AADHAAR-A Unique Identification Number:Opportunities and Challenges Ahead

The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) with a launch of a nationwide Unique Identification Project named "Aadhaar," is perhaps one of the biggest projects in the world so far to provide a unique identity to its residents based on demographic as well as on biometric data. This project has opened the doors for people to avail benefits of various government sponsored schemes related to employment guarantee, access of public distribution system, micro-banking, health insurance, free education for children, etc. The present paper has highlighted the potential benefits of "Aadhaar" to the unprivileged people who had to prove their identities at every step to avail benefits of social welfare schemes and access public distribution system, etc. But the implementation of Aadhaar has also associated with challenges such as management of huge database of billion of people where enrollment, updating and authentication will go on side by side in addition to involvement of technological and strategic risks, and proper usage of UID System at the low level by various state agencies. There is need to have a strong coordination between UIDAI and state governments at the top level and between registrars, sub-registrars and enrolling agencies at the bottom level to have a complete and good quality data for enrolling and authentication of residents.