Indian National Identity Project

By fatimanadine on Friday, September 2nd, 2011

The NYTimes recently reported on the Indian Identity project, Aadhaar.  I feel that Aadhaar is a great idea for indigent people in India.  In addition to increasing access to public welfare, it can lay the foundation for access to public justice via online dispute resolution that is mobile phone based.  

ODR already exists in India (see http://www.odrindia.com/ - headed by a world-renown ODR expert, Chittu Nagarajan).  However, the national identity system can help strengthen the system.  Once the system can securely use mobile devices to recognize a person’s identity, it could lead to better enforceability of judgments.  In addition, since the system is centralized, there could be much more done to ensure fairness and enforceability because of its direct link to other parts of the person’s identity.  

I talked to some Indians (aka my cousins) and asked them their thoughts on the project.  They were mostly unconcerned with the project and felt that most nations are moving to a centralized identity system even if it’s not run by the government.  I feel that there is much truth to that.  

However, I find it alarming that the central identity system is run by the government.  Such a system brings up huge issues related to transparency and privacy.  India does not have the best reputation for transparency of its practices and still has many hurdles to overcome.  As it moves forward, the country must build trust with its citizens.  The country is already taking steps to fight corruption, but we must wait and see how it uses the collected identity data.  If Aadhaar works well in providing social services to the indigent, the government may be able to build sufficient trust to expand programs connected with the identity service.  

I imagine that the government doesn’t have the resources (or really cares) to constantly track every single citizen at all times, but there are an overwhelming number of privacy and data security issues related to this project.  (Ex. civil liberties, hacking, spoofing, identity theft, security strength, publication availability of data to name a few, but the list goes on and on.)  Hopefully, a greater number watchdog groups or trusted organizations will spring forward to help create best practices.  We will just have to see how it all plays out… maybe in the end it will be used to create a state-sponsored biodata-based dating service! 

(NYTimes article @ http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/02/world/asia/02india.html?pagewanted=1&src=recg)