.3 billion numbers issued. Due to the uniqueness of the number and the availability of online authentication services, Aadhaar has become central to India’s public service delivery reforms.

When people asked me to explain the online ID, I used to provide them an analogy of body (sharir) and soul (atman). The Aadhaar number is like the soul, indestructible and permanent (ajar, amar), as the Gita describes it. The paper or the card is its temporary abode (sharir), which holds the number (atman). When you have direct access to the atman, the sharir and its perishable nature are unimportant.

The decision to make Aadhaar just a number has greatly contributed to the goals of cost reduction, determination of uniqueness, inclusion of the poor and in enabling Aadhaar to become a digital ID platform, rather than a standalone smartcard. There are multiple reasons for the success of this design.

Lowest-Cost Solution: Aadhaar has not only proved to be robust with unique features otherwise not found in other ID systems, it is also the most frugal of solutions. For instance, a smartcard would have cost Rs 70-80 at the very least. Add to this, the cost of couriering the card and the personal identification number (PIN) separately and securely. At Rs 100 per smartcard, the total expenditure just for the smartcard would have been Rs 12,000 crore for the 1.2 billion registrations. That is more than the total expenditure UIDAI has incurred till date.

Determination of Uniqueness: Identity in a centralised repository can be managed to weed out duplicates, should any be detected, because cancelling the duplicate Aadhaar is as simple as blocking the use of a number. Not so with ID systems that depend upon a physical token. If sufficient by itself, such a token continues to work as the ID till it is retrieved or destroyed. If you can’t retrieve a duplicate, you cannot extinguish its use with any degree of certainty.

Safeguarding Inclusion of Poor: Those who lose a smartcard or any ID token would also lose their identity and suffer enormous harassment to get it back. Further, the impact of such a loss would be especially severe among the poorest The Aadhaar system is convenient for residents, absolving them of the worry of loss or misuse of their card. Today, millions of Aadhaar letters are downloaded and printed every day. Imagine the trouble and expenditure in reissue, if Aadhaar was a smartcard.

Excerpts from the book, ‘The Making of Aadhaar’, published by Rupa (Rs 595).

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