India's ambitious Unique ID project dubbed "Aadhar" that aims to give every Indian citizen a Unique number mapped to biometrics, launched today in the Nadurbar district of Maharashtra. However, Technoholik got a sneak peek at the UIDAI (Unique ID Authority of India) tech centre in Bangalore to find out everything you need to know about the enrollment process.
The Setup
The enrollment officer (EO) sits at right angles to you and enters data into a laptop. The insight of the Aadhar team here is that the person getting enrolled must see what is being entered. Thus there's a monitor in front of you which mirrors the enrollment officer's screen so that you can point out spelling mistakes or other errors. If the person getting enrolled is illiterate, he or she can nominate someone to accompany and verify. There's a small laser printer behind the EO's laptop and a webcam, fingerprint reader and iris scanner account for the remainder of the hardware setup. Unless of course you count the light bulb hanging from the ceiling and a white 'roll-up' chart behind you for the "passport photo studio" effect!
Compulsory Information
Name (First and second name complusory but middle name optional), Gender (Male/Female/Transgender) and Date of Birth are the compulsory fields. While postal address is also required, it's more for the sake of mailing your UID number rather than strictly being a proof of residence. The EO asks you for a PIN code and the city/district fields are automatically populated. The rest of the address is entered manually.
Supporting Documents
The UID team acknowledges the fact that a large number of people may not have any supporting documents to prove their identity. In this case, one is allowed to bring another resident who is already in possession of an Aadhar number to be an "introducer" by vouching for the person seeking to enroll . Of course there is scope for fraud either with a colluding introducer or by just using fake documents. However, the whole point of Aadhar is that one can only fake their identity once and this prevents large scale "ghost identity" which is the bane of most Indian government schemes. The great PAN (Permanent Account Number with the Income Tax department) card scam after all involved a single person creating thousands of different PAN numbers.
Photograph
A photograph is taken of the person getting enrolled, purely for the purpose of printing it out on the enrollment receipt, so that illiterate residents have some way of knowing that the receipt indeed belongs to them. Beyond that, the photograph serves no biometric or authentication purpose.
Biometrics
First there's an iris scan where you look into a binocular-like device held up to your eyes by the EO. After that it's the four fingers of each hand, followed by both thumbs (a process familiar to those entering the USA) for your ten fingerprints.
The EO makes you review the data entered one final time before giving you a laser-printed receipt. While the residents of Tembhali, the "Aadhar village" will get their numbers today itself, the rest of us won't be that lucky. We'll only get to walk away with the receipt and will have to wait for the actual number to be delivered by India Post!
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