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| Vol. 4, Issue 5 May 2012 |
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Perspectives |
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Politics |
Numbers and NREGA
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| The landmark job scheme should
not be a testing ground for UID |
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Published : 1 February 2011 |
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AP PHOTO |
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| Manmohan Singh presents one of the first UID numbers.
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N 7 JANUARY 2011, a group of science students
staged a silent protest as Nandan Nilekani began
delivering a lecture on ‘Adhaar’s role in the
transformation of public service’ at the National
Institute of Advanced Studies in Bangalore. The students
were holding printed posters that read: “Secure electronic
archive is a myth.” |
Nilekani, a husky man in his mid-50s, left his company,
Infosys, in 2009 to take up a new role as the chairman of
the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), a
government agency charged with creating an identification
number for every resident of India. The project, known
as Aadhar—meaning “foundation” or “basis”—aims to create
a universal database, backed with biometric data such
as fingerprints and retinal scans, capable of verifying the
identity of every Indian. The goal, as Nilekani has said, is
to establish “one single, non-duplicate way of identifying
a person.” The project’s supporters argue that UID will
simplify registrations and transactions for rural or poor
Indians, eliminate fraud and corruption in the distribution
of public funds and goods, and bolster national security
against illegal immigration and terrorist threats.
But as the protestors in Bangalore demonstrate, the initiative
remains hotly controversial: its cost has been estimated
at 1.5 trillion rupees, and it aims to cover a population of 1.3
billion people—likely the largest numbering process in human
history. Activists have raised a series of further questions
about the programme. Can the security of the central
database, containing personal information, be guaranteed?
Will this storehouse of personal information be misused by
police or intelligence agencies? Will those who fail to enrol—in what has been advertised as a voluntary programme—be
excluded from government services or benefits?
In late August 2010, the activists intensified their anti-UID campaign with newspaper op-eds, TV interviews and
blog posts outlining their objections to the project after the
Ministry of Rural Development signed an agreement with
the UIDAI to make possession of a UID number compulsory
for participation in the National Rural Employment
Guarantee Act (NREGA). The job cards of more than 20
million workers in the five-year-old employment scheme—the main plank of the Congress party’s pro-poor policy—are
set to expire in 2011. The fear expressed by the activists, in
short, is that the requirement for UID enrolment will prove
an obstacle for workers; the numbering scheme, which is
still in its early stages, remains untested and unproven.
Five years after its introduction, NREGA has made a
decisive impact on the lives of India’s rural poor: the job
scheme covers 619 of India’s 626 districts; it has dispensed
784 billion rupees and employed 44.1 million people. Villages
that had been idle for decades buzzed with activity:
harvesting rainwater, planting trees, digging canals, laying
down drains and roads. The programme is not without its
problems: studies have found ample evidence of corruption
on the part of local pradhans and administrators, who have
siphoned off NREGA funds by inflating daily attendance or
drawing money for fictional workers.
For Nilekani and the backers of the UID project, the irregularities
in NREGA and other large-scale social welfare
schemes provide the most compelling rationale for introducing
a universal identification database, which they suggest
will eliminate fraud and ensure that government funds
pass directly to labourers. According to UIDAI, worksites
will be equipped with devices for fingerprint capture
and authentication in order to prevent the compilation of
false attendance records or payments to “ghost workers.”
Through handheld devices, the attendance data would
be transmitted into databases by using mobile phone or nearest Internet connectivity. It would be harsh to question
this idea as it has the potential to speed up the payment of
wages. But the law already contains provisions intended to
detect fraudulent accounting through “work measurement,”
which requires tangible evidence of asset creation. What is
needed now is for these rules to be backed with a more robust
regime of inspection and enforcement. Though attendance
fraud has been given wide attention in the media, by
far the largest amount of corruption in NREGA comes from
false receipts for the acquisition of construction materials,
not the invention of “ghost workers.”
The use of biometric data, according to the UIDAI, will
further ‘financial inclusion’ among the rural poor by enabling
cash transfers outside of the banking system: if the
local corner store is equipped with a device to read fingerprints,
a worker or pensioner could verify his identity and
receive a payment from the owner of the store, who will in
turn be reimbursed by a bank or government agency.
At present, the government of India, as per the muster roll
data, deposits the wages into the labourer’s bank account.
Contrary to popular assumptions, 83 percent of NREGA
job card holders already have bank accounts, and payments
in cash are no longer used in most parts of the country. The
labourer goes to the nearest bank and stands before the
cashier, who after identifying him from his passbook, distributes
the money. The cashier cannot refuse money to the
labourer; and the labourer cannot deceive the cashier. The
same cannot necessarily be said of the store owner.
At the same time, the UIDAI’s own “Biometrics Standards
Committee” has noted that retaining biometric efficiency
for a database of more than one billion people “has not
been adequately analysed” and the problem of fingerprint
quality in India “has not been studied in depth.” Here the
accuracy of fingerprint matching is the point of concern:
the fingers of labourers are prone to cuts and scars while
working, which can lead to a negative reading from the biometric
device. What if someone’s fingerprints won’t match?
The UIDAI has suggested that retinal scans will provide a
backup method for identification—but these are expensive,
and it would be impossible to conduct daily identification
across thousands of worksites using a retinal scanner. How
will workers prove their identity if the fingerprint reader
rejects them?
It is possible, of course, that a properly functioning UID
database and the successful deployment of all the required
technology and training could indeed improve the efficiency of NREGA. The sheer size and complexity of the job
scheme, which makes it an ideal target for the backers of
the UID project—who are eager to enrol as many people as
quickly as possible—also makes it unlikely that UID can be
seamlessly integrated into NREGA without disrupting the
programme and hurting the millions of people in poverty
who depend on its wages.
The government’s decision to make UID enrolment mandatory
for work under in NREGA runs the distinct risk of
limiting participation in the jobs scheme: it is hard to imagine
that the 23 million workers whose job cards are set to
expire will join UID prior to the deadline. The process of
enrolment—which requires the completion of multiple
forms and the registration of fingerprints—is not simple,
and its details and prospective benefits have not yet been
made clear to the rural poor who are supposed to be its
primary beneficiaries. Further awareness campaigns on
this front are still required. Given this reality, the government’s
decision to make the possession of a UID number
compulsory for job card renewal may prove dramatically
detrimental to NREGA.
The government has batted away inquiries about UID
and NREGA with a series of vague responses. Mihir Shah,
a member of the Planning Commission, told me that he believes
“putting UID into NREGA is the way forward.” He
admits that there are likely to be “teething problems” at the
outset, but says he believes that in the long run the UID
system will be better because “the electronic database will
be secure.”
Nilekani did not respond to the protestors at his lecture
in Bangalore, and continued to emphasise the positive benefits
of UID: “It’s an opportunity for people to open bank
accounts, have micro-ATMs and mobile phones,” he said.
All this may indeed be true, and yet none of it proves UID
is necessary, or beneficial, for the health of NREGA—which
should not be used as a registering agency for identification
numbers.
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Readers' Comments |
Total Comments
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Sridhar
2 September 2011
02:25 PM
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At another plane, the UID skepticism one often hears in the media is a dissection based on conventional thinking and conventional solutions. The logic in this article is not anything new and I assume is likely to be the same logic that celebrates Indian innovation as "Jugaad". My question to the skeptics is - why throw out a promise, possibly the only one on the horizon, because a database cannot be secured. Either the smart protester wizkids at NIAS secretly brag that, give me time and resources and I can hack in! Of course, anything man made and run by man can be compromised. I believe this skepticism is an urban, city slicker's existential dilemma that stems from insecurity. I myself faced it when once I was to design a Pyau (water serving place) for Kumbhmela, and I presented a design that used local materials such as clay pots and when I presented it to an urban dwelling architect, I was asked, what if someone throws a stone and breaks the pot? Now, my response was, people attending Kumbh mela are in a state of bliss with salvation and moksha moments away as they throng for a holy dip. Will such a person contemplate throwing a stone? Even if there was such a person, there is a word for that - delinquent. The other question is - it is so costly, all this technology! Before objecting, they ought to suggest an alternative, unless the question is the underlying premise is itself - robust technology and procedure is not a solution to ingenious ways of man out to beat the system. In which case, they can be content with patchy "Jugaad" or SMS jokes about "we are like this only".
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Prakash Sao
30 May 2011
02:04 AM
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This is indeed an informative and well analysed article, carefully describing the linkage between UID and NREGA. shame on the UIDAI and the Govt of India that a project which is being advertised having a voluntary nature is in actuality have been made mandatory for the rural poor. this indirect method of forcefully enrolling rural poors is an example of shitty diplomacy.
it seems that it is not that the NREGA needs the UID but the UIDAI needs the NREGA database, thats why they are linking this to the UID for easy and fast enrollments.
no doubt that projecting the development issues before the countrymen, the govt has hidden objectives in this project otherwise the lacunae in social welfare schemes like PDS and NREGS can also be rectified by addressing the structural problems rather than investing thousands of crores on such projects. The govt does not even bother to listen to National Advisory Council or the Central Employment Guarantee Council on such issues. This largest employment guarantee scheme is the brain child of the members of NAC like Jean Dreze. And it is pathetic that the govt is not reasonable even to them.
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