On September 29 Our PM Manmohan Singh landed in Tembhli Villege Nandurbar district in Maharashtra with a 12 digit number to a new era. 

                               Ranjana Sadasiv Sonawane (782474317884) created a history by becoming the first person to get an unique identity number under the UPA govt’s ‘Adhar’ project. Her five year old son Hitesh also got a UID number. The PM declared that everyone will get this UID soon. This was a revolutionary step taken by our government. Definitely it is going to be very useful in this new technical world. Poor people in India don’t have any identity proof because of this shortcoming they couldn’t open bank accounts or get other benefits of government welfare programs and several times, these benefits are pocketed by others. Sonia Gandhi said “The goal of this project in not only development but inclusive growth.”

Brains behind the Project

 A graduate from Indian Institute of Technology Bombay with a B. Tech. in electrical engineering batch 1978, after his graduation he joined Patni Computer Systems where N. R. Narayana Murty took his interview. After three years there was a dispute in company and Murty walked out of Patni. His entire division walked out with him and the defectors established a new company INFOSYS. Later on he became the CEO of INFOSYS in March 2002, taking over from Murty. In July 2009 he left INFOSYS to serve the chairperson of Unique Identification Authority of India after getting an invitation from our prime minister Dr. Manmohan Singh, in the rank of a cabinet minister.

 An IAS officer Ram Sewak Sharma of Jharkhand Government cadre has been appointed as the Director General and Mission Director of the authority. He is a well-known person in the e-governance project in Jharkhand, he worked as an IT secretary and during his job period he has won a number of awards for best Information Technology Trends State in India.  

Unique Identification Authority of India 

 Also known as UIDAI project is a part of planning commission of India under which government of India will provide unique ID number to all Indians but not smart cards. The authority would provide a database of residents containing very simple data in biometrics. It will create world’s largest biometric database covering around one billion people. It will be a multipurpose identity card which will help people in several ways like in poverty alleviation programs such as NREGA, addressing Illegal Immigration into India and terrorist threats is another goal of the program. They are actually planning to link voter ID, passports, ration cards, licenses, fishing permits and a few more alike things into one card. The Union Labor Ministry has offered its verified Employment Provident Fund (EPFO) database of 42 million citizens as the first database to be integrated into the unique ID system. 

This project is known as AADHAR which means base or foundation.

            They have planned to introduce a micro-payment system in order to make banking services easy for rural people. The idea is to appoint Business Correspondents for every Gram Panchayat and they will be selected among the people themselves they could be kirana shop owner or any reputed person fromthat area and they will be working like instant ATM’s.

Nandan Nilekani says, ”This device will be based on a mobile phone connection and would be made available at every BC. Customers would just have to get their identity authenticated and withdraw or put money into their bank accounts. This money will not come from the ATM, but from the cash drawer of the BC” 

 Critiques

 The main critique is technical difficulty as in November 2009 WikiLeaks said that “The UID Database will be susceptible to attacks and leaks at various levels.” and a national database could allow police or intelligence groups to discriminate against people by caste, religion or birthplace.

Besides this Biometric verification is not 100% accurate. This technology is can’t distinguish between the upper skin of the finger and technically made dummy fingers of acrylic paint, silicon rubber etc and in this 21^st century fingerprint can be altered very easily by paying a very few thousand bucks .

             According to The Wall Street Journal, “Numerous social studies show that knowledge of these identifiers adversely impacts delivery of services such as education and health care to disadvantaged citizens.” 

            Except this there are people making statements about Article 21 of Indian Constitution and relating that with this project. A few more stating that it’s a gross violation of fundamental human rights and many more rumors are there including that NandanNilekani is misleading Indian government.

On the brighter side

 Now the government is using technology to better our lives. It is very helpful in making the system transparent and ensures speedy recovery of resources to the needy without any malpractice. It is a boon for our people.

 This project is not just for enabling the poor to access the government programs it will help them in so many ways and it is not just for villagers or poor people even urban educated persons will be getting profits from it. This way a ’ 12 digit no’ will be making the life of every Indian more lavish and beautiful.

- Piyush Raj Verma

Every now and then, we hear that India is on its way ahead, it is rising and becoming stronger. But, what is the definition of this strength- is it merely signing a nuke deal with U.S. or the IMF

pegging the growth rate of India at 9%. Probably not.

The biggest strength that India has is the strong “social fabric”, whose weaving thread is family ethics and moral values which are gradually eroding. This is evident from the fact that the divorce rate in India, at present, is on its all-time high. Reasons are many- some justified and some not so justified..And here, I want to clear my stance that I am not the orthodox hindu from the 1930’s, who considers divorce to be a taboo and divorcees to be social ogres. But I am
definitely against divorces on trivial grounds, like, snoring and pimples…! Yes! This is the “now” of this holy sacrament.

A Times of India report says that every two out of five marriages are officially breaking up in Mumbai, let’s not consider ourselves with the unofficial ones…! And Mumbai, more than anything else is a trendsetter for the rest of India. The aftermath is conveniently
foreseeable.

There are n number of circumstances, that one can blame, for this drastic increase in divorce rates. One very important factor is the hyper-urban lifestyles that result in time-starved relationships. With both the spouses working for 8+2 hours, they are left with too little time to nurture their marriage, which results in discontentment. Another reason again, has much to do with loosening morals- extra marital affairs, which is a fair enough reason to get divorced. Some
people even blame it on Bollywood culture that is invading the Indian masses.

An interesting study by a Malay board- National Population and Family Development Board (LPPKN) says that amongst Indians the most popular reason for divorce is “Mother-in-law” or broadly the “in-laws”. This depicts the lack of tolerance amongst Indian couples regarding family
ethics.

Some sociologists believe that Indians are aping the western culture and this westernization has led to this swelling number of divorces, but here, something that is left unheeded is that U.S., the
pall-bearer of western culture, is declining in divorce rates and our India is trekking up.

Romans had an interesting concept-“matrimonia debent esse liberia” meaning that marriages shall be free; centuries later Victorian England had an starkly opposite view that one should stay in his or her marriage for better or for worse. I believe that, the concept should hang between the two- one should try to save a marriage to the maximum possible extent, but, when it affects you so much so that it corrupts your soul, one should get out of it.

Family is considered as the most important and fundamental element of Indian society, which when breaks, weakens the social fabric. This weak social fabric is sure to show up in the national character. The strength of a country is not only determined by its military and economic strength, it depends equally so on the moral strength of its people. So, lets be rational and morally courageous and make and keep India strong and healthy in its soul.

- Shivangi Tripathi, Student, RML National Law University, Lucknow